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Olivier Prud’homme decided to respond, at length, to my post on five ways Windows Vista is better than Mac OS X. The operating system wars will never subside, but if we could just stop talking in circles for one moment – maybe we could learn a thing or two about the OSes we choose not to use? Instead of basing opinions on assumptions or second-hand experiences, perhaps we’d be better served in trying different operating systems ourselves. No matter, the following message is completely unedited – so any mistakes made are that of the original author, Olivier. What are your thoughts?

Read more on Windows vs Mac…

When someone offers you hundreds of dollars worth of software for a fraction of the cost (legally), you’re insane to ignore the offer. This is what MacHeist is all about: a bunch of crazy people running around the Web, completing puzzles, and getting tons of digital bits in return. This time around, I scored dozens of apps (valued at $500 in total) without dropping a dime.

Read more on MacHeist: Mac Software Discounts, FTW!…

Spicy Distribution announced the 2008 edition of ‘Give Good Food to Your Mac.’ In this special offer, the more products you buy, the greater the discount gets. Remember when I talked about it last year? It starts at 20% when you choose 3 apps and increases to 50% with 5 apps or more. You have only until the 30th of November 2008 to get the best of the offer.

What’s available this year? Here’s what’s on the menu:

Read more on Give Good Food To Your Mac…

Did you have any of these already?

• Image Tricks – “Uses Mac OS X Core Image filters that transform pictures to unimaginable extent and apply advanced visual effects. The program can create unique artwork you may use as business card background, for web design, print materials and more.”

Read more on 10 More Awesome Free Mac OS X Apps…

I’m lucky; I still have a working iSight in my home office. I don’t really use it anymore, because newer webcams sport far better resolution, image quality, frame rates, etc. No, it’s not up for sale – it’s a collector’s item.

Read more on Mac Webcams…

Exclusive Coupons: $10 off Parallels Desktop 4.0 for Mac

I love my Xbox 360s; I think Popfly rocks (Silverlight will bring much needed competition to Flash). Plus, I can’t live without Exchange and its server-side rules. I love my Microsoft mouse more than any other mouse in the world. Surface looks totally awesome, too.

Read more on 50 Reasons to Switch from Microsoft Windows to Apple’s Mac OS X…

My friend Brandon works for Microsoft, and he also owns a Mac. He uses Windows on his Mac, but… let’s just assume that he’s not the only Microsoft employee who carries around Apple hardware (and software, given that Brandon’s running Boot Camp on it).

Read more on Do Microsoft Employees Use (and Love) Mac OS X?…

Someone, who can be identified as Darwin9 in the chat room, sent me a “How to Move the Home Folder in OS X Leopard.” I hadn’t done it yet, but it’s something that I was hoping to do for my next installation.

Read more on How to Move the Home Folder in OS X – and Why…

I’m not surprised that Vista barfed on Philip Greenspun (RE: The $1000 HP desktop tower running Windows Vista), but I am surprised at his inline follow-up comment:

I returned the system to Best Buy (a painful process that would have taken hours on a busy weekend day) and she reverted to her ancient Dell. When she receives documents from people using Macintoshes, she cannot open them. If she had a Macintosh, she would be sending documents to her professional colleagues (all Windows users) and they would not be able to open them.

Read more on Most Users Simply Can’t Switch to a Mac…

Ross Snowden and I have been interacting online for a while. He emailed me again last night:

I watched a video (or perhaps it was the live feed on your site) a couple of evenings ago. You were reading a letter you received from someone who mentioned they might consider switching to the Mac operating system, and you were impressed that he considered the possibility and wasn’t strictly against the idea.

Read more on Is Apple Proprietary?…

MacBoy14 has seen the light:

I have finally given in and bought Xslimmer. This $11.95 app is AMAZING! Since you are now gonna switch to an almost all-Mac house I thought it would be the perfect time to tell you. Anyways, if you haven’t seen this app, or you haven’t bought it, I HIGHLY recommend it. If you don’t know Xslimmer, is an application that will scan through (or you can manually add) all your apps and check them against a database of apps that can be slimmed. If the app is “slimmable,” (Only a few are not, and I have just found one app so far that it said was okay but wasn’t… Airport Utility [The one in the utilities folder]) it will remove the PowerPC architecture of the app and all the additional languages of your choosing. This DRAMATICALLY reduces the size of an app and the time it takes to start an app.

Read more on Put Your Mac Apps on a Diet…

Peter Cochrane from Northern Ireland, U.K., submitted the following email. But instead of giving my response, I thought it would be interesting to hear what you’d suggest…

Hey Chris, been watching / browsing your YouTube channel for about a month now and I gotta say – great! One thing I found particularly funny was the following: I found “the iPhone rant”, then right after the video I happened to click on next was the one where you’re holding your iPhone, pretty funny in light of some stuff you had to say in the rant video! But mostly I find it very informative and much easier to check up on than reading text in a blog or review. Keep up the good work!

Read more on Time for an Upgrade: PC or Mac?…

From my Mac genius friend, ‘Darwin9′…

File Paths? In the Finder, if you select the View menu | Show Path Bar, you get an interactive path bar along the bottom of the Finder window. By interactive, I mean you can drag files to each folder in the path bar allowing you to easily move content back through the folder structure.

Read more on OS X Finder Tips…

I’ve compiled a list of my top 100 Mac apps for your perusal, since so many people have been asking for it. Thanks to Taylor Olson and Jason for helping me put all the icons and links in place! These apps are certainly Tiger compatible, and most of ‘em work inside Leopard (though the VNC utilities are now unnecessary). I did my best to avoid overly popular titles, but couldn’t avoid it in some cases.

Read more on Top 100 Mac Apps…

Many of us have suffered through the “pane” of installing / reinstalling Windows. Even the Vista installation experience is somewhat klunky in comparison to the OS X method. Mike Frink is a fellow “fencer” (someone who sits between the world of Windows and OS X, like myself):

Read more on How to Reinstall OS X…