desktop
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Intel iMac desktop nirvana
As regular readers of TUAW might remember I have one of the last iMac G5's that Apple will ever produce, which are cosmetically identical to their Intel iMac brethren, so I know a thing or two about these desktops. They are great machines and I wouldn't hesitate recommending them to anyone who asks, and neither would Tom Yager.Tom dislikes desktops and goes as far as calling them, 'the muck at the bottom of the tank that swallows creativity and imagination,' but that was before he got his hands on a 20 inch Intel iMac. Tom has declared this the desktop that he has always wanted, and the perfect desktop bar none.Apple, says Tom, has gone to the effort of equipping the iMac with everything that it needs,and not skimping on the quality. This creates a great computer that takes literally 5 minutes to get up and running (and judging by the boot times of the Intel iMacs it might take even less time to get them up and running).Long story short, the iMac has converted Tom Yager from laptop snob to desktop booster.
Scatter photos on your desktop
Photo Desktop is a fun little application that lets you search for photos in your iPhoto libray and display them on your desktop as Polaroid-style snapshots. When launched, Photo Desktop's main window represents your desktop. Click "Add a Photo" and the media browser appears, allowing you to browse your iPhoto library with all of your albums intact. Select the image you want to use, give it a title and adjust its size, orientation and position on your desktop. The changes you make in Photo Desktop appear on your Mac's desktop in real time. A menu bar item lets you disable/enable your new pile of photos. I think I'll be keeping this one for a while.Photo Desktop is donationware and requires Mac OS 10.3.9 or higher and iPhoto 4 or higher if you want to browse your iPhoto library.[Via I Heart Apple]
Enable drag-and-drop desktop printing
Since I don't actually own a printer, I find it ironic that I'm posting a tip about printing more efficiently on a Mac. Regardless, this is a handy little tip right out of Apple's Pro site for all you chronic printers out there: if you print a lot of documents throughout the day without necessarily needing to edit them, you can create a "desktop printer" onto which you can simply drag and drop a file to print it. No opening the document or Office, and no dialogs to click through. It's pretty simple: select your printer in the Printer Setup Utility, go up to Printers > Create Desktop Printer (cmd shift D) to create your very own printing secretary on your desktop. Now, if only OS X had a coffee option...
