Tag: converter

Top Free and Open Source Apps for Mac Users

August 07, 2008 by Jason

A couple of days ago, I met an old friend of mine who just got his hands on a brand new Mac and, after about half an hour of showing the ins and outs of the machine, he asked me why the Mac community has so few free applications. If he had known that I would start writing down every piece of free and/or open source software capable of running on a Mac and keep talking about them for a whole hour, I think he wouldn’t have asked me that question in a million years.

To be fair, I kind of slowed down about 30 minutes after I started writing the list but still got pretty far to cover two pages. Those were the apps that I could remember at the moment, while still trying to write down other apps in no particular order.

The exact same question seems to haunt a lot of Mac switchers out there and thus, I decided to put up a list of the most important free applications I would install on my own Mac after performing a clean install.

Because I do want to give the list some type of order, I have put the apps in six categories, again, in no particular order: Internet, network, audio/video, graphics, games, editors and miscellaneous. The content in the first five categories is pretty obvious. In the sixth, I have included the programs that wouldn’t fit in any of the first categories. Read More»

How to convert video to Apple’s iPhone

August 03, 2008 by Jason

Apple’s iPhone is likely to be one of the biggest gadget releases in 2007. It’s also unlikely to be sold with Apple’s iTunes Pro software so if you plan on converting your favourite movies or shows to your iPhone, you’re going to have to work it out yourself.

The reality is, however, you can start creating your iPhone video library right now because the tools already exist.

Although Apple has been reasonably scant on giving out the iPhone’s technical details, there’s enough information just from Apple’s iPhone website to help you create exactly what you need.

If you look at the technical specs of the iPhone, the Apple website says the screen is 480×320-pixels. Now if you read the fine print at the bottom of the screen it says “Up to 5 hours of battery life is based on H.264 1.5-Mbps video at 640-by-480 resolution combined with 128-Kbps audio”. Read More»