The other day I read that there are over 4,300 Universal applications available, which means lots of choices for your Intel-based Mac. But many of these applications aren’t high-power productivity programs you might need for your work. In fact, some of the most important entrants, such as Adobe Photoshop, and Microsoft Office for the Mac, are months away from joining them.

The real mark of the power user, however, is supposedly the number of tweaks and enhancements you install on your system. It’s not enough, for example, to just feel the surface of your Power Mac, Mac Pro, or Intel-based Mac note-book to see if they’re running hot. Instead, you may want to check out a number of handy utilities that monitor such things as CPU temperature, subdivided by core, and speed of the cooling fans.

My particular preference is iStat Pro, a Dashboard widget, which provides more information about system status than anyone could possibly need.

However, that’s only the beginning. There are loads and loads of menu bar add-ons that can stretch the iconic display almost across the screen, right up to the menu bar labels. Other utilities can restore some of the features that have yet to arrive in Mac OS X, such as a window shade function and a a configurable Apple menu.

That’s just a start, however.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

This article was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006 at 1:53 AM and is filed under News and tagged with: Adobe Photoshop, Apple Menu, Cooling Fans, Dashboard Widget, Enhancements, Istat Pro, Mac Notebook, Mac Os X, Menu Bar, Microsoft Office, Night Owl, Power Mac, System Enhancement, Universal Applications.