Firstly, if you don’t have Adobe Flash installed then how the hell have you managed to do without it for so long? Adobe Flash is one of the most essential tools if you’re going to enjoy video on the net. Being without it is like walking into a cinema with a blindfold on.

The long awaited Adobe Flash Player 10, code-named “Astro,” introduces a host of new features which make Flash even more potent and powerful than before and it’s developers that really have something to cheer about. These include new expressive features and visual performance improvements that allow interactive designers and developers to build even richer and impressive Web videos.

To get a taste of what I mean, once you’ve installed Flash Player 10, view the interactive demos to see the new 3D engine put through its paces. It’s the new 3D possibilities that are the most exciting aspect of this release, but that’s bolstered by some new custom filters and effects, advanced ways of laying out text and enhanced sound APIs. Indeed, the sound from Adobe Flash Player 10 is one of the most notable improvements resembling something closer to Dolby Surround Sound.

One of the essential accessories for internet browsing and videos, if you haven’t installed Adobe Flash Player yet then you’re in for a treat.

Download Adobe Flash Player 10.0.22.87 in Softonic

Path Finder is a superb file browser and management application that will make you wonder how on earth you only managed with just Apple’s Finder for so long.

Path Finder basically takes Finder’s interface and adds many more powerful features plus it tweaks the interface to make it look and feel much better. Probably the best improvement you’ll notice are a new dual pane browser, cut and paste support, a completely overhauled Leopard-friendly interface and it now supports Coverflow.

The number of features in Path Finder are too numerous to mention in full but some of the highlights are network share browsing which means it auto-detects Mac and Windows network volumes and it allows you to activate screen sharing from within the file browser.

In addition, it supports tabbed browsing, a bookmarks bar, a reload button and a find window, and filter inside the browser. At almost $40 for a full licence, Path Finder is not a cheap upgrade for Finder but it definitely adds a whole new world of functionality and ease of use to file browsing and management on your Mac.

If you get frustrated by Finder, or you simply need a better way to manage your files, Path Finder is a truly comprehensive solution.

Download Path Finder 5.0.9 in Softonic

When it comes to peer to peer (P2P) downloading, the best applications on Mac are still aMule and Limewire. Yet users looking for a friendlier alternative can turn to XFactor, a P2P application giving you access to most of the major networks like Kazaa and Gnutella. The program’s interface, very similar to that of iTunes, shows all your downloads in progress in the central part. Searches made in the box in the top left of the window are then shown in a list in the left of the interface.

XFactor cleverly integrates your iTunes library, accessible from the menu in the bottom left of the interface, making it easy to share all your music with other users. The integrated player is also quite useful to preview videos being downloaded. XFactor has been discontinued and the developer page is not even available anymore, so we fear this is the last iteration of the program you’ll find.

A nice alternative to more popular P2P apps, XFactor integrates your iTunes library and offers a friendly interface.

Download XFactor 0.93 in Softonic

You’ll get more out of your favorite songs if you know the lyrics – or at least, you’ll stop singing the wrong lyrics and looking like an idiot.

If you’re a big iTunes user, then you’ll need DesktopLyrics to deliver lyrics directly to your desktop as songs play without any effort on your part. However, the lyrics are delivered in a Window that doesn’t automatically appear on top of everything else so it can remain hidden. It would have been useful if the developers had somehow added an option to set the DesktopLyrics window on top but as things are, you’ll have to minmize other windows to see the lyrics.

DesktopLyrics can also be a bit hit and miss as regards the lyrics it selects. Usually, you’ll get the right song but occasionally it will either select something completely wrong or worse, nothing at all, leaving you with just a blank box. It seems that Desktop Lyrics doesn’t use a wide range of databases to retrieve info which is why this occurs.

There are probably better lyric finders out there although DesktopLyrics is fine for anyone with a pretty mainstream music collection who doesn’t mind minimizing windows to see it.

Download DesktopLyrics 1.1.1 in Softonic

iVideo has nothing to do with Apple but it’s clear that the developers have tried to emulate iPhoto or iTunes for videos.

And they’ve done a pretty good job. iMovie, like iPhoto, automatically detects all video content on your hard drive and organizes them by date or other parameters that you specify. This is so much better than using Finder to organize your multimedia content. Movies can be organized using playlists and thumbnails, and can be viewed directly within iVideo or using an external application. It then makes them much easier to manage, publish and share. iVideo allows you to perform batch renaming, full screen playback and compile smart playlists.

Browsing your films and videos by thumbnail is much nicer than going through hundreds of anonymous AVI or Quicktime files. Sharing is also a high priority with iVideo. The developers have enabled you to export a selection of videos to an HTML page that you can then upload directly to your FTP server. Although it’s probably quicker to use YouTube for this (it would have been nice to have seen YouTube integration in iVideo) it does mean you have control over your own content and can upload files as large as you want. If you’re on a local network, iVideo makes it easy for anyone with the application installed to share videos too.

iVideo is the kind of app that you wouldn’t be surprised to see in iLife and if you have a lot of disorganized content on your hard drive, you might find it reveals content you forgot you even had.

Download iVideo 4.0.1 in Softonic

Renaming files can be an absolute nightmare if you’re faced with a batch of wrongly-named ones, or recovered files which have had their IDs corrupted.

A Better Finder Rename is a comprehensive file renaming solution for Mac and can rename huge numbers of files in seconds. A Better Finder Rename allows you to do just about everything from adding, removing, inserting and replacing characters and text to adding formating, changing and even inserting sequences of numbers.

In addition, with A Better Finder Rename you can change the date and time of a huge batch of files at once plus convert file names to Windows NTFS, SMB, DOS, Mac OS, etc. You can also change the capitals of files name to lower case if need be. As you’d expect from such a simple application, there’s not much to A Better Finder Rename and the interface itself is very simple and straightforward. Simply browse to the files you want and define exactly how you’d like to change them. What’s most handy is that you can preview changes in A Better Finder Rename before you make them to see how it’s going to look and affect the files (including MP3 files).

A Better Finder Rename is an excellent renaming tool which is simple to use and can save you hours of wasted renaming time.

Download A Better Finder Rename 8.1.1 in Softonic

Have you ever wanted to take charge of a commercial airliner and fly around the world? Well X-Plane is about as close to the real thing as you’re ever going to get on your PC. Claiming to be the world’s “most comprehensive, powerful simulator” it’s so accurate that the US and Canadian aviation authorities have given it official approval to train pilots towards their commercial licence.

Of course, those guys are not sat behind a PC in their bedroom – their training is done in a $150,000 simulator – but what they see is exactly what you get on your PC. What’s more, you’re not limited to Earth – you can even fly around Mars!

Firstly, be warned. This is one MASSIVE program. Don’t be fooled by the 1.8MB file size in the game description – that’s just the installer. Once you’ve installed that, a very swanky download dialogue opens to download the other 1.3 gigabytes of the game. All those scenarios, vectored graphics and flight controls take up a lot of hardrive space. Depending on your bandwidth, you will be looking at hours, if not days to download the whole thing.

In this demo, you are limited to just one aircraft and five minutes of flight but in the full version, you can take control of props, jets, single- and multi-engine airplanes, as well as gliders, helicopters and VTOLs such as the V-22 Osprey and AV8-B Harrier. It also offers subsonic and supersonic flight dynamics, sporting aircraft from the Bell 206 Jet-Ranger helicopter and Cessna 172 light plane to the supersonic Concorde and Mach-3 XB-70 Valkyrie. In all, about 40 aircraft spanning the aviation industry (and history) with several hundred more which can be freely downloaded from the internet. There’s even a plane builder option which allows you to build your own model.

You can pretty much fly to any location around the world and choose from over 18,000 airports to test your landing and take-off skills. You can even test your mettle on aircraft carriers, helipads, frigates that pitch and roll in the waves, and oil rigs. It naturally features the whole range of weather conditions you might face and the plane reacts realistically to them. The graphics are vector based so they’re not exactly brilliant but they’re what you’d expect from a simulator .

The biggest problem you’ll have is working out how on earth to get started. The controls are incredibly complex to mirror a real commercial airliner. I spent the best part of 10 minutes just sat on the runway trying to work out how to start the engines whilst Air Traffic Control went crazy at me. You are prompted with a few guidelines at how to get rolling (such as “hit spacebar to release the breaks”) although you’re not told how to start the engines.

There are so many switches and dials in the cockpit that there’s no knowing what to hit without studying the huge flight manual in detail. In the end, the best I managed was to race around the airport before crashing into and destroying a control tower, killing all on board. For those that do have more patience, they need merely move the mouse cursor to the top of the screen where a drop down menu will present access to preferences, instructions, control configuration and many other options.

For those that just want to fly free as a bird and admire the scenery, X-Plane is not for you. For those that want the challenge of mastering a real airliner or are training for a professional licence, it’s the best programme out there and will have you absorbed for hours.

Download X-Plane 9.30 Beta 3 in Softonic

I love playing Pool, but simulations never seem to have quite the same kind of appeal. Maybe it’s the lack of beer involved or maybe it’s just because it’s not the real thing.

Keno Pool is however an unusual take on the usual pool genre because it introduces a special version of Pool called “Keno” Pool. The closest equivalent in English would be bar billiards except in this version, there are no sticks or poles involved. You simply have to hit the balls not into corner pockets but into different colored holes that are worth different amounts of points at the top of the table. The aim therefore in Keno Pool, is points, not to beat an opponent.

The graphics are decent although the movement of the balls is a bit odd – it seems that sometimes they’re sliding on ice. Every time you pot a ball, a generic voice will announce “nice shot” or something along those lines. The points you score are doubled if you put the corresponding colored ball in the right hole. There are no options or preferences although you can adjust the spin of the ball by selecting where on the cue ball you hit it. The power of your shots can be controlled by pulling the mouse back and forth.

Keno Pool is an interesting take on the pool genre. It’s a bit more engaging than regular pool as it’s very hard to get the colored balls down the correct hole although in the end, it can become very frustrating in this respect.

Download Keno Pool 1.0 in Softonic

Safari doesn’t handle ad blockers very well and those that do exist often work very erratically or too efficiently, blocking everything in sight.

The designers of GlimmerBlocker claim that it’s a much more efficient and safer ad blocker for Safari because it is implemented as an http proxy. This means that the stability of Safari isn’t compromised because it doesn’t use any hacks and consequently, it also works with other browsers. The other big advantage of GlimmerBlocker is that it won’t break either when you upgrade Safari.

GlimmerBlocker allows you to block images by right clicking on them and also allows you to specify which cookies are allowed from 3rd party sites. GlimmerBlocker even allows you to add modifications to pages by adding CSS rules and Javascript or by transforming the HTML before Safari receives it. In this respect, it’s also an ad blocker for more advanced users, which is considerably more effective than most but does require some CSS and Javascript knowledge to get the most out of it.

GlimmerBlocker is an excellent ad blocking tool that’s ideal for Safari users with some knowledge of how CSS and Javascript work.

Download GlimmerBlocker 1.3.2 in Softonic