I’ve been using a Mac for the past three years, so when the slick Windows 7 Snap feature came out, I admit, I was a little sad I wasn’t in the market for a new Windows OS. Enter ShiftIt, a utility for Mac which replicates the behavior of Snap. The Shiftit dropdown menu sits in my menu bar, and I can resize windows using either the dropdown menu or shortcuts. I use it primarily when I’m writing outlines for papers, so I can have my outline, notes, and research windows sized well together.

Admittedly, you don’t need this app to resize windows such that you can see more than one at once, but it makes the process much more zippy, accurate, and convenient.

(ShiftIt works with Mac OS 10.5 and 10.6.)

I don’t know how I ever lived without my iPod Touch. As a student on a campus with wifi everywhere, it acts just like an iPhone, but without the outrageous monthly fees and AT&T headaches. Here are my five favorite apps residing on my iPod:

iReddit
Price: $0.99

I am a big Reddit user. I tried the older open-source iPhone app for Reddit (known simply as “Reddit”), but it kept crashing. I’ve since shelled out a whopping $0.99 for the paid version, and I’m very happy with it. It loads quickly and crashes infrequently. I can check my mailbox and shake to get a random link. What more could you ask for?

Echofon (formerly Twitterfon)
Price: Free ($0.99 for Pro version)

This is a very fully-featured app, for being free. I can do anything on Echofon that I could from twitter.com on my computer, and even a little more. For example, Echofon colors unread tweets, which is a handier feature than it sounds. There is a Pro version for $0.99 that I haven’t tried that will sync tweets with their browser plugin, but I’m happy enough with the free version that I haven’t tried it. The app is ad-supported, but the ads are limited to a space the size of a tweet at the top of the screen, so they don’t bother me very much.

Yelp
Price: Free

If you haven’t tried Yelp at all yet, I highly recommend it. It lists and rates restaurants and stores in a given locale, so it’s great if you’re traveling or even just looking for a new place to eat around your home. The iPhone app is perfect because I usually don’t bring my computer along with me when I travel. It saved me in New York when the group wanted Eastern Indian food and in Montreal when we wanted French fare. The ratings are generally top-notch; people take the service very seriously. Overall, it’s a great service, and the app makes it super-easy to find businesses by location, by price range, or even by cuisine.  Each listing shows ratings, reviews, location, and phone number.

Sol Free Solitaire
Price: Free

I love this app because it’s simple, it’s free, and it does exactly what I want: play one-card-draw solitaire. It is ad-supported, but the ads do not get in the way of gameplay at all. The cards are easy to read and equally easy to move around. There are also no cheesy sound effects. The app also contains more versions of solitaire, such as 3-card-draw and Demon, but I haven’t played with them very much. Overall, this is a good implementation of a simple and fun game.

Wild West Pinball
Price: $0.99

I downloaded this app when it was free, and I couldn’t believe it was priced so low at the time. It’s an addictive little pinball game with an incredibly realistic physics engine. With the 2.0 update, they’ve moved the app to $0.99, but I still think it’s worth the price. They also improved a bunch of gameplay elements, such as fixing some of the most annoying traps in the game so the ball doesn’t get stuck there all the time anymore (I doubled my high score the first time I tried the new version). Just make sure you disable the music through the Settings app before you play; the included music is really cheesy and annoying. I keep the sound effects, though, considering how realistic they make the game feel.

What are your favorite iPhone apps? Tell me about them in the comments or send me an email!

According to the headlines, Snow Leopard is in trouble.

Mac: Hi, I’m a Mac
PC: And I’m a PC
Mac: Hi, I’m a Mac
PC: Are you OK?
Mac: Where am I? Who are you?

Such was reddit.com‘s top-rated comment yesterday when word of a major bug in Snow Leopard got out. Apparently the operating system has a bug that can delete all user data if someone logs into a guest account, then back into their regular account. The BBC and several other sites today reported that Apple has acknowledged the bug and is working on a solution. They advise in the meantime to delete any old guest accounts and only use native Snow Leopard guest accounts if necessary, which suggests that the bug comes from a problem in the upgrade process for guest accounts native to Leopard (or possibly even earlier).

I suppose I could count this as another reason not to upgrade to Snow Leopard, but it doesn’t seem to be as big of a problem as the media would have us believe. This problem obviously doesn’t happen every time someone uses a guest account in Snow Leopard, or it would have been reported much earlier, considering the operating system was released in August. Another good reason to upgrade is that my assumption about pricing turned out to be incorrect. While Apple’s official story is that to upgrade from Tiger you have to buy the $169 box set, quite a few sources have reported that upgrading using the $29 package directly from Tiger works just fine. I even have a couple friends who have done it with no problems. As for me, I’m still holding back because I’m running a few legacy programs that I need for classes that I couldn’t get by without. But when I do upgrade, I will make damn sure to delete any upgraded guest accounts!

Apple’s new OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard is being released this coming Friday. Savvy Mac users are abuzz and excited to upgrade. For most, deciding whether to upgrade or not will be a cinch: Apple has set the price of the new OS down to $29, but only if you upgrade from the latest version.

For me, upgrading to Snow Leopard would be considerably more costly. I bought my Macbook Pro in July 2007 when they shipped with v10.4 Tiger (I sadly did not realize that new MacBooks would start shipping with Leopard as soon as October of that year). When v10.5 Leopard did come out a few months later, I didn’t bother to switch, because the upgrade from 5-year-old PC to brand-spanking-new MacBook was enough of a boost to keep me excited without a new OS. Now that the computer is a couple years old, I’m thinking about whether it needs a pick-me-up of OS proportions to keep it running as though it were new.

Snow Leopard has a lot going for it. For me, upgrading would mean access to Time Machine, Spaces, Boot Camp, and other features I have done without. If the specifications on Apple’s website are to be believed, I would also get a speed boost from Snow Leopard – between the switch from 32-bit to 64-bit computing and the new Grand Central Dispatch feature which automatically allows programs written for one processor to be handled by two, Snow Leopard should be exceedingly zippy. Another exciting feature is being able to enter Chinese characters by drawing them on the touchpad instead of having to enter them phonetically and hoping the computer realizes which one the user intends. Writing kanji through the touchpad would be a great timesaver for my upcoming Advanced Japanese class.

Despite all the cool stuff Snow Leopard has to offer, I am going to have to pass on it for now for a few reasons:

Cost: For those of us who didn’t join the v10.5 Leopard club, v10.6 Snow Leopard is priced a bit higher than $29. Apple recommends that users like us purchase the Mac Box Set, which includes not only the new operating system but also iWork 09 and iLife 09, and costs $169. The set is tempting, because ever since OpenOffice 3.0 started crashing all the time on me, I’ve been wanting a stable office suite. However, if you don’t need the productivity software, Leopard can be purchased for $96 on amazon.com, and from there you can use the $29 upgrade price for Snow Leopard. So if I want Snow Leopard, it would put me back at least $125, and that’s a lot of money for me right now. I could almost book a flight home for that much. I’ve also spent a lot of money with Apple already this past year, buying a new iPod Touch and paying for out-of-warrantee repairs to my logic board.

Edit (10/13/09): Despite Apple’s recommendation, Tiger users with Intel Macs can upgrade just fine from the $29 disc.

Don’t Actually Need It: I’ve gotten along fine without an upgrade so far; why should I upgrade now? I haven’t noticed any decline in performance with my current MacBook (not counting the afore-mentioned repair). Sure, it could be a might zippier, but not by much. For the most part it still feels as practical, elegant, and useful as it did when I bought it.

Alternative Software and Hardware: I listed the main reasons Snow Leopard appeals to me above, but that doesn’t mean upgrading is the only way to attain these features. Instead of using Time Machine, I have been regularly copying the contents of my filetree to my external hard drive. It’s not as slick as Time Machine, and I wouldn’t be able to instantly revive the computer if it died, but at least my files would be accessible and restorable. There are also plenty of other programs that do the same thing Time Machine does that I could use instead, like SuperDuper. Speed boosts are not exclusive to Snow Leopard, either; a cheaper and easier way to give my MacBook a lift would be to install some extra RAM. I believe it presently only holds 2 GB of RAM, and its capacity is 6 GB. Still lots of room to grow there.

Compatibility Issues: When Leopard was first released, it took my college four months to release new drivers for its printer network that functioned with the new OS. Upgrading too soon could mean having to go without software I need for school and work, especially open-source software.

It’s not as though keeping an older operating system is unusual. On the Windows side of the world, people still use Windows XP even through it is almost eight years old and Vista was released more than two years ago. According to Market Share by Net Applications, Windows XP is still run on 73% of computers that use the internet. Granted, a Windows upgrade is more expensive than a Mac upgrade, and Windows Vista has never been popular, but my point is that plenty of people agree with me that you don’t always need to upgrade just because the upgrade is available.

That said, it looks like I am going to have to hold off on this one. Maybe if I wait a few years, the price will come down enough to make it more affordable. In the mean time, I’m going to stick to upgrading my RAM to give my two year old computer a lift.