AOL has released the next generation of AOL Desktop for Mac, to the collective sound of a great internet yawn. The world’s worst internet program and provider trying to make a program for the already fully functional Mac is laughable at best.

Mac OSX Leopard and previous versions are pretty good about cleaning up after themselves but occasionally may take longer to start up or shut down or a bit of both.  I recently experienced this on a two week old MacBook Pro running Leopard.

You finally caved and bought a Mac and may be using Safari as your primary browser.  I’ve tried using Camino, Opera and Firefox under Mac OSX Leopard but none of them now hold a candle to Safari 3.1 running under that operating system.  The only problem is you are limited in the selection of add-ons/plugins.  While some previous features that were left out are now included you will still find that it needs some.

Campfire has finally been released for the iPhone. Campfire is a business chat application that lets you communicate with your project team members and employees in real time online. It includes group chat, file sharing, photo and video sharing capabilities and more.

The last thing on a lot of our minds is where to put those downloaded files and they usually end up occupying a folder on the desktop.  Unless they are filed away permanently, this can create a messy desktop after a while.  Windows users should be familiar with Iconoid which hides desktop icons.  Mac users also have a utility to do the same, Desktopple.

Though I wince every time I consider how dependent the free world is on Microsoft products, I must admit that Microsoft Office is most times a necessity for Mac users; with that in mind, it either gives me great pleasure or makes me slightly nauseous to announce that the newest iteration of Microsoft Office, 2008, for Mac will be coming out of its closet at MacWorld.

Those of you that have the money to buy the full version of PhotoShop for Mac, great, for those of you that don’t there are a few cheaper options but why not go with something that’s completely free.

For the longest time now, those who have chosen to take the “unpaid” route for Apple software have been able to do so without repercussion; however, Apple submitted a patent earlier this month that might be looking to crack down on all those hapless pirates.

Most Mac owners are quite content with the security that accompanies each copy of OS X.  Symantec, provider of various protective software services, claims that OS X is just as vulnerable to attacks, and the same kind of attacks, as Windows.

Over the years all of us collect hundreds or even thousands of desktop backgrounds some of which will never see the light of day again, that’s where a free program called Desktopia may help out.