This is a repository for all the software “Picks of the Week” made at the end of every episode of the fantabulous podcast MacBreak Weekly.
Episode 53 / September 15, 2007
Scott Bourne starts with a hardware pick beyond the practical reach of most of us, the Bang and Olufsen Earset 2 bluetooth headset at $350. He says that it’s not worth $350, but it makes you look like a Borg. So yeah.
Not happy with Firefox, Leo Laporte has been looking to Safari and ways to extend it a la Firefox extension. So, he picks Inquisitor, the really cool and free search plugin for the Safari search bar. Like Spotlight on your desktop, you start typing and search results start popping up immediately (from Google, Yahoo!, Amazon or other sites). It also feature auto-complete. Like most really cools apps, it’s hard to describe and it’s better to just check it out.
Andy Ihnatko gives Quicktime Pro props. He says you don’t realize how much you’ll use the full-featured version until you unlock it. He says it’s great for editing audio and video as well as converting between formats.
Hey! At this point on the podcast Leo gives this site a shout out. Woo-hoo! He thanks yours truly (actually pronouncing m name correctly, I guess that’s why he’s a pro) and the fine folks at mbwpicks.com who are also cataloguing all the picks.
Alex Lindsay picks some vaporware that does look really cool (and isn’t so steamy since Alex has been playing with it, we find out in a later episode). Pixelmator is an image editor that has all the robust popular features of Photoshop without any of the bloat. It uses the Core Image technologies Apple provides and looks very much the Cocoa app. Very beautiful looking. Here’s hoping it delivers.
Justine Ezarik chooses MailPlane, which is a desktop interface for Gmail. It’s not a regular mail application; it still uses the Gmail web interface we all know and love. However, it adds all sorts of functionality like the ability to have several accounts open in tabs, image drag and drop, notification, etc.
listen to episode / permalink / picks at 1:09:40
Hi folks! Thanks to all the folks who’ve subscribe to the RSS feed and who’ve visited this humble little site. I just wanted to take a couple lines to share with you my vision for this site. I don’t intend this site to be an up-to-the-minute (week?) catalog of everything said on MBW. That is, it’s not a site you can subscribe to in lieu of listening to the podcast and get the week’s picks. Instead I see this as a repository. Something you can come to when you know you remember there was a pick that’s useful to you now but the name of which you can’t recall. Or, just plain Google bait: type in what you’re looking for and hopefully the answer’s here.
That said, don’t expect this site to be update within minutes of the MBW podcast’s release. Hopefully it will usually be within a week, but the value of this site will be as repository, not in immediacy. The other bit of value I’d like to add is in the conversational, annotated style of the site. It’s not merely a list so it that should help with folks finding what they’re looking for through search. Comments? Suggestions? Drop me a line at jerry at brito dot com.
listen to episode / permalink / picks at
This weeks brings us a deviation from the usual as our intrepid hosts bring us anti-picks: the apps baked into OS X they hate the most. The move was encouraged by the inimitable Merlin Mann who asked the others, “What’s the crappiest application that ships on a Mac?” Andy Ihnatko shoots down NetInfo Manager, an app I didn’t even know I had, and takes the nerdiest picker award. Leo Laporte doesn’t like iPhoto because it’s slow and doesn’t have all the features he’d like to see. Scott Bourne reaches for Digital Color Meter because it’s 8 bit, but I agree with Leo that it’s very useful for web design. Alex Lindsay hates Stickies. Finally, Merlin declares his lovehate for iCal. I feel his pain. It’s a rigid app and the fact that there’s so much potential makes it doubly painful.
listen to episode / permalink / picks at 58:10