Mac Software

Although taxes aren't due until April, many people like to get an early start in step with the new year. Services from the two most popular digital tax-prep brands are available to try or buy, although state forms won't trickle in until mid-January.

As e-filing and online tax preparation become more popular, boxed applications and their Web-based counterparts offer most of the same tools and interface elements. As a rule of thumb, online products are ideal for one filer, while installed software can handle a bigger household. Although there are no revolutionary changes to TurboTax and TaxCut from … Read more

A new version of QuickTime is available from Apple that plugs security holes in the software for both Mac and Windows users.

QuickTime 7.3.1 was published Thursday afternoon in order to plug unspecified "security issues," according to Apple's Web site. But the fixes appear to correct the Real Time Streaming Protocol issue identified in late November that could lead to unwanted visitors if you visited a Web site that contained code taking advantage of the flaw.

Four separate patches are available on Apple's site, three for the Mac OS X big cats Panther, Tiger, … Read more

It's extremely rare for me to talk about games two weeks in a row for the Mac Daily Download, but a recent release from our friends at Freeverse Software is too good to pass up. When I heard the makers of great Mac games like Kill Monty, WingNuts 2, and Burning Monkey Solitaire were making a new twist on the online hit Desktop Tower Defense, I was immediately interested. As with most everything that comes from the folks at Freeverse, I wasn't disappointed.

Hordes of Orcs puts a new spin on Desktop Tower Defense games with smooth 3D … Read more

I'm a software reviews guy by trade, but I've mentioned before I'm also an avid gamer. I grew up in the era of "classic" arcade games and with all the advancements over the years in technology, graphics, and the birth of new and exciting game genres, I've never stopped. But even with today's advanced games, I sometimes long for the games that required only a joystick, a fire-button, and a pocket full of quarters.

The Mac gaming community knows all too well there is often a significant amount of lag time between when … Read more

Part of the reason people buy Macs is because of Apple's attention to style. Whether it's bondi blue, smooth white, glossy black, or brushed metal, Mac hardware is as much about functionality as it is the overall aesthetic. Of course, attention to aesthetics doesn't stop at Apple hardware. Mac OS X and most Mac software shares the same smooth lines and beveled edges of the hardware surrounding it. The application icons in the Dock are bright and slick, and the open and close buttons on documents and applications are like pieces of candy. Anyone who has turned … Read more

It's been quite a while since we visited the subject of best themes for Mozilla Firefox. It took a little while for some developers to catch up with the release of Version 2, but now there's a large number of cool add-ons for spicing up the look and feel of your your browser.

There's also a lot of crap. Luckily for you, I've waded through the morass and found what I consider to be the best themes for Mozilla Firefox. Of course, one of the greatest strengths of Firefox is the ability for every user to … Read more

The Gdrive, the mythical, hypothetical Google-provided and free Web-based storage drive, took a giant step toward reality earlier this week. As most of America waddled out of its tryptophan-induced haze on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the myth could become real within a few months.

However, you don't have to wait that long to get free storage from Google. Thanks to Gspace and Gmail Drive, you can start using your five-gigabyte-plus of Gmail storage as a virtual drive right now. This second, even.

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There are Firefox plug-ins for just about every task imaginable. There's one to tell you how many e-mails you've got waiting to be read, and another that gives weather forecasts. You can change how the browser functions, you can manage your music players, and with FireFTP, you can transfer files using a top-notch FTP client.

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Right on the heels of the big tryptophan doping event of the year, three of my favorite programs have gone through some minor tweaks and changes. Firefox, Pidgin, and The Gimp have all received a bit of tweaking. Let's take a look at the changes.

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