Monthly Archives: August 2007

Mac Software Review: Snapz Pro X 2.1.0

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Snapz Pro X 2.1.0
Mac software review

Snapz Pro X from Ambrosia Software, Inc. is the industry-standard screen-capture software title under Mac OS. The performance of personal computers has improved such that anyone can edit self-filmed videos. And there is a great deal of demand for video tutorials. So there is a lot of demand for screen-capture software. The screen capture business is lucrative. There are now a dozen screen-capture shareware titles just for Mac OS. But no Mac shareware title is even close to outselling Ambrosia’s Snapz Pro X.

Two months ago, Ambrosia updated Snapz Pro to 2.1.0. It’s now Intel-Mac ready. Furthermore, the company released another update a few days ago to make small improvements to its screen-capture software. Continue reading →

Inside Mac Games: Neverwinter Nights 2 Coming to Mac

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Neverwinter Nights 2

The game website dedicated to Mac OS says today that Texas-based video game distributor Aspyr Media is currently working to bring to Mac a sequel to the hit RPG game originally produced by BioWare and published by Atari. Well, Inside Mac Games says that Neverwinter Nights 2 is scheduled for release in December. So we have about 4 more months of waiting. Continue reading →

Freeway 4 Pro Quick Overview

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Freeway 4 Softpress

Freeway 4 Pro from Softpress is a relatively expensive solution to building websites. A single package costs US$289. It’s nothing like other website design applications we have ever used. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we give it our ‘buy-it’ recommendation. We often use Adobe Dreamweaver to modify our PHP webpages. And we use Adobe Fireworks if we want to work on web graphics. They are separate applications. Freeway 4 Pro is interesting because you can work on graphic images and rotate and skew them without resorting to a graphic application. Continue reading →

Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop Very Simple Tutorial: Sand Clock

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Adobe Photoshop Adobe Illustrator

I don’t know why, but we have strange customers from time to time. For example, there was an old lady who came to our office a few weeks ago. She brought a broken sand clock and said that she wanted to replace it with a new one. And she showed me a receipt from WalMart. “Umm, … You are at a wrong place, old lady,” I said. Then she stared at me. I didn’t know what to say. Eventually, I said that I could design a new one digitally using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop CS2. Then she nodded and smiled. Well, you know… As I always do, I launched Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop on my iMac. In a matter of 12 minutes or so, I created a brand-new sand clock for her.

The following tutorial shows steps to design a sand clock, using Adobe Illustrator CS2 and Photoshop CS2. Note that the screenshots below are extracted from a tutorial video with PNG compression. Therefore, their quality may not be the best. Continue reading →

Notice from Site Administrator

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Mac MacHouse






Because of Apple’s inability and failure to fix MakeRefMovie, we have been forced to remove all QuickTime reference files. For those who have been unable to watch QuickTime-based video tutorials, whether they are members or non-members, especially those who reside outside the NTSC region (United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Australia…), should now be able to watch them all with no trouble. Although we believe we’ve fixed all the links, because of the volume, it is possible that there are some broken links. We will continue to make sure all links are working.

A downside of this major change is that there will be no more new QuickTime-based video tutorials for non-members. Once they were available to non-members, old ones like the Quick Overview series are now available only to members due to security reasons.