Many people live with their Macs. From the time they wake up to the time their head hits the pillow at the end of the day, the Mac plays an intimate role in their lives. It is for these people that certain developers focus their efforts - and, incredibly, some of the best and most useful applications evolve from these silly little things designed to make Mac users' lives easier.
Did I say from the beginning of the day? What could be nicer than waking up to your favourite iTunes music playlist? Well, actually, a lot of things. Waking up to Angelina Jolie, for one. But most Mac users will have to settle for their favourite music. To make this happen Loud Inc developed Loud Alarm (
www.loudinc.com/desk US$12). Using this shareware application, you can easily set up multiple alarms (music) to get you out of bed.
If you are not quite ready to think clearly when you get to work, this would be the time for Busy Bee (
www.applesource.us/tchest/busybee free), an app that convinces others that you, or at least your Mac, is hard at work processing a large project. It will pretend to do some fictitious Mac maintenance procedures like an I/O string optimisation or a virtual submenu hexdump, with the Status Window convincingly revolving at an agonisingly slow pace. The developer says, 'Simply start the application, then you are free to talk to friends, take an extended coffee break, chat on the phone, or anything else you want while your Mac is busy.'
Since you now have a few moments on your hands this would be a good time to check out Happy Wife (homepage.mac.com/khsu/HappyWife/ HappyWife.html free). This is an application that you install on your spouse's Mac, and it is one of the coolest apps ever. Every once in a while, the hidden application generates a message on your love's screen that says how you feel. You create the messages of affection and your spouse's Mac delivers them. The author of Happy Wife created the application as a birthday present for his wife.
If you spend a lot of time hanging out around the water cooler or coffee machine because of Busy Bee, you may find the Mac app Today in History (
www.x2studios.com/index.php?page= products&id=13 free) helpful for starting conversations. It automatically displays a list of events that ccurred on this (or any other) date in history. Not a bad way to be a well-informed nerd.
If you are forward-thinking enough to already have these automation tools, you might be a candidate for Robot Controller (homepage.ntlworld.com/b.hilken/ pages/RobotController.html free), a Mac tool that controls the Lego Mindstorm toy robots. Though these were designed for kids, any imaginative adult can assemble the parts to do practically anything.