Belkin TuneCast
Review by: Katie
http://catalog.belkin.com/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=404646
Price: $79.99

More and more cars are being built to work with iPods and other personal media players. in fact Steve Jobs regularly documents in his Keynote presentation just how many automakers are creating custom iPod solutions for their vehicles. But what about all of us who don't have one of the latest and greatest cars on the road? I personally drive a 1997 Toyota Avalon (it's a great car, only has about 75,000 miles on it and I plan to drive it another 100,000) and it certainly doesn't have any kind of iPod connection. Although I went out a few years ago and put a new stereo in the car that does have an iPod dock, it won't work with my iPhone, which is what I'd like to use as my primary iPod. That's where the third party manufacturers come in with some really innovative solutions. Read More...

BookEndz Docking Station for MacBook
Review by: Katie
http://www.bookendzdocks.com/Docking_Stations-Docking_Station_for_13_MacBook_Black.html
Price: $159.00 with other options available

While at Macworld earlier this year, I had a chance to see first hand a lot of the Mac products that I had read about over the years. One of the products that I specifically sought out was the Docking Station for MacBook by BookEndz. BookEnds makes docking stations for most Mac portables, and since I regularly "dock" my MacBook to an external monitor, keyboard, mouse and USB hub while working at home, I've long been interested in the concept of an "all in one" dock in hopes of replacing the mess of wires that currently sits on my desk. The good folks over at Dr. Bott were kind enough to send me a BookEndz Docking Station for my Black MacBook for review. Read More...

Billable 1.1.2
Review by: Corey
http://www.clickablebliss.com/billable
Price: $24.95

Billable is a easy to use Invoicing application, that will make creating your invoices quick and easy.

You setup your clients in an easy to use client editor window. The window allows you enter important information about your clients, and you can also use the window to import a client from your address book. This is actually one thing I love about Billable, too many applications make you store these Clients in your Apple Address book, which I don't want. I like that Billable has its own database, and Billable automatically backs it up each time you open the application. Read More...

AppZapper
Review by: Katie
http://www.appzapper.com
Price: $12.95

I recently took a call from a listener on the Typical Mac User Live Podcast who said that he had installed a ton of programs but thought he had removed them by simply dragging the icon in the Applications folder into the trash. Problem is, that didn't really uninstall all the "extra" files that were installed in other locations. The solution I recommended..App Zapper. AppZapper is one of those applications that once you start using it, you just don't know how you ever got along without it. The premise is quite simple, drag an unwanted application into AppZapper and ZAP! the entire application, including all those annoying little orphan files are instantly moved to the trash.

Many of the programs installed in Mac OS X are self contained in a package inside the Applications folder and once removed the entire program will be delted. But the problem is, most applications install files in places other than the Applications folder. One of the largest problems I've run into with with applications developed for Mac OS X is that for some reason, very few developers, even major developers such as Adobe, no longer include uninstallers with their programs. Do you have any idea how many stray Adobe files I have on my system since installing CS2? Scary...
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iSale
Review by: Katie
http://www.equinux.com/us/products/isale
Price: $39.95

Until recently, selling on eBay has always been a bit of a pain. I’d have to take pictures of my item and if I wanted more than one picture in my eBay listing I’d have to host the photo on my own .Mac webspace and then figure out how to link to those photos. If I wanted something other than simple text and a photo I’d have to open up an html editor and basically create a webpage that looked pretty. Once that’s all done, I’d have to copy the code, open up my browser and go through another half-dozen webpages to list my item on eBay. As I said, it was a pain, until iSale came around.
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Audioengine A2
Review by: Katie
http://www.audioengineusa.com
Price: $199.00

First, I must say that I am not an "audiophile" but I appreciate good music and quality speakers. But still, I've never considered spending $200 for a set of speakers that I would hook up to my laptop, I think the last pair I bought were a $35 open box special at Best Buy. After listening to the Audioengine A2 speakers for the past few months, I'll never go back to those cheep computer speakers again. Read More...

My apologies for the lateness of this review, but I figured to keep in line with my new years resolutions, better to post late than never. I actually started writing it a few months ago, and well, forgot about it. For those of you who don’t yet have an iPhone, it’s food for thought. Though you know you may want to wait now until after the January 15th Keynote at Macworld…you never know.

I wasn’t going to buy an iPhone. I had agonized back and fourth over the decision for months and when release day came, I watched all the coverage on the news and Internet wishing I could be a part of it all. But no, the iPhone wasn’t a practical decision for me. Finances were tight as I wasn’t working while in graduate school, I was getting ready to move to a new city and start a new job, and I was happy with my current provider and in the middle of a two-year contract. On top of it all, the phone was a first generation product that still lacked many features and cost $600. (You can read more about why I wasn’t going to buy an iPhone in my previous “Thoughts on iPhone" Blog Post.)

The first few weeks after the iPhone came out I avoided actually touching one. Sure, I had read all about them, watched the tutorials, and probably knew more about the iPhone than the average person who owned one. Corey had played with an iPhone that a co-worker owned and offered up this bit of advice. “If you really don’t want to buy one, don’t touch one. If you touch it, you will buy it.” He was right. I touched it…and I bought it…and now I can’t imagine my life without it.

The iPhone is a hard product to review because it does so many different things. I’m going to try to break this review down into the different categories of iPhone functions in hopes of making it a little easier to digest. Please feel free to post any comments or questions and I’ll do my best to answer them. You can also email us at themaccore@gmail.com or call our audio hotline at 206.203.2673 with your own thoughts on the iPhone. Read More...

Disco 1.0.2
Review by Corey
http://www.discoapp.com/
Price: $29.95

Since Mac OS 10.2 (Jaguar) I have been using the Finder to burn CDs with the data from my drive, just drag and drop and the CDs are cross platform. Its really all I need. What turned me on first about Disco, and what may just get everyone to try it is the user interface. The ooolest feature by far: the animated sequence when you are burning a CD. Disco has the option of displaying animated smoke, fire, goo, icy mist, purple haze, read sea, and steam. My favorites are smoke and fire. This is an amazing effect and just goes to prove even more how cool and creative mac developers are in creating their apps.

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DiskWarrior 4
Review by: Corey
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/
Price: $99.95

I've had DiskWarrior 4.0 for approximately 3 months, and have been asked for a review several times by many colleagues, clients, and friends. A program like this really takes a long time to review, in my opinion. So what is Diskwarrior?

Alsoft says, "DiskWarrior is not a disk repair program in the conventional sense. Instead of patching the original directory, it uses a patent-pending technology to quickly build a new replacement directory using data recovered from the original directory, thereby recovering files, folders and documents that you thought were lost and that no other program could recover."
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RapidWeaver
Review by: Katie
http://www.realmacsoftware.com/
Price: $49.99, Upgrade and Family Packs available

I have three websites that I manage, this one for the MacCore, one personal site and one for my local Mac Users Group. Until a few months ago, none of them looked very good. I used GoLive and was able to get sites that functioned and looked just okay, but updates were a pain and they took literally days to build. I didn’t want or need anything super-fancy, I just wanted something that worked, was easy to update and looked clean and professional. One of my favorite podcasts, ScreenCastsOnline did a series on RapidWeaver that peeked my interest and I haven’t looked back! Read More...

Audio Hijack Pro
Review by: Katie
http://rogueamoeba.com/audiohijackpro/
Price: $32 with upgrade pricing available.

In a nutshell, Audio Hijack Pro will allow you to "hijack" audio from any source, and redirect it to another source and record and mix audio sources. If you can get the audio into your Mac, you can record or redirect it with Audio Hijack Pro. Here are a few examples, you could record conversations over your favorite voice-enabled instant messaging client. You could (with the proper hardware) record any audio you can get in your Mac from an analog source, this would include your old LPs, and cassettes. You can record streaming radio off the internet for playback at a later time. Read More...

SpamSieve
Review by: Katie
http://c-command.com/spamsieve/
Price: $25

I receive an astronomical amount of junk mail and spend quite a bit of time each week filtering through what's good and what's junk email.

Until recently, I refused to pay money for a spam filtering program. I was using Microsoft Entourage (I now use Mail) and both programs have a decent Spam filter, but it wasn't great and iI had to regularly check through the Spam folder to make sure good messages weren't miscategorized as spam and of course I would regularly still have a few junk mail messages show up in my inbox which is always frustrating. Then I got creative, I created my own email rules which essentially became a secondary email filter. (For example, "If Message Body contains the word Viagra then move message to folder Spam and Mark as Read.") This worked for a while, but the problem is Spammers are getting smarter in the way they create their email messages which make the messages appear more-likely to be good messages, and therefore bypass spam filters. Now I'm getting really frustrated....

In comes SpamSieve.... Read More...

I had no intentions of buying an Apple TV for several reasons. First, I didn’t buy all that much video content from iTunes, second, I thought the $299 price tag was a bit steep, and third, I didn’t have a “compatible” TV according to Apple’s specifications page. Nevertheless, the device intrigued me, perhaps I was just caught up in Steve’s “Reality Distortion Field” but when the opportunity came to win one at our local MUG meeting I jumped on it. Now, 48 hours later, I must say I’m enjoying the device much more than I initially thought. Read More...