5 Great Software Gifts for Mac Users

Category: Software

For those readers who haven't yet bought all of their Christmas gifts or who just want to treat themselves to a Mac gift, I've prepared a list of some of the best commercial software available for Mac computers. For each application, I'm including minimum system requirements, a short description of the software and a link to the developer's website. All of the software packages are available through Amazon so you can stay home on this cold, icy day and order the gifts from the warm comfort of your home.

1.  The Ultimate Office Suite - Microsoft Office 2008

Developer: Microsoft
List Price: $399.95

Microsoft Office 2008 is a powerful and versatile office suite that consists of a word processor (Word), a spreadsheet application (Excel), a presentation program (Powerpoint) and, for Mac users only, an email program (Entourage). Microsoft Office is the standard office application in the PC world and the Mac version is fully compatible with the PC versions. It is probably the most powerful office suite available, yet it is easy enough to use that even a novice computer user can be creating Word documents and Excel spreadsheets in minutes. Microsoft provides ample support for Mac users of Office 2008, including downloads of necessary security updates and a website filled with support articles and tutorials just for the Mac user (Mactopia).

More info:
www.microsoft.com/mac/products/Office2008

2.  Data Protection with Data Rescue II

Developer: Prosoft Engineering
List Price: $99

Data Rescue II is one of those applications that you hope you'll never need but you're thankful you own it if you ever do need it. The program has one purpose - to rescue data from a corrupted drive, including restoring files from a drive that won't mount on your desktop. With Data Rescue II, you can restore all types of files, including files deleted from your computer or from a digital camera or card. You can even clone a failing drive and retrieve data from the clone. Rescue Data II is not, however, a disk repair program. For that, you'll need an application like Drive Genius (see my review of Drive Genius on my earlier post on the MacUpdate bundle). But if you have a corrupted drive, nothing beats Rescue II for retrieving and saving the data on the drive.

More info:
www.prosofteng.com/products

3.  Great Photos with Adobe Photoshop Elements 6

Developer: Adobe
List Price: $89.99

If you want a powerful and easy-to-use photo editing application, Photoshop Elements 6 is the best application you can buy and still have money left over for some other gifts. Photoshop Elements has easy one-click editing and guides to lead you through the photo editing process, but it also has many of the high-powered photo editing tools often found only in expensive applications. In addition to its excellent editing features, Photoshop Elements 6 lets you create projects, such as photo books, online albums, cards, and CD or DVD labels. For the photo buff on your list, Photoshop Elements 6 makes the perfect gift.

More info:
www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelmac/features

4.  Perfect Burning with Toast 9 Titanium

Developer: Roxio
List Price: $99.99

Toast 9 Titanium is the best disk burning program available for a Mac computer. With Toast, you can burn data to CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray disks. You can even burn data over several disks. In addition to burning data disks, Toast lets you create HD videos or record streaming audio from the Internet. If you have created a video masterpiece and it won't fit on one DVD, Toast can compress up to 9 GB of data so that it will fit on a single-layer DVD. Use Toast for all your burning needs and CD and DVD coasters will be a thing of the past.

More info:
www.roxio.com/enu/products/toast

5.  Control Your Mac with MacSpeech Dictate

Developer: MacSpeech
List Price: $199

Have you ever wanted to stop using a mouse and a keyboard and control your computer by speaking to it? Now you can with MacSpeech Dictate. This special software package comes with everything you need, including a quality microphone and headset. With MacSpeech Dictate, you can train your computer to respond to your voice and commands. You can even move the mouse cursor with your voice. MacSpeech Dictate works in Mac OS X and many favorite Mac applications, such as Microsoft Word, Photoshop, iChat, Mail, and iPhoto. MacSpeech Dictate is the perfect gift for the person who loves to talk and give commands.

More info:
www.macspeech.com