 | Microsoft Office 2011 | Anyone coming from a PC background knows how important the Microsoft Office Suite is. The new Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac features your favorites: Word 2011, Powerpoint 2011, Excel 2011, and Outlook 2011. As with the previous version you can easily save files and those on other operating systems can view and edit files normally. The software is used by over 1 Billion Macs and PCs worldwide. The new version allows for Office Web Apps, letting you work online from anywhere. Other new features include: full screen view, template gallery, coauthoring, visual basic, and reordering objects through layers. |
 | iPhoto '11 | The iPhoto '11 application is a part of the iLife suite with iMovie and Garageband. Some of the more expensive photo apps offer Face recognition options, iPhoto does it as well for a fraction of the cost. It automatically recognizes individuals and puts a name to that face. Get ride of the dreaded red-eye and retouch photos, publish them to various social networking sites, and play around on your Mac with slideshows for the family. Lastly, enjoy creating greeting cards, calendars, and scrapbooks through the iPhoto program. |
 | iMovie | iMovie is Apple's video editing software allowing you to take home movies and edit them into professional films. From your old camcorders, digital cameras, or even iDevice take the files and finally edit them and create a video for viewing. The editing is made for even the newest of users. It allows drag and drop editing and moviemaking. For the more complex user fine-tune your movie and fix shaky video, edit audio, and make adjustments to picture quality. The Mac version is a cheaper alternative to more expensive competitors. |
 | iWork | The Mac version of Microsoft Office has been around for a long time. Pages, Numbers, and Keynote are the three productivity programs in the suite; a document text processor, spreadsheet, and presentation app respectively. Each application allows for easy user-friendly navigation while you manage page layouts, create simple/complex formulas, and add professional-quality animations to the presentation. You can open, save, and email Office files in the iWork program as well. |
 | Parallels Desktop 6 | Parallels Desktop is what you think of when we mention running Windows on your Mac. It is the bestselling, most trusted and highly rated piece of software. From when you install Parallels Desktop to being able to run Windows programs only minutes will pass. This is a very fast program that works greatly with your Macbook or iMac. There are multiple view modes and gestures that offer great personalization. Enjoy Parallels Desktop and view your favorite programs on the Mac with seamless integration and innovative drag-and-drop features to make working between systems a breeze. |
 | ScreenFlow | ScreenFlow is a popular screencasting software application from Telestream. It allows for capturing your screen (monitor), video camera or audio feed. This allows for great tutorials or presentations from within the app. Noted as best in class Similar to popular Mac video applications you have an editor screen that features a Timeline, offering you all clips on a timelines, allowing you to select each and trim, add effects, adjust audio, etc. ScreenFlow uses custom 64-bit enabled compression systems, handling virtually as much as your can throw at it. ScreenFlow is super fast and can handle DVD video to the largest presentations you have. |
 | Dropbox | Travel a lot? Accessing and working between multiple computers? Dropbox is a must-have! It is a free app offering 2GB of online storage. For a small fee you can increase this to 100GB but for the casual user 2GB is plenty. Store your web files, pictures, important documents needed for mobile use, or any other thing you can think of. You can sync between various operating systems, mobile devices, and the automatic syncing will instantly show you what has been uploaded from the other computer. The military grade security keeps your files safe, while the easy share option makes for quick file transfer for Dropbox. |
 | Final Cut Studio | Final Cut Studio is the choice for professional editors. There is a great deal of flexibility with the editing tools allowing you to dictate just how the edits will occur. Final Cut takes virtually any media and can mix and match formats and frame rates when you are editing in the Timeline. Where is it used? Anywhere - True Grit, Eat Pray Love, and Everybody Hates Chris are just some of the Hollywood creations Final Cut has been involved in. Features include: 150 amazing effects and transitions, ProRes codec allowing for HD viewing, and digital cinema workflows. |
 | Dreamweaver | Dreamweaver is the most reputable web building program offering much more than simple coding. With numerous themes and a large support system Dreamweaver lets the novice create visually stunning web pages visually without code. It is associated with the Adobe Creative Suite, sister applications Fireworks and Flash work directly with Dreamweaver to enhance your images and video on the site. Having said that, you can just use Dreamweaver develop your pages, test and preview in multiple browsers to ensure compatibility, and upload files directly through Dreamweaver. New features include integrated CMS support, CSS support with starter pages, simple site setup, and BrowserLab integration. |
 | Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 | Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 is the number one selling photo-editing software allows for so much in one program. You can create, edit, and enhance photos, then share photos in print, web, or on other devices. Touching up photos has never been easier, here in Photoshop Elements you have one-step options to adjust color, constant, and lighting. Tutorials and the large number of users make this one of the best purchases for photo geeks because with the users you will get more inspiration and hundreds of tutorials for mastering the software. |
 | Things | Things is all about task management. It has transformed task management on the Mac and now has offered just that on the iPhone and iPad. This gives the user enhanced portability and use wherever you may be. Easy sync allows for instant syncing when you are on the same wireless network. Things is simple, it shows you everything you NEED, nothing more. View what you need to do today, your current projects, what is scheduled, and those things that will be needed someday. Set due dates, repeating events, notes, and much much more. Great visual enhancements such as a dock badge show how many things still need to be accomplished. |
 | Simple CSS | Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a somewhat complicated word for the web novice. How do you create new stylesheets and enhance your site. Simple CSS is an application for the Mac that makes it very easy. It lets you make the CSS from scratch and edit current files that may be on your site. Instead of complicated codes Simple CSS uses a nice point-and-click interface. Some key features include importing and exporting stylesheets which is a fast, important, and pain-free feature to include. To make styling easier there is drag and drop options for reordering the styles. Preview your changes in the program, making for less mistakes and frustration as opposed to uploading without knowing what to expect. |
 | Drive Genius 3 | Drive Genius 3 for Mac is a program to use if your Mac is running slower. If speed is being affected and the hard drive is giving you errors Drive Genius can help. It runs as a 64-bit application and utilizes tools to monitor the overall health of the drive. It offers a great user interface, Drive Pulse, Enhanced Repartition, RAID support, and more features. This award-winning program has been around for some time but it keeps getting better and better, while simultaneously getting faster and more user-friendly. We all hate when hard drives fail, but now there is a tool to help get some of that precious information back. |
 | ESET Cybersecurity | Antivirus has been a keyword many Mac users have not concerned themselves with. Now with Macs becoming the most popular devices Eset Cybersecurity is here to keep you safe. It does not cause bloat like many PC antivirus programs, it is pretty clean and quick to use. The program will search for any existing viruses, such as those imported with music files. It blocks any attempts to your Mac by keeping that seemless performance we love with the Apple device. |
 | Aperture 3 | Aperture is a favorite program for taking images and transforming them into perfect photos. First import your favorites where Aperture grabs key variables such as shutter speed, aperture, and focus points. Next organize images by face detection? Yes face detection! The Faces quickly scan to find more photos of your favorite individual. This is a great feature for automatically organizing large galleries, a time saver like no other. After this initial phase you can compare, enhance, and share your images through Facebook or Flickr. All in all you will be able to create a powerful gallery and organize pictures like never before. |
 | CODA Web Development | Coda is a web editor that has been around for a few years but has gotten better with each update. In Coda you have much more that just a site viewer/editor. Coda prides itself on offering one-window web development. It is a site editor that offers you instant access to your site. It will remember where you last left off and open the server for you, amazing. Next the file editor supports FTP, SFTP, FTP+SSL, and WebDAV. The editor is specifically designed for web gurus while staying user-friendly. A preview mode, CSS editor, and Terminal mode are just three more of the features that Coda offers. |
 | Google Chrome Browser | Google Chrome is a free web browser available for the Mac iOS. It offers many improvements to the Safari browser. First of all, Chrome along with Firefox from Mozilla offer many extensions for the web developer. You can get toolbars and other improvements making your designing experience easier and less painful. These extensions make the browser feature-full but do not take away from speed. View your unread Gmail messages, Alexa web ranking, or Google Pagerank all you’re your browser. Chrome is the fastest browser while still allowing you tabbed browsing, fast search, and fast start-up. Browse the over thousand themes, apps, and extensions available for your Mac version of the Chrome browser. |
 | VMware Fusion 3 | Mac users may need Windows application from time to time. That is why VMware Fusion is the perfect utility. It runs both Mac and Windows programs side-by-side and does not require you to boot into any specific mode. The new version offers faster performance and 5x the graphics. For avid gamers, animators, or anyone needing speed and graphic excellence VMware is the program to go with. You can now run Windows 7 on you Mac and use both Windows Aero and Flip 3D animations. |
 | StoryBoard Quick | StoryBoard Quick is a great program for creating storyboarding software. It is pre-loaded with enough content allowing you to use StoryBoard even without drawing experience. StoryBoard Quick offers a visually pleasing layout allowing you to show people where the project is going. The features include the ability to import virtually anything into the storyboard. When you are finished you can take your storyboard and export them as a Flash movie, graphic file or other format to view the finished project. |
 | The Print Shop 2 | The Print Shop 2 for Mac allows for publishing projects. It does not matter whether you are at home, office, or in school the program is known for creating amazing results. Create greeting cards, fliers, banners, calendars, labels, signs and much more with Print Shop. Numerous clip-art images make for creative designs while three editing modes make for precise editing. The new version gives you options to create Newsletters and Booklets which are a handy tool for the publisher. |
 | QuickBooks 2011 | QuickBooks 2011 is a premier accounting app for the Mac. The application is built specifically for the Mac and offers great usability with customizable forms. What is key is QuickBooks is super easy to use and setup, within minutes you will be up and running. Within the application you can organize all your finances in one place. Once information is entered you can view specific customer information and transaction history, you can create invoices, print check, and pay bills. For the business you can choose to get the multi-user solution allowing you to show others some of your QuickBooks data you feel comfortable showing. |
 | Alsoft DiskWarrior 4 | Diskwarrior, from Alsoft, is a great program when things on your computer go bad. It helps you recover files from a failing hard drive. Get back those photos, music, and personal documents. Diskwarrior uses a new search to look through the entire damaged directory and it then recovers documents, files, and folders by putting them on a new replacement directory. Using patent-pending technology Diskwarrior guarantees to recover more information than any other program out there. Easy to use and simple, one button will do it all for you. |
 | MacFonts Complete Collection | MacFonts gives you access to over 2,000 OpenType fonts that you can use for presentations, websites, or personal enjoyment. For the international user there are international characters included in this complete character set. Another great feature is 100% compatibility with all of your favorite apps. For the price this is an incredible value. Remember with MacFonts you have access to each font with no additional fees once the program is purchased. |
 | Final Draft 8 | Final Draft is the number-one selling scriptwriting software around. It has been around since 1991 and has improved greatly over the years. It is designed for writing movie scripts, stageplays, or television episodes. The word processing and script formatting makes this application stand out from others. Unsure about formatting rules, well not a problem since Final Draft automatically paginates script to industry standards. Final Draft has been used by Oliver Stone, Tom Hanks, J.J. Abrams, James Cameron and more. |
 | Pixemator | Pixelmator is a very easy-to-use image editor for the Mac allowing you to create, edit, and enhance images. Pixelmator offers precise pixel-accurate selection tools allowing for edits that are as exact as possible. Also, Pixelmator functions as a layer-based editor, with various features to incorporate various layers for viewing. Supporting over 100 different file formats Pixelmator is a program that can take any image and edit the look, add effects, and more. When you finish you can save layers in PSD and PNG formats for later viewing. |