It has come to my attention that some of my dear friends are still using MacPorts or (shudder) Fink to install UNIX packages on OS X.

Please. Stop that.

It’s hard to admit that I’m jealous of anything Windows. But I’ve been jealous of the subscreen partitioning feature in Windows 7. It’s really cool.

Apple’s built-in screenshot app is pretty okay, but it’s not quite seamless enough. When I want to file a bug report, or post a humorous screenshot to Flickr, or snap a screenshot to post on Technophobe, I turn to Skitch.

Don’t get me wrong, I still use Skitch for quick and dirty screenshots and annotations. In fact, I use it more than Layers. But Layers gets my vote for coolest screenshot app of all time.

I’d tip that.

If you ever use more than one computer on the same desk, you need Synergy. Synergy is a protocol that allows several computers to seamlessly share the same keyboard and mouse. It’s cross platform: I use it to control my Mac laptop, a desktop PC running Windows and a Linux box. I plop my laptop down on the desk, it automatically connects to my desktop computer, and I can use it just as easily as I would a second monitor.

If there’s one utility that should be installed on every Mac, it is Growl. Growl provides a unified system notification interface. By itself, it does nothing. But it allows all other apps to interact with the user in a clean and consistent manner. Growl is inherently Maclike, as it creates a consistent, attractive and unobtrusive way to let you know what’s going on with your whole system.

One of my biggest problems with the “clipboard” paradigm is that it only holds on to the last thing I clipped. I’m forever forgetting that I just clipped something I wanted, and haphazardly replacing it by copying something new.