VLC media player is the most successful free open source multimedia player out there with over 500 million downloads according to the developers. In particular, VLC media player is a great alternative to , iTunes, and RealPlayer. It's lightweight, fast, easy to use and most importantly, plays almost anything.

Note that versions of VLC media player compatible with Mac OS X 10.1 to 10.6 are available. The main download link is version 2 for the 64 bit Intel version compatible with OS X 10.5 and above. However, you can find VLC Player for OS X 10.4.11 Intel Macs here. There is not, and there will never be, a version of VLC media player for Mac OS 9 say the developers.

It's been two and a half years since version 1.0 was released and version 2 ("Twoflower") brings a new interface, faster decoding, support for more formats and the ability to play HD and BluRay. It still remains however the most stable, flexible and lightweight audio and video player around today. While other media players will play unusual formats after downloading a codec, or simply refuse to play things, VLC media player handles tons of formats, from MPEG to FLV and RMBV files. Version 2 has seen some important additions too such as support for 10 bit codes plus multi-threaded decoding for H.264, MPEG-4/Xvid and WebM.

Also useful is the fact that you can use VLC media player to preview files you are downloading since it plays incomplete parts of video files. VLC media player is not just for video playback however. It also offers superb integration with video channel streaming services such as Channels.com giving you access to channels such as ESPN, Reuters and National Geographic. Just right-click or CMD-click on the playlist, select Services Discovery and Channels.com. Channels.com will then appear in your VLC media player playlist. Click on it to reveal the the different categories of channels available. Click on the category you want and a drop down list of all available channels appears in VLC media player. Just click on the channel you want to watch and streaming should begin almost immediately.

VLC media player also has great hotkey support and if you take the time to learn the shortcuts so it can be controlled without touching your mouse. If you're watching DVDs or video files through it, this is not an issue. For music, it plays more or less any file and features an equalizer and playlist creation. VLC media player isn't as intuitive as iTunes as a media manager, but it's a much more flexible player in terms of file formats. You can even use VLC to convert your files, and on top of all the formats and physical media it will play, many streaming protocols and TV capture cards are supported.

VLC media player makes it easy to add subtitles to your video files too - just add the SRT file to the folder where your video is kept, and it will automatically play with subtitles.

Finally, the interface has been somewhat improved in version 2 on Mac. In fact, the Mac interface is now considerably slicker than on Windows with a single window for everything. However, it's only available in 2 colors: Lion grey and QTX black. There are also new extensions support and better Lion integration. The preferences menu is still comprehensive without being overwhelming, and there is extensive documentation online.

Don't forget to check out some of our blog posts such as VLC media player v KMPlayer, How to rotate a video with VLC media player, How to sync audio with video in VLC media player and How to use subtitles with VLC media player.

There's very little to fault with VLC media player. It's a superb lightweight media player that will successfully play the most stubborn files where other players fail.

Download VLC media player 2.0.6 in Softonic

Microsoft ended support for Internet Explorer for Mac on December 31st, 2005, and does not provide further security or performance updates. Since the browser is no longer designed to handle the requirements of most modern web pages, we strongly advise you to try Firefox, Chrome, Safari or Opera instead. Alternatively, just check out all of the other browsers available for Mac.

However, if you really can't help yourself and are an Internet Explorer nostalgic, you might want to try it for a trip down memory lane. However, for normal internet browsing we'd really discourage you from using it. We couldn't even render the Softonic website in it and indeed, most websites failed to load properly. Internet Explorer for Mac is incredibly slow, buggy, prone to crashes and freezing and is woefully short of security settings.

Since development finished in 2005, Internet Explorer for Mac doesn't offer even the most basic features that you would consider a prerequisite on any browser nowadays like tabs, extensions, saved sessions or private data management.

There are absolutely no compelling reasons to use Internet Explorer for Mac. If you've just switched from Windows to Mac, try one of the browsers suggested above instead.

Download Internet Explorer 5.2.3 in Softonic

How to get started in Minecraft

Your world in Minecraft is randomly generated, and you appear in a land surrounded by water, with mountains, valleys, trees and animals. It's not clear what to do except explore to begin with but as the sun sets, monsters appear, who will kill you. Survival is impossible in the open, so you need to build a shelter to hide out in for the first night.

Collecting wood from trees, coal and stone from cliffs, you have to use your inventory to create tools, planks and more. Once you know how, mining and building is pretty quick, and you can create some really cool structures.

Minecraft realms

A new realm has been added to Minecraft, which allows faster travel through the huge worlds. Called The Nether, it resembles Hell, and is full of flowing lava and monsters. You can access The Nether using portals made from Obsidian you have mined. Also, when you create a new Minecraft world, it will now be more varied, with 'biomes' of different landscape, like desert, tundra and snow. NPC (non player characters) now roam villages, which can serve as early shelters for you at night, if you can find them!

Version 1.0 has some nice cosmetic changes, including an HD texture pack, better lighting from torches and even prettier sunsets and sunrises! The game launcher also looks better. There is now a 'Creative Mode', which makes you invincible, gives you unlimited resources, allows you to fly, and fast forward/rewind time! This mode is ideal for players who just want to get on and build cool stuff, without worrying about staying alive.

Minecraft is a wonderfully inventive sandbox game that really deserves the title, as your creation in it is only limited by your imagination and time!

Download Minecraft 1.5.2 in Softonic

UnRarX is very easy to use. Simply drag and drop RAR files onto the UnRarX interface and your files will be automatically unzipped. The extracting process appears in the main section of the UnRarX interface to indicate the progress of the extraction.

The main controls for UnRarX are in the top-right of the main interface. These functions allow you to browse for a file, extract files and test files to see whether they are corrupt. If your file is password protected, just press the 'password' button and enter it to open and extract the archive.

You may encounter a few problems depending on your file type. If you receive a CRC error, it's likely that one of your RAR archives is corrupted. Also, if you experience a "UnRarX cannot extract archive" error message, try re-directing the output volume to your desktop instead of File Directory. These little glitches can make UnRarX a bit tricky for beginners but most people should experience fre problems.

Unfortunately there seems to be very little developer support for UnRarX although there is a support page with links to a forum and bug report page, where you may be able to find help with problems you're having. Note as well that UnRarX only unarchives RAR files - it won't create them for you.

UnRarX is one of the closest things to WinRAR on Mac for unzipping RAR archives.

Download UnRarX 2.2 in Softonic

It's not often that a Microsoft product gets remade for Mac but Paintbrush is more or less a version of MS Paint which comes by default with Windows - you know, the kids app that you never used when you were on Windows. Be warned that it's not quite as simple as Paint, but it follows a similar pick-up-and-paint format and is easy to learn with just a little perseverance.

Paintbrush is an extremely simple app – don’t make the mistake of thinking it’s a photo editor or replacement for an image editor like Photoshop. You've got a toolbox which allows you to use a paintbrush, rubber, color palette, area selector and little more than that. In other words, Paintbrush won't appeal to any serious artist but it could be useful to keep your kids happy for a while or simply if you want to doodle a few minutes away.

You can save your Paintbrush masterpieces in most major formats, although you can only select one default save format (.PNG). It's not easy to paint on Paintbrush when using a mouse, however; the app should support the addition of a light-pen and pad to make it more usable.

Simple to use and easy to get going, Paintbrush is the blank canvas that will take you back to kindergarten.

Download Paintbrush 2.1.1 in Softonic

You play as Carl Johnson, returning to his home of Los Santos after five years away. Plenty has changed over the years, and Carl sets about getting his gang's reputation and influence back. GTA: San Andreas' gameplay is classic GTA - tons of cinematic cut scenes, varied missions and lots of mini games, spread over a free roaming sandbox world.

What defines GTA: San Andreas more than anything is the scale. It's hugely ambitious, set in a massive state featuring three big cities, and plenty of countryside. The campaign is enormous, and there is plenty more to do beside. The storyline, a rags to riches tale, may not be massively original but it's well told with excellent acting and lots of memorable and funny characters. The radio stations are excellent, with a great mix of 90s music and hilarious adverts.

There are points where GTA: San Andreas will be frustrating for some. Racing cars in the countryside can be pretty slippy for instance, and building up Carl's lungs for swimming underwater takes too long. Some of the missions are a little annoying too, but hey are eclipsed by the best moments of the game and the amount of fun you can have roaming the state, enjoying the sites and creating havoc!

GTA: San Andreas is a milestone in sandbox gaming. It's violent and very much an adult game, and while it has gameplay flaws, the overall achievement and the fun you can have playing are pretty much unbeatable.

Download GTA: San Andreas 1.02 in Softonic

Microsoft Word 2011 is a component of Microsoft Office 2011, which has been significantly improved for Macs from the 2008 version. In Microsoft Word 2011, the toolbar has been vastly improved and is far more practical thanks to the Ribbon interface inspired by the Windows version. As a result, you now have different sets of tools depending on different types of document that you're working on.

Microsoft Word 2011 makes much greater use of screen real estate too. By using the Ribbon, you can view documents in glorious full screen mode which really makes your documents look great and focuses you on the document rather than the toolbars surrounding it. Also in Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac, Microsoft have added support for SharePoint. This allows Mac users to connect to Microsoft's Sharepoint servers directly and collaborate on documents in realtime.

Microsoft Word 2011 and the entire Office suite have been through some major changes over the past 3 years and it now finally feels like a real OS X product.

Download Microsoft Word 2011 for Mac 14.0.0 Preview in Softonic

With good reason too. Firefox remains an incredibly powerful and customizable browser although persistent memory leakage problems and competition from Google Chrome have dented its popularity.

There are a few interesting improvements in Firefox 21. There's a new Enhanced three-state UI for Do Not Track (DNT) to enhance privacy protection. Firefox should also start a bit quicker on your Mac as it suggests what can be done to improve start-up time (such as disabling certain unused add-ons). There's also a new Firefox Health Report feature which monitors how stable and well oiled your version of Firefox is. Other than this, there have been some minor cosmetic changes to functionality and some developer focused improvements.

The interface is pretty much the same as previous versions of Firefox, with a minimalist toolbar and there's still no way of removing elements that you may not want such as Java and .Net Framework. The major downside for most users however is that some plug-ins or add-ons won't work with the latest version of Firefox yet - so if you have a lot installed, prepare to be disappointed.

One major problem that persists is the high usage of RAM when Firefox is displaying Flash videos such as YouTube. Firefox runs an extra "Plugin-container" process for Flash videos that can occasionally consume 100% of your CPU and cause your Mac to freeze temporarily.

Something that's been introduced in more recent versions of Mozilla Firefox is Facebook integration. Firefox now supports Facebook's social API so you can have dedicated buttons for Facebook in your browser. Mozilla Firefox supports Facebook's Messenger within Firefox, giving users desktop notifications as well as a persistent friends list and activity feed on the right. Conversations will open up as overlays on top of whatever website you're on so you can multitask while you chat.

Mozilla Firefox 20 isn't a revolution in the development of Firefox, but there are some useful improvements that still make it a decent browser.

Download Mozilla Firefox for Mac 21.0 in Softonic

With Skype you can call other Skype users absolutely free wherever they are in the world thanks to P2P technology. Skype brings together the main functions of talk, chat, video, file sharing and screen sharing in one main window. In the latest release, by default your contacts list is on the left with the other basic functions in the main part of the program window making it more streamlined and slicker than previous releases.

New in Skype 5 is the ability to video conference with up to ten participants. Group conferencing has also been made easier thanks to the redesigned call window which means that all distractions (such as other conversations) are minimized and only the names of participants displayed. However, although you can video chat with one contact for free, group video conferencing is now a premium feature which you have to pay for,

Skype features a new contacts list sorted by category and you can add favorites to the top of the list. Searching for them has also been made easier by integrating them with your Mac address book. You can also now rename contacts so that you're not stuck with their default username. Finally, accessing Skype is now easier thanks to a mini Skype control bar that sits on top of any web pages, documents or photos you've got open although some may find this a bit intrusive.

Although the latest Skype adds many improvements, some people may miss the smaller and more discreet interface of Skype 2.8. There is a feeling that the developers have gone a bit over the top in expanding Skype and "hiding" certain features and it will take users of the old version some getting used to. The fact that video conferencing is now a premium feature will also annoy many faithful users.

Finally, most recently Skype was taken over by Microsoft which has led to further integration with Microsoft services among other things. You can now sign into Skype with your Microsoft Live account details for example and chat to MSN contacts online using Skype. There's also been considerable integration with Facebook allowing you to chat and communicate with Facebook contacts from Skype.

The new Skype brings video conferencing and a more intelligent user interface that once you've adapted to, should make Skype an even better way to keep in touch while you're away. However, those that don't like the interface changes will be less than impressed and can still download version 2.8.

Download Skype 6.4.0.833 in Softonic

Open up your archive with the program and it will take care of the rest. It's most important feature is handling multi part archives, quite useful when you're expanding a file containing multiple video parts for example.

RAR Expander will also work with password protected files, but you'll have to make sure you remember your password before expanding.

While this is one of the most common formats you'll come across, it's a shame that the program doesn't let you expand other popular formats like Stuffit Expander does.

Users have also been known to prefer unRarX, which effectively restores corrupted archives, something that RAR Expander doesn't seem to handle.

Download RAR Expander 0.8.5 Beta 3 in Softonic

uTorrent for Windows has been a big success on PCs for years and uTorrent for Mac includes all the same features that made it such a success. It's lightweight, extremely easy to use, very fast, requires no configuration and generally just makes downloading torrents very easy. If you have used the Windows version, the main difference you'll notice is that uTorrent for Mac is slightly stripped down compared to the Windows version.

For example, down the left hand side of uTorrent you have all the same menus that you have in Windows that allow you to select exactly what you see in the uTorrent window. You can choose to view only those downloads that have completed, those that are currently downloading, those that are active and finally those that are inactive. Of course, you can also choose to view all of these at the same time too.

However, along the top of the interface, some of the controls that you find in Windows have been removed such as the button for RSS downloads, the create your own torrent wizard button and a preferences button. Preferences can be accessed via the menu bar although there is no RSS downloader or create your own torrent wizard unfortunately.

Everything else is the same as you get in uTorrent 's Windows version including a detailed stats windows giving you details of your download which you can toggle on and off via the info symbol on the top right of the interface. You'll also find the search box which simply takes you to a Google search results page.

The preferences dialog offers the same controls as in Windows with options to limit the bandwidth uTorrent uses, network settings and BitTorrent settings. Most importantly, downloads in uTorrent for Mac are lightening quick (if you have plenty of seeds for your file) although of course, this will also depend on how fast your internet connection is. It takes little more than a few seconds for uTorrent to start finding seeds and get on with downloading your files.

Finally, the uTorrent website offers you several different skins to choose from, an extensive FAQ and a full guide to using uTorrent for beginners. There are few drawbacks to uTorrent but one problem is that there is no way to add or remove torrent components once they have started.

Note that uTorrent provides access to a huge number of files but should only be used for sharing legal digital content.

If you've used uTorrent in Windows, you won't be disappointed by uTorrent for Mac. If you've never used it, then give it a go and you may never go back to your old torrent client again.

Download uTorrent for Mac 1.8.4 in Softonic

In Surgeon Simulator 2013 for Mac you play the part of a surgeon Nigel Burke. The twist is that Nigel has no medical qualifications - it's just you, some surgical tools and a body. Your goal is to complete various operations as quickly as possible with minimal blood loss starting with a heart transplant.

When you start the game, Surgeon Simulator 2013 for Mac allows you to select which size resolution you want to play and whether you want to play in Windowed mode (i.e. a window on your desktop). To quit the game, the only way to get out is to press CMD and Q together.

Surgeon Simulator 2013 for Mac opens with music from the British hospital drama "Casualty" set in Holby City hospital which continues throughout the game. You control the surgeon's hand with the mouse or keyboard but the first thing you'll notice Surgeon Simulator 2013 is extremely difficult to control. You control each finger separately which is tricky in itself but the hardest thing is actually picking-up tools and using them to heal and cut organs.

You will inevitably make a huge mess of your first few goes on Surgeon Simulator 2013 for Mac and hack your poor patient to pieces. I managed to send the spare heart flying across the room, after destroying the rib cage with a saw and then accidentally throwing both of the patient's lungs at his face - he had no chance after that.

At the end of the surgery, you will be given a verdict as to how the surgery went, a final blood remaining level, surgery time and rating. However, it's incredibly hard to know which tools you need and how to use them in Surgeon Simulator 2013 for Mac. Some in-game prompts or instructions would have been better to prevent every operation turning into a blood bath.

There are some amusing sound effects to Surgeon Simulator 2013 for Mac - mostly Nigel Burke going "Oh No!" and "Oh Jesus!" in a cockney accent as things go wrong and your patient slips away. However, the Casualty theme soundtrack gets very repetitive and leaves you wishing the hospital TV drama had never been invented.

Surgery Simulator 2013 for Mac is still a fun simulator which illustrates the complexity of major heart surgery whilst also being quite educational about the human body too.

Download Surgeon Simulator 2013 in Softonic

The myth of Slender started quite simply as a rumor and has also been popularized as an internet meme. The story is that Slender Man is a mythical creature often depicted as a tall, thin figure wearing a black suit and a blank face. According to legend, he can stretch or shorten his arms at will and has tentacle-like appendages on his back. Slender Man can cause memory loss, insomnia, paranoia, coughing fits (nicknamed "slendersickness"), photographic and video distortions and can teleport at will.

The basic premise of the game is the more directly you come in contact with the Slender Man, the faster your sanity drains. You therefore have to careful not to look at the enemy for too long and remember that your flashlight has a limited battery so you must turn it off from time to time to save it. Also, the more you sprint, the lower your maximum stamina becomes, so you must sprint only when you need to.

The controls to the game are simple:

Mouse -- Look around
W,A,S & D -- Move
Left Shift -- Sprint
Left Mouse Click -- Pick up pages
Right Mouse Click -- Flashlight
Q & E -- Zoom in/out

Slender does well in creating quite a creepy atmosphere for a very basic game. It feels like just you, your torch and the sound of crickets chirping as you fumble your way through the forest looking for manuscripts. However, the overall aim of collecting 8 pages of the manuscript is quite limited and so the gameplay is a bit limited.

Note that you'll need an archiving tool like The Unarchiver or RAR to unpack this Slender game download. Slender will not perform very well on older Macs too, especially MacBooks from around 2008. If you have problems, try lowering the graphics quality to the lowest setting at the start of the game.

Slender is an eerie horror game that's well worth trying whether or not you've ever heard of the Slender Man myth.

Download Slender: The Eight Pages for Mac 0.9.7 Beta in Softonic

Firstly, note that if you install Messages, it replaces iChat although Apple has assured that iChat services will continue to work. In a further move towards iOS, Messages provides better integration with iMessage on iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch running iOS 5.

Some of the benefits include unlimited iMessages to these devices, the ability to start a conversation on your Mac and then continue it on your iOS device and launch FaceTime video calls. You can also send photos, videos, attachments, contacts, locations, and more.

You can also connect Messages to other chat protocols. It supports AIM, Yahoo!, Google Talk, and Jabber accounts.

If you want iMessage for Mac then Messages brings OS X and iOS one step closer to make sure you can always keep in contact with your friends and family.

Download Messages (iMessage for Mac) Beta in Softonic

The first thing we noticed about Google Chrome for Mac is that it's unbelievably lightweight. While Firefox was consuming anything from an average of 20-30% of a Mac's CPU, Chrome for Mac barely registered on the scale, occasionally touching 1%. For anyone plagued with Firefox memory leaks and crashes, this alone is surely going to be a compelling reason to give Chrome a go.

As you'd expect, Google Chrome for Mac also features tabbed browsing, which visually, is more attractive than Firefox which tends to cram them together somewhat. Extensions and bookmarking (including syncing across machines) are included, as is Adobe Flash.

Chrome for Mac only works on Intel Macs and you might find that some add-ons that you used with previous browsers aren't available for it yet. This is rapidly changing however and most popular add-ons are now available on Chrome.

Perhaps most importantly, Google Chrome for Mac is extremely quick. Surfing the Softonic site, page-loads took less then a second and all images were loaded very quickly. YouTube in particular loaded with lightening speed.

Overall, the handling of sites using JavaScript in particular is mightily impressive and this has been made even better with the implementation of a V8 Crankshaft. Its also nice to know that with Chrome for Mac, even if there is a problem with one of your tabs, that it won't crash the whole browser - just the tab itself. However, sandboxing of Flash still isn't available in the Mac version, even though it is on Windows.

The final version ensures that you'll be able to synchronize not only bookmarks across multiple computers, but also browser preferences - including themes, homepage and startup settings, web content settings, preferred languages, and even page zoom settings. Meanwhile, you can also enable each extension to work in incognito mode through the extensions manager.

With thousands of extensions, super fast browsing and all the intelligence and slickness you expect from a Google product, Chrome for Mac delivers an excellent browsing experience.

Download Google Chrome for Mac 26.0.1410.65 in Softonic

A step-by step tutorial launches the first time you run LogMeIn Hamachi and shows you how to use the main functions. At first sight, LogMeIn Hamachi looks very easy to use. Complications arise later on when trying to share files between the computers: you'll need to have a user account with privileges in the target Mac, or so it seemed in our testing, during which we were unable to share files due to right issues. Oh well, at least we could have a chat – a very safe one, of course.

LogMeIn Hamachi is an extremely handy tool especially if you're working in technical support and need to help remote users behind firewalls. It can however be slow sometimes but much will depend on your connection.

LogMeIn Hamachi is a great solution to establish safe, private P2P connections between two computers although it's not as easy to use as it seems at first sight.

Download LogMeIn Hamachi 2.1.0.434 in Softonic

Most notable is the Content Aware tool which makes editing Photoshop more "intelligent" plus there's a new design and a streamlined interface. In addition, basic video editing functions have been added for the first time. Note that Adobe Photoshop CS6 only supports 64 bit Macs.

When you first open Adobe Photoshop CS6, the most eye-catching thing is the revamped colorful user interface. However, if you don't like the new look, you can revert to the old grey interface via Preferences - Interface. Beyond this however, there are some useful new features:

Content Aware

Content Aware intelligently moves selected objects and adjusts them accordingly with the background or surrounding objects. This enables you to simply drag and drop objects in Photoshop much more easily without having to readjust the background. Don't like the position of a person in an image? Just move them to another position instantly and the background automatically adjusts.

Video Editing

Adobe Photoshop CS6 brings video editing to Photoshop for the first time. Its integrated with all of Photoshop's traditional tools which makes it very powerful when it comes to retouching scenes, adjusting colors and filter sets etc. It also allows you to add audio tracks although it's not very advanced otherwise.

Bridge file browser and Mini Bridge

Adobe Photoshop CS6 features a more powerful file browser which allows you to sort and manage pictures according to specific metadata. The fully integrated file browser with thumbnail previews photos quickly and opens them instantly for easier library management.

Adobe Photoshop CS6 brings some interesting new features to this powerful photo editing software. Particularly interesting is the Content Aware function which makes retouching and manipulating photos incredibly easy. Please note however that this beta version may be unstable and if you need a reliable version, its recommended to use Adobe Photoshop CS5 or Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Download Adobe Photoshop CS6 Extended 13.0.4 in Softonic

The first thing Mac users should be aware of is that there's nothing eye-popping in Snow Leopard that's going to have you scrambling to upgrade. The focus of OS X 10.6 is simply to improve overall efficiency and reduce it's footprint. However, there are a few interesting new features that will certainly interest some users. Here are some of the most notable:

Slimmer QuickTime Player

Maybe inspired by the success of VLC Player, "QuickTime X" features a simplified GUI with a greater focus on codec support

Cocoa Based Finder

Finder has a glossy new Cocoa Desktop Window and Contextual Menu

Safari Beta 4 Default Browser

In an unusual (and some might say slightly desperate move) Apple included a beta version of Safari 4 with Snow Leopard presumably in a bid to give it a leg-up against Firefox.

Microsoft Exchange Server Support

A smart business move that will surely attract more corporate users. Mac users can now connect to Microsoft Exchange 2007 servers via Mail, Address Book, and iCal

Faster Installation Time

May not be of much interest to single users but network administrators installing Snow Leopard on multiple machines can expect to install it in around 15 minutes compared to around an hour for Leopard. Testmac.net completed an install in an incredible 13 minutes.

More Stacks Control

Stacks has been improved to allow users to drill-down the contents of sub-folder

If you're finding your Mac is operating increasingly slowly, then for speed alone it's worth the upgrade to OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. In addition, its also fair to say that developers will find much to be happy about about in Snow Leopard. The integration of Grand Central, OpenCL and a 64 bit kernel will finally allow them to take full advantage of the dual processing power of Intel Macs and produce some stunning applications.

Download OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard 10.6.8 in Softonic

iMovie '11 works by importing your movie (which for large films has to be in DV format) and then allowing you to cut and paste bits of it together, much as you would with a word processing application. Adding soundtracks is a breeze thanks to integration with iTunes as is images due to integration with iPhoto. Also, if you just want to cut something for YouTube, an integrated uploaded makes sure your creations go online instantly although I sometimes find this fails to upload properly or doesn't tag the video correctly.

There are tons of trailers and templates for you to choose from that make your movie look far more polished that would ordinarily be possible. By the time you've finished, your raw film will look amazingly polished. iMovie '11 can be fussy with formats - it works best with DV format films and trying to import other formats may not work or just crash it completely.

Advanced video editors will find that iMovie '11 lacks specialist editing functions but for most people, iMovie turns you into a pro with minimum effort.

Download iMovie '11 9.0.9 in Softonic

Open Facetime and you'll immediately see yourself on screen, and you have to sign in with your Apple account to get started. Once done, FaceTime will sync with your address book, allowing you to immediately call anyone who has the capability.

Calling an iPhone 4 or iPod Touch is easy, once you have your contacts. Image quality is excellent, and the display is pleasantly free of distractions. If the iPhone is rotated, the image also changes on FaceTime for Mac, from landscape to portrait and back. It's a very smooth, simple and comfortable video call experience.

FaceTime is not perfect though. While integration with your contacts on the iPhone makes perfect sense, on the Mac it's less useful. You can't add contacts to FaceTime directly, but have to do it via Address Book. If you don't use Address Book, you have to start. Hopefully integrating contacts will improve in later versions, and perhaps include other services like Facebook. It would also be nice to have FaceTime open without constantly seeing video of yourself!

FaceTime is a very promising video chat application that's certainly the best option between Apple users who are able to use it. However, it still needs more development, and will struggle to knock Skype off its perch unless a Windows version is produced.

Download FaceTime for Mac 1.0.2 in Softonic