Here at TUAW, as you probably know, we really love the Mac mini. Some of us have a mini hooked up to our TV, some are used as servers, and some are used as great desktop computers (including mine).

We wanted to ask you what exactly you use your Mac mini for, so we came up with this in-depth poll. There are several choices, so let us know how you use your Mac mini.

If your favorite use for a Mac mini isn't listed in the poll, you can also leave a comment below and tell us how you use your mini.

Engadget is the latest to report a rumor that's been circulating for months: tomorrow may be the day that we finally see those new Macs we've been waiting on. John Gruber claims we're going to see new MacBooks and iMacs (which we'll rate as "expected"), updated Mac minis (wouldn't be a huge surprise, though we haven't heard that so much about that one, particularly not a mini bundled with Mac OS X Server -- a very nice idea, though), and something called a "Magic Mouse," as well as a multitouch trackpad accessory. I have to admit: those last two sound less likely than the iPod touch camera -- while the new MacBooks and iMacs definitely wouldn't be out of place before a holiday season, breaking out brand new accessories without an event to back them up isn't really Apple's style.

But then again, ours is not to judge: the rumors say new mice and some sort of multitouch trackpad, so that's what we're passing on to you. Believe it or not, as you will. We'll of course be up and refreshing Apple's store constantly here at TUAW -- if anything new shows up there, you'll see it here ASAP.

A TUAW reader zapped us a note with his BlackBerry device to tell us that as of today, BlackBerry Desktop Software for Mac is available (we first noted it as "coming in September" back in July).

It's a free download [link], and requires Mac OS X 10.5.5 or better, BlackBerry device software version 4.2 or higher, and iTunes 7.2 or newer. Key features of the software include the ability to synchronize your iTunes library with your CrackBerry, sync calendars, contacts, and appointments, & add or delete apps and files.

This is the first time that Research In Motion (RIM) has developed their own solution for syncing Macs and BlackBerry handhelds. In the past, the company made a version of PocketMac for BlackBerry available at no cost to Mac-owning customers, and other third-party developers such as Mark/Space have had BlackBerry solutions available for many years.

Thanks to Storry for the tip!

Welcome to another edition of Mac 101, TUAW's series for beginners. Today, we show you how to get more bang for your desktop real-estate buck with Finder icon labels.

Have you ever wanted to know how large a picture on your Desktop was, but didn't want to open it (or even just hit ⌘I to get info)? Or instantly know how many items were in a folder? Mac OS X lets you display that information right under (or next to) the icon itself.

How? Easy! Click on your Desktop, and choose Show View Options from the View menu (or just hit ⌘J.) Then, click the radio button next to Show item info. Voíla! Instant metadata for your Desktop files and folders. For pictures, the Finder will show their width and height in pixels.

You can also adjust the position of the labels associated with the icons on your desktop. Instead of having the file and folder names beneath your icons, why not have a change and put them to the right? Just click either Right (or Bottom, if you prefer the default) under Label position.

For other awesome beginner tips, visit our Mac 101 category.

I want to make a quick mention regarding one of the most useful utilities I've found in recent days: SizeUp. It allows you to resize and reposition windows using keyboard shortcuts. It's no secret that I like my screen real estate, and making the most of it is a big deal to me. You can sit and resize windows all day, but I'd rather hit a couple of keys and have everything in place.

SizeUp offers half-screen (vertical or horizontal) and quarter-screen sizing (easily positionable in any corner), as well as a true Windows-style maximize function. You can also set a custom size for the "Center Window" option, which resizes the window to the specified dimensions and positions it in the center of its current screen. Not the screen you want? The last set of shortcuts lets you jump the window between existing monitors in your setup.

The hotkeys are configurable, but the defaults (surprisingly) didn't conflict with any of my extensive collection of shortcut combinations. SizeUp is shareware, but you can pay what you think it's worth (Fair licensing). A suggested price of $9.99US doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. If it's useful to you, but not that useful, a minimum donation of $2.99US is requested. The maximize function alone is worth that. Developers Irradiated Software also offer a "lite" version called TwoUp which can do the split screen trick on its own, free. Grab a fully-functioning demo of SizeUp at the Irradiated Software website.

In the most recent Ask TUAW, we addressed a question about Twitter (follow TUAW!), and asked readers for their favorite clients. Several users suggested Nambu, and having just put it through its paces, I can see why it's so popular.

Nambu is a native Mac application designed for multiple social networking services, but in practice it seems like its primary strength is as a Twitter client. It offers support for multiple Twitter accounts, which can in turn be viewed in several different ways. It also integrates support for the tr.im URL shorting service and the pic.im image service.

There's the standard list view which will automatically integrate tweets from multiple accounts into a single timeline. There's a three-pane view, somewhat similar to Mail, with a sidebar allowing you to choose between accounts, and finally (my favorite) there's a multi-column view reminiscent of the Adobe AIR-based TweetDeck and you can, of course, choose what appears in each column: main timeline, replies, sent messages, searches(!), etc.. In addition, replies are automatically threaded so they appear indented under the most recent tweet from the person to whom you are replying (as well as within the normal timeline). Another nice feature is that it automatically displays the domain of shortened URLs that appear in your timeline.

In short, I think I've found my new Mac-native Twitter client. Nambu is a free download from The Nambu Network.

Grape, just released as a beta, is a new take on desktop file management. I've seen several attempts at innovative user interfaces for file management in my day, some better than others, but this is the first one I've been really excited about. In the words of the author -- Stéphane at docklandsoft.com -- "Grape is a visual and spatial way to classify and organize temporary files." I use my desktop as a sort of Inbox, saving all of my working files, PDFs of web pages and other random bits there during the day, and then tagging and bagging the collected mess once or twice a day. It's not a bad system, but I love anything that might make my life simpler and/or more interesting.

Grape takes all of the files on your desktop and puts them into a kind of three-dimensional workspace where you can pan and zoom, group files and perform various functions, including filing them to folders anywhere on your hard drive. You can zoom in and out with your scroll wheel or by holding command-space and dragging a rectangle. You can pan around the space by holding space and dragging. Once you've started organizing, you're able to create boxes and text labels to highlight groups of interest or provide highlighted areas for sorting. You can also Quick Look files, as well as choose the preview image for movies and multi-page PDF files. You can't descend into folders, but if you have a Quick Look plugin for folders, it's really easy to identify previously grouped files without jumping back to the Finder.

At this point, Grape is interesting (and fun), but lacks some much-needed functionality. Among the list of things I'd like to see: more mouse-only navigation, droppable folders, the ability to create functional drop-boxes to send files to specific folders, OpenMeta tagging (or AppleScript access to selected files for apps like Tags) and a more customizable interface (I find the default blue gradient a little overwhelming). It's a great start, though, and has really piqued my interest in more "spatial" file-management interfaces. Check out a video of Grape in action after the jump, and grab the beta here.

Mat posted a while back about the magic of GeekTool -- it's an app that allows you to run Unix scripts and show logs in a good-looking pane right there on your desktop. Mac OS X Tips recently did a post about how to put your iCal events up there using a script called iCalBuddy, but industrious reader Ben G. has taken this even a step further, and sent along a link to a similar script called twitterbuddy, which -- as you may have guessed -- will send your latest tweets to GeekTool.

As a result, he's got the desktop you see above -- both tweets and iCal events sitting in a transparent pane on top of his desktop background. It will require a little Terminal tripping, but it's pretty easy to do. Just install and set up GeekTool the way you like it, and then make sure the buddy scripts are installed. From there, you can create a New Entry in GeekTool, and run whatever commands you want. It's incredibly flexible, too, because it'll put any Terminal commands you can throw at it right there on your desktop. If you're looking to fill in some of that unused Desktop space, give it a look.

Today's new hardware announcement refreshed the Mac mini and iMac lines, and at long last, the Mac Pro was also given some love. In the 14 months since the last Mac Pro refresh there have been some significant hardware changes within the microprocessor world and within Apple's own line. The result meant that the Mac Pro, while still a beast, wasn't as cutting-edge as it has been in the past. Let's look at the update and see if that story has changed.


Processor and Chipset

The big news with this Mac Pro update is the Quad-Core Intel Xeon "Nehalem" processor. Intel's "Nehalem" is the latest breakthrough in Intel's 45nm space. The Mac Pro may actually be the first commercially available computer that uses the Nehalem-based Intel Xeon. The base configuration is a Quad-Core 2.66 Ghz Intel Xeon, but you can configure a Mac Pro with two Quad-Core 2.93 Ghz Xeons, effectively meaning 8 cores. As far as I know, the 16-core option for the latest Xeon won't be available until later this year. To put it another way, this is bleeding edge.

Looking at Apple's benchmarks (obviously, the independent tests that are sure to come will probably give a more accurate overall picture), the 8-Core 2.93 Nehalem-based Xeon processor offers some significant speed increases over last generation's 8-Core Xeon 3.2 Ghz.

Aside from pure processor speed, the new chipsets include an integrated memory controller, Intel's QuickPath, Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading technologies. The Hyper-Threading implementation is especially interesting because it means you can run two threads on each core, effectively meaning your Mac can recognize 16 virtual cores on an 8-core system. This is a virtualization nut's dream.

On the memory front, a single Quad-Core Mac Pro can take up to 8 GB of RAM. If you do the 8-core option, that capacity expands to 32 GB.

Graphics and Displays

Last October, Apple committed itself to using DisplayPort technology for its products and displays. The unfortunate side-effect of that decision meant that users wanting a Mac Pro to go with that sexy new 24" Cinema Display were out of luck, because those displays require a Mini DisplayPort, something the previous generation Mac Pros just didn't support. No more. The new Mac Pro features both Mini DisplayPort and a dual-link DVI port, so you can hook up both a 30" Cinema Display and that new 24" LED beauty.

Apple is touting the new Mac Pro as having "the fastest Mac graphics ever". Indeed, the stock NVIDIA GeForce GT 120 (note, NVIDIA changed the naming convention of its graphics chipsets recently, but the GT 120 is based on the 9500GT chipset) with 512 MB of GDDR3 RAM is a pretty decent start, especially for video professionals. You can customize the Mac Pro to include the ATI Radeon HD 4870 with 512MB of GDDR5 memory, which is one of the latest and greatest cards available from ATI.

You can put in up to four GT 120 cards in the Mac Pro, meaning you can drive as many as 8 displays off the Mac Pro. That's the video setup of my dreams.

Whether you've got a new Mac and you're looking to replace the tired "Aurora" background, or perhaps you just want to spice up your desktop with something a little Apple-flavored, this site's for you! Francesco Mugnai has up at his blog over 60 different Apple-focused wallpapers that he has found at various and sundry locales from around the web.

Many of the wallpapers are from DeviantArt and Flickr, so if you have spent any length of time perusing Apple wallpapers from either site, then you have likely run into a couple of them. Some of these I have seen a few times before and some of these are a new take on an old favorite; but many are completely new to me. In other words they are all worth checking out and possibly adding in to the desktop wallpaper rotation.

What about you, dear friends? Do you have any stand-out, Apple-related desktop imagery that you've created or found which you would like to share with others? Post some link love in the comments and pay it forward; after all, everyone loves finding new Apple stuff! My personal favorite, you ask? I suppose you will have to click through to find out.

Popular virtualization software Parallels has been updated to build 3810. The software offers many upgrades and fixes, including Windows DirectX 9.0 with Shaders Model 2 support, as well as "experimental" support for Snow Leopard and Windows 7 beta.

The "experimental" caution, as you might surmise, means not all features will work. For example, in Snow Leopard, there is no USB support, and Parallels notes there is no shared networking support.

Parallels has been running a competitive race against VMware Fusion as each software solution tries to out-feature and outperform the other.

The Parallels update can be downloaded at this link, or you can select "check for updates" from the Parallels application help menu.

A complete list of the enhancements in this build can be found here. Some users are reporting faster performance and some improvements with use of peripherals.

Some people hate having any icons showing on their desktop. If you are one of those people, then you might not want icons showing for attached disks, hard drives, or iPods. Here's how to get rid of these annoying icons.

Open Finder preferences by clicking "Finder" in the menu bar and selecting preferences (or by pressing command + , while in a Finder window or first clicking on the desktop). Once there, click the General tab. Under the "Show these items on the Desktop:" area, use the check-boxes to select which items you want/don't want to show on the desktop.


Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 section.

Have you ever wanted your screen saver to appear as a background image? Probably not. But if you like to show off to your Windows-using friends, then this tip can definitely help you out. By typing the following command into Terminal (Applications > Utilities), all on one line, and hitting enter, you will instantly see your screen saver displayed as a desktop background:

/System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine -background

To get things back to normal (which you probably will want to do, as many screensavers will put undue load on your processor), either close the Terminal window, press control + C, or restart your computer. If you are running Leopard and have the clock overlay active, it will appear above all windows, which can get a little annoying.

Want more tips and tricks like this? Visit TUAW's Mac 101 and Terminal Tips sections.

Security researchers at Corsaire have published a PDF whitepaper discussing best practices for securing Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard in a networked environment. The whitepaper is free.

"While the default installation provides a relatively secure system, it may not always meet organizational security requirements. This guide is aimed at users in environments requiring stronger security controls in their operating system, making full use of the protection features offered by Mac OS X 10.5," the whitepaper says in its introduction.

"It may also be of use to System Administrators wishing to enforce an organization-wide desktop security policy."

The guide also discusses key security differences between Leopard and Tiger, and builds upon previous guides for those operating systems.

A direct link to the PDF is available here.

I was on the hunt today for a clock application and ran across an interesting implementation in Wallpaper Clock. Basically it's a small application that dynamically redraws your Desktop every minute, to keep your time and date, well, up-to-date. The application itself is free, but requires particular artwork files in a variety of designs. Some of these clock files are available in a free, low-quality version, while others are only available to registered users (along with the free ones in higher-quality versions). It is also possible to create your own Wallpaper Clocks with your own images.

Wallpaper Clocks is a free download however there is a registration fee for subscription based access to the maker's website with artwork unavailable in the free version. Subscriptions are $8.99 for 3 months, $12.99 for 6 months, $19.99 for one year, and $29.99 for lifetime access.