Top Five Geeky Programs (Mac OS X)

These are my top 5 programs that will bring out the inner geek in you and your Apple Mac.

• Geekbench
Geekbench is a benchmarking tool, as the name suggests. It’s free and can be downloaded onto most current Macs. Close all applications and it’ll measure the power. Then compete with a friend!

• Google Earth
OK – this might seem really, really obvious, but it isn’t. You see, on its own, Earth is a great tool for everyone, but under the Tools menu there is a realistic flight simulator game. It requires great skill and precision!

• Grapher
A graph drawing program simply built in to OS X. It’s under Utilities. Most people have never heard of it (but you had).

• Lockdown
A freebie (you can see where I’m going here) that locks down a Mac and whenever someone does anything to it, it sounds an alarm which is immutable, flashes the screen, emails a photo of the intruder and requires the correct paired Apple Remote to unlock. Applies to USB, keyboard, mouse, laptop power leads, FireWire, WiFi, whatever… And customisable too.

• Deeper
Use this utility to change many, many hidden settings on a Mac. You might want to modify the login screen’s information, change window minimisation behaviour, or a whole host of other things.

Enjoy! All are free – to the best of my knowledge – and all can be found on Sourceforge or via Google, if your Mac doesn’t have them already…