Yesterday I finally received my MacBook. There was much joy and celebration as I told the other guys here at DT about it. I also was pretty excited about it; I mean, I have written for DT almost a year now, and not until now have I had any say on Apple subjects. All of that is beside my main point, which has nothing to do with me being happy about my MacBook. The point I am aiming for is how I ended up in a video chat with my friend Aaron, who has owned his MacBook for as long as I can remember. He started sending me programs that he had dug up from the immense amount of open source/freeware floating around for OS X. There are a couple that I feel obligated to give the spotlight to.

smcFanControl

This little beauty of a program has saved the top of my legs from receiving the burns from a MacBook running at 80℃. Basically what smcFanControl does is it takes over fan speed control and does an excellent job of it. The newest version allows for multiple fan speed profiles. You can assign each profile to a power state, i.e. battery profile is 1800 RPM, and you assign it to be activated while the MacBook is running on battery power. This program really shines when you’re charging your MacBook; everyone knows that charging causes the temperature to shoot through the roof. It also is quite useful during long video rendering sessions. The program shows up in the menu-bar at the top when you launch it, so don’t freak out and think it doesn’t work. Also I would suggest adding this to your login items list. Version 2.1.2 can be found over at MacUpdate.

Desktop Manager

Desktop Manager is probably a more well-known program than smcFanControl. Despite how well known it is, I have still seen people without it, and they are definitely missing out. Desktop Manager creates four virtual desktops on your Mac. With these three additional areas to open programs and such in, it’s hard to find your desktops cluttered. Each desktop contains the same icons as the others; only the program layer is affected when switching between them. The program allows for animations to be played between desktops, and allows adjustable transition times. Moving applications form one desktop to another is as easy as it is simple. All it takes is pressing the key combination ⌘+H and the highlighted application will disappear. Then move to the desktop you wish for the program to be on and press ⌘+tab and select the program you just hid. It will then reappear on the active desktop. Switching between desktops is as easy as holding ⌘+⌥ and then pressing either the right or left arrow keys. You can download Desktop Manager from Mac Update here.