Mac Bundle 5.0 at StackSocial – Good for Genealogists

Snapheal 2.0 The Mac Bundle 5.0 at StackSocial, a “Name Your Own Price” bundle, is one of the better deals for Mac-using genealogists, even if it doesn’t have any Mac OS X genealogy software in the bundle.

It ends on May 7th, and it comes with several applications, including software that would let you run Windows apps on your Mac (without needing to install Windows or run Boot Camp), an application that can remove unwanted objects from photos, as well as fix damaged photos (tears, scratches, etc.), data recovery software, and PDF/OCR software.

The apps I listed above are all very handy to a lot of genealogists, and can be had for under $10 (or more deepening on how much you feel it’s worth to you). If you paid full price for all of the apps, it would be over $800, and even the apps I singled out would cost $280.

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Reminder: WWDC 2012 Today, New Hardware Expected

Apple’s 2012 Worldwide Developers Conference is today, and there are lots of exciting things for Mac and iOS users expected to be revealed today. We should hear about the following: – OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion (with a nearing release date) – iOS 6 – An upgrade to most of … Read more

Adobe Photoshop CS6 – Open Beta for Mac & Windows

Adobe has posted a public beta of ADobe Photoshop CS6 – March 21, 2012. The Photoshop CS6 beta covers both Photoshop CS6 and Photoshop CS6 Extended – keep in mind that Extended has additional features that the normal Photoshop doesn’t have, such as 3D image editing.

Update – it is a 60-day trial edition.

Just over a month ago, I posted about a video that Adobe posted concerning Photoshop CS6’s Content Aware features. That’s one of many new or upgraded features.

Features of Photoshop CS6
– Aforementioned Content-Aware upgrades, such as “Content-Aware Patch”
– Increased performance from the “Mercury Graphics Engine”
– Upgraded User Interface, a “modern UI”
– “New and re-engineered design tools.”

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iPhoto 11 Update with Calendars

Apple has released iPhoto 9.1, which is actually iPhoto 11 9.1. iPhoto 8.0 is the version number of iPhoto ’09, so iPhoto 9.1 is iPhoto ’11 . Anyways, it’s an update for Apple’s iLife ’11 that resolves a few issues, and adds some additional letterpress holiday greeting card themes. The … Read more

New iPod nano – 1GB

By now, you may have heard about the new iPod nano that came out to day – it has a capacity of 1GB and retails for $149. Yes, it holds 240 songs, but that’s not the selling point for a genealogist – the selling point is that this one holds up to 15,000 photos (and it can display them on the built-in color display – not a big deal, or on a TV screen, which is a big deal). It pulls the photos through iTunes/iPhoto (and it can provide a musical soundtrack to any photo slideshows you may put on).

iLife ’06, .Mac Updates

Last, but not least, iLife ’06 has been released – with some updates that maybe of interests to some Mac genealogists. Along with it, an update to .Mac to allow for improved integration between the two. Among the highlights – in addition to creating nice photo books through iPhoto, you can now create calendars and greeting cards, and order them online, as well as enhanced performance for iPhoto (which can now handle 250,000 photos).