Windows; Mac A couple of months ago I wrote about a VPN service that provides you with 300MB of free bandwidth every month, and with it you could choose between using a U.S. or U.K. server to tunnel your traffic through.
Mac only In Mac OS X Lion Apple introduced a new feature that lets the OS restore all of an application's windows the next time the app is started. This helps users pick up where they left off, and while I find this to be extremely helpful there are also times where it can be highly annoying. A good example is with the TextEdit app.
One of the capabilities I love in Google Chrome is that it can sync most of my data across all of my browsers. It does a really good job of making sure my extensions, preferences, themes, bookmarks, passwords, and more are always available to me no matter which computer I'm on. The concern you might obviously have with doing something like that is how secure is your information?
Mac only If you enjoy listening to Pandora on your Mac the free Pianopub app will make it a little nicer when grooving to your tunes. The app itself is pretty basic, but at the same time it includes all of the important functionality you need for this to be useful. Those things include like being able to skip or rate songs, and also add or remove stations.
Windows only I don't know very many people anymore that use screensavers on their computers, but displaying a nice photo collage might be worthwhile if you still enjoy having something flashy on the screen when your computer is sitting idle. I came across a pretty nice one that was started a few months ago, and I'd say offers the right amount of options without being overkill.
Mac only If you want to annotate a PDF on a Mac there are a bunch of ways you can do it. Heck, you can even use the built-in Preview app to do common things like draw boxes around areas or type text anywhere you want. If you are constantly working with PDF forms there is a better option that I like and it is called FormulatePro.
I love using Wolfram Alpha, but their recent push to get people to upgrade to their "Pro" version really started to turn me off of this awesome service. Sure the frequent popups asking you to "Go Pro" is pretty annoying, but what was even worse to me is that they disabled the ability to copy results without at least signing up for an account.
Windows only There are some keys on the keyboard, such as the caps lock and scroll lock keys, that can be annoying if they accidentally get turned on without you realizing it.
Mac only I don't write about scripts too often, but when I saw the webkit2png Python script I thought it could be really helpful to Mac users that were looking for an easy way to snag a screenshot of a webpage using only the Mac terminal. Sure there are plenty of browser extensions that are capable of doing the same sort of thing, but those are more for one-off screenshots.
Windows only We've covered a bunch of different applications that can be used to bulk rename files and folders, and normally they all have their own strong points. Bram is another one of those utilities, and like the others it has some features that set it apart from similar apps.
Windows only I remember testing out the ImageGlass photo viewer last year and was impressed with the speed at which it could shuffle through photos, but I wasn't very fond of the interface. When I recently checked back in on the project I noticed that a technical preview of ImageGlass 1.5 was available, and it is looking pretty good.
Windows only We've covered some apps that will wrap around your mouse when it reaches the left or right side of the screen, but Mousinity is one of the first we've seen to do all four sides of the screen. That means it can jump from the left and right sides, but also from the top and bottom.
Windows only Sometimes a folder can get overwhelmingly unorganized, and trying to sort it out manually would take forever. That's where a program like Folder Axe is handy. You can throw a huge directory of files and folders at it, and then choose how it should sort the files. It will then organize them into directories or ZIP them up for easy archival based on the parameters you specify.
Mac only Last year we wrote about a free Windows and Linux tool called HTTrack that will let you create an offline archive/copy of a website. Unfortunately the app wasn't available for Mac users, but there is a great alternative called SiteSucker that does pretty much the same thing and has a much nicer interface.
Windows only I'm sure you've come across a situation where you've wanted to track the changes that have been made to the Windows Registry because it can be nice to know the changes a program is making. That is where an app like Regshot comes in to play.
Windows only If you have a program that you want to ensure is always running the free ReStartMe app may be a necessity for you. All you have to do is give it a list of processes to monitor, and if one of those processes are ever caught not running it will immediately start up the app again.
Mac only I spend quite a bit of time living in the terminal on my Mac, and so I was rightfully excited when I came across the free app called iTerm 2 that squashes some of the things I wanted the built-in app to offer. One of the things I really needed was a search feature to quickly find things from past commands I've run, and iTerm 2 does that very well.
Windows only In Windows there is an option to safely eject a drive from the machine, but it's not always successful nor is it very thorough. The free and portable ProEject tool tries to take it a step further by cleaning up all possible traces of the drive to make sure it isn't being used anymore.
Mac only When using an Apple keyboard with your Mac the function keys take on alternate purposes. For example, if you press the F8 key it will play/pause your music instead of sending the F8 signal to the application you're using.
Windows; Mac Whenever you copy and paste something you are probably doing so with the intent of transporting that snippet of text or image somewhere else. Maybe you're copying it into a Word document, saving it in Evernote, performing a Google search, mapping an address, or one of the many other possibilities.
