A very basic example would be the differences in keyboard shortcuts. Mac users press the command + c and v keys to do that while Windows users Ctrl and not the Windows key. There are many additional examples like that.

MaComfort is a software for the Windows operating system that brings some of the functionality of Apple Macintosh computers to Windows.

The free version of the program offers four different categories that bring functionality from the Mac to Windows. The categories are keyboard, active corners, spaces and quicklook.

Keyboard

• Volume: Toggle Mute with F3, Lower Volume with F4 and Raise Volume with F5
• Mac Key Combinations: Enable standard Mac key combinations like Apple Q to quit an application (now Windows Q). All Windows key combinations remain active.
• Special Characters: Access special characters like they are offered on a Mac keyboard (e.g. Alt L for @)
• Extended Mac Key Combinations: Enables application specific keyboard shortcuts like Windows T (Apple T) to open a new tab in the Firefox web browser.

Active Corners

Option to add actions to the corners of windows. Available options range from using features offered by maComfort to shutting down the computer or starting an application.

Spaces

Spaces imitates the virtual desktop manager under Mac OS X Leopard. It can simulate a number of virtual desktops with navigational shortcuts, fast access options and advanced dragging.

Quicklook

Provides the option to quickly preview a file by selecting it and pressing Space. This feature can be used to preview image, text and audio files according to the developers. This seems to only work in Windows Explorer (but not the Windows desktop)

MaComfort is an interesting program for Mac and Windows users who want to use some features that the Mac operating system provides under Windows. The developer does not provide compatibility information on the website. It worked fine on a Windows 7 Professional test system. The download is available from the developer’s website. (via Caschy [German blog])

The .spotlight-v100 and .trashes folders were created automatically by an Apple Macintosh computer system that the USB flash drive was plugged in before. These two folders are automatically created whenever a USB flash drive is connected to a computer system running an Apple Mac operating system. Spotlight is a indexing process on the Mac that will save the information that are gathered in the .spotlight-v100 directory.

The .trashes folder on the other hand is simply a trash folder for the specific drive which is also created by Apple Macintosh computer systems. Windows users can simply delete both hidden directories to free up disk space.

There is however no need to worry that these two folders have been created by malicious software.

The development team adds a serious warning to the announcement that both builds are considered incomplete meaning that they are missing features but also support for various web services and websites. It is for example not possible to play videos on the Youtube website with the builds.

How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won’t yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.

The Chrome team keeps track of so called issues that are encountered in both web browsers. The current list contains 440 issues of which several are considered important including missing plugin support which means no Flash yet, no full screen browsing, no favicons, partial preference access, no web print, no bookmarks bar and lack of input methods for some languages.

The developers are aiming for a beta release as soon as possible without going into detail when the release is expected. The public release on the other hand is a good sign that we are soon going to see stable well supported builds of the Google browser for both Mac and Linux.

Crossover is a commercialized version of Wine, a re-implementation of the Win32 API, which allows to run Windows software naively on the operating system. Crossover Mac Pro is therefor capable of running Windows software in Mac OS X while Crossover Linux Pro can do the same under Linux.

The benefits of this solution are obvious. Crossover (or Wine for that matter) provide the means to run Windows software directly in another operating system. This is a difference to dual boot systems where the user has to switch between the systems and virtual machines which also need time to boot and do not provide the same levels of performance.

It should be mentioned that it is not possible to run all Windows applications with Crossover. Codeweavers have created a table with compatibility ratings for windows applications.

The benefits of Crossover over Wine are noteworthy as well. Crossover, being a commercialized version of Wine, comes with several functions not found in Wine. This includes graphical and one-click installer for Windows applications among other things.

Codeweavers officially supports several applications and games in both versions of Crossover.

Applications:

• Microsoft Office 2007, 2003, XP, 2000 and 97
• Microsoft Visio
• Microsoft Project
• Quicken
• and others

Games:

• World of Warcraft
• Team Fortress 2
• Civilization IV
• Half-Life 2
• and others

You can win one of ten licenses for Crossover Mac Pro or Crossover Linux Pro. Please mention your operating system in the comment so that I know which version you need.

In Northern England, we have been ‘fortunate’ enough to have had quite a bit of snow this week. Not everyone is as lucky though, and Snowflakes is an application which ensures those at lower latitudes won’t miss out. Snowflakes allows snow to fall either on the desktop or, should you really need reminding, in front of all windows. The speed and number of the snowflakes can be modified. It is a little distracting even behind all windows, as the snowflakes falling can be seen in the space just above the dock.

Mac users love widgets and fairy lights. Festive Lights is a widget which allows you to ‘decorate your dashboard’. Users have several options: festive lights can surround the dashboard, or only hang from the top; they are available in different colours; mistletoe can be added; and the pattern which the flashes follow can be selected.

Fairy lights are also available for the desktop. One way would be to drag the above widget to the desktop (a little hack required). Another option is Xmas Lights, a standalone application which allows lights to appear behind and in front of windows. Several lights are available and more can be added.

Christmas Countdown is another useful widget which does what it says on the tin, displaying the amount of days until Christmas in the form of a Christmas Tree.