I have recently started using Bean as my main text editor at home. I discovered it a few weeks ago on FreeMacWare.com. I don’t download very much from there, because I don’t trust very many apps that are truly FREE. But I must say, Bean was totally worth the download. I don’t have any complicated text editing to do at home, so what Bean provides is perfect.

Bean is a Cocoa based open-source word processing application.  The program loads very fast and is easy-to-use, efficient, and functional. It has a very clean interface, which is a big plus in my book. It is definitely a step up from TextEdit. It integrates with Apple’s Dictionary and has a handy Dictionary icon in the toolbar. There is a Get Info icon that will display all sorts of useful information about the document you’re currently working on. Plus, you can customize your toolbar, so that features you use most will be on the toolbar if you want them there.

I haven’t needed to open any other file formats in Bean, but the website says this about what it can handle:

• .doc format (MS Word ‘97, minus images, margins, and page size)
• .xml format (MS Word 2003 XML, minus images

Bean can export those formats to these formats:

• .html (web page format, minus images)
• .pdf
• .doc compatible (with images intact)
• .rtf (with images intact)

Bean can read and save to these file formats:

• .rtf format (rich text)
• .rtfd format (rich text with graphics)
• .bean format (identical to .rtfd)
• .txt format (Unicode and legacy)
• .html format (as source code)
• .webarchive format (Apple’s web archive format)

It is made clear that Bean is not a replacement for Microsoft Word. However, it is perfect for the minimal amount of text-editing I do at home.

Bean features a zoom slider, a handy inspector that allows you to adjust font, size, line spacing and more, plus there are date-stamped back-ups and autosaving, among other useful features.

It seems as though the creator of Bean, James Hoover, has done his research on creating a good word processing application. He has written a concise essay on the origins of Bean, here.

Try Bean, I think you’ll have a pleasant experience.  Requirements:  A Mac with a PPC or Intel processor running OS X 10.4+ Tiger or OS X 10.5+ Leopard.

Thirty-Two years ago, on April 1, 1976, Apple Computer was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne. The first endeavor of their new company was to market and sell the Apple I PC. The Apple I computers were built by Steve Wozniak at the home of Steve Jobs’ parents. Its public debut was at the Homebrew Computer Club. A total of 200 Apple I’s were built over the course of time. It went on sale in July of 1976 at a market-price of $666.66.

The Apple I at The Smithsonian (Source: RebelPilot)

Apple Computer’s Very First Logo - Pre-1976

Apple Computer’s First Public Logo (The one most people will recognize) - Late-1976

One of my favorite freeware applications is Alwin Troost’s WeatherDock, an application for OS X that displays weather information as a customizable floating icon, a desktop icon, and/or a menu item.

Information is pulled from The Weather Channel’s weather.com®. Current conditions are displayed in the main window, along with other various detailed weather information. You also see upcoming forecast information for 5 or 10 days.

The optional desktop icon can be set to a static location on your desktop or you can position it wherever you’d like, setting it to auto-hide when your mouse cursor nears it.

As I said, this is freeware, but there is a link for PayPal donations on their website. If you find it useful, go ahead and send a few bucks their way. By doing this, we help keep these great little apps free and fund future revisions.