Make Your Windows Computer look like a Mac

I, probably like some other people, see some of those cool, new, Macs and want to know how I can make my Windows look like it. Well here are some programs that are cool, easy, useful and free make your computer look and run like a Mac.

1. Safari. This is the ever popular Apple internet browser that is found on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and all Macs. It is a browser similar to the other popular Firefox and Internet Explorer 7 browsers, but adds some cool features of its own. The first of those features are a good RSS reader. RSS are either short quick versions of articles on websites or full versions of articles on websites that can be viewed without necessarily going to the exact website itself. This happens through what is called RSS feeds which are in web browsers (Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer), email applications like Microsoft Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird, as well as other places and devices. What is good about Safari’s RSS reader however, is that it offers a very quick, simple, and easy way to view the feeds. Another nice feature in Safari is ability to load regular pages quicker. While this feature is only a second or two of difference in most cases, it still is cool and useful. Safari also does something else that I noticed when I used it, it displays websites cleaner with text and pictures appearing much nicer. I’m not sure why this is, but I still find it to be something that will be helpful, especially to people who are viewing the internet very often, or are using it for searching for news articles or pictures. Safari is now out of testing phase (aka Beta) and is available for free at Apple’s website here.

Apple’s Safari browser running on Windows XP (it also runs fine on Windows Vista).

2. ObjectDock. This is a program which runs like the Mac dock in that it lets you open programs and files just like they do on the Mac. It is a free and easy to use program made by a company that does a lot of Windows customizing- Stardock. I was told of this program by a friend in school who I saw using it on his computer, and I have been using it personally now for almost a month. I find it really cool and easy to use, and have recommended it to other friends who are not as “techie” as me. They pretty instantly figured out how to work it as well, and are also liking it on their PC’s. All they did was download it from this site (over 4 million downloads, and a trusted site so don’t worry about downloading a problem to your computer), and dragged the icons of the programs they like into the dock to have them placed there (If you don’t want a program there then just drag it out of the dock an it will make a poof and be gone). After that all you need to do is click on the icon and it will load the program you want. Very simple, very cool, and best of all… FREE.

Here is picture of my ObjectDock with my programs in it (iTunes, Office programs, Firefox). The programs with the white triangles underneath show the programs that I was running at the time I took this clip.

3. The third thing you could do is make the background look like that on a new Mac. Here are pictures of 2 of the more popular backgrounds on those new Macs that are in all the commercials on TV. To make it your background all you need to do is right click on the picture below and click on “Set as Background.” If you want to save 1 or both pictures, separately or in addition to setting it as your background, then right click on the picture and click on “Save Picture As” and save it to somewhere you will remember it later (your pictures folder, desktop etc.).

Here are the two pictures as well as the link to the site to get ObjectDock. Also if you have any questions, comments or other recomendations feel free to post them in the comments below.

Click Here to go to the website to download ObjectDock.