There was so much news this week we don't even know where to start. Okay, that's not entirely true, but it was a super busy week. We had CES hitting on all cylinders all week and we covered that extensively, then there was the launching of the Mac App Store (and its nearly immediate hacking) which was rather exciting, and before the weekend was over we had pretty solid support for the iPhone at long last arriving at Verizon.

Wow. That's a tall order, but if anyone can bring it down to nice bite size morsels of weekly goodness, it's the dedicated Mac|Lifers who saw it all, just In Case You Missed It.

Features:

- Everything You Wanted to Know About the Mac App Store (But Were Afraid to Ask) - They said they were going to do it on schedule and we believed them. Here it is, faith rewarded as Apple brings that iOS you've come to love to your OS. So how do you get it? How do you get there? How do you access these sweet new apps? Never fear, we gotcha covered, as always.


- 7 Awesome Mac App Store Alternatives - Yeah, yeah, yeah, Mac App Store, Shmack Shmore. Whatever. You've been rocking jailbreak action, you've been off the beaten path before. You want some alternatives to Cupertino's fine little walled-off garden. Oh well, have we got some app stores for you. Games, productivity, Cydia? Yeah, all that and more.


- Mac|Life's CES 2011 FTW Award Winners -  But wait a second, we hear you shouting, you said there was more than just the Mac App Store. Indeed we did. Our beat reporting from the floor of the Consumer Electronic Show took in a lot of stuff, big, little, and everything in between. Did we find promising technology out there? You bet your bippy we did. Heck, we even gave these people awards, as you gathered from the headline.



How-Tos:


- How To Bring Touch Gestures to Your iPad Web Browsing - We have to admit, with the release of the Magic Trackpad we have been expecting Apple to bring more of those multitouch gestures to Mobile Safari. So far, not so much. Burt if multitouch is what really floats your boat, then you need look no further than Ingenious Creations’ Perfect Web Browser, which is only a smidge slower than Safari, but gives you so much more, if you just know how to stroke it right. Wait, that didn't sound right. You know what, just read the article, don't mind us.


- 4 Awesome Terminal Tricks to Tweak Your Desktop - Maybe you know Terminal like the back of your hand and maybe just the very idea of the command line makes you shiver with dread. Whichever the case, we've made it easy to get the most out of this simple little gizmo for all kinds of desktop  modding. So even if you aren't the sudo, we have copy and paste tips that'll put you in the driver's seat.



Reviews:


- myTexts Pro Review - Sometimes when we have to sit down and write a column, the thought of that big empty screen just waiting to be filled with words makes us want to jump out a window and hitch a ride on the nearest international bound freighter. But sometimes that blank page is just what you need, a distraction free space that blots out everything but the sun. And that's just what myTexts Pro gives you. Now get typing!

- Yum Recipe Organizer Review - With every other paper thing moving into digital editions, we expected cookbooks and cooking related apps to have seriously moved the ball down the field here. Imagine our surprise when Yum proved  decent but not great. Sure, we can upload our recipes and layout is clean and easy, but we need a bit more two-way in our iOS compatibility and a way to search for recipes we can dish up based just one what we have in the house. Maybe an update...



News:


Check out our rumor predictions for 2011's CES. How did we do?...one rumor that definitely turned out to be true: Microsoft did decide to throw down the gauntlet on Apple TV and apparently Redmond is getting into the TV game...especially after the runaway success that was the MS Surface 2.0 which sold like hotcakes at $7,600...and all this TV talk meant, of course, that Comcast had better get on the stick and -- what, wait, they did? oh, fine TV is almost as hot as the iPad, it seems....even everyone's least favorite carrier had a few nice new wrinkles to existing TV package set up which gave a few kisses to the iOS crowd...then they went and announced that their LTE/4G network would be kickin butt and takin names as of next year, and was there a wee little iPhone hint in there?....and does that next generation iPhone look anything like this model?...what about the next generation of Android OS? Does it look anything like this latest Honeycomb drawing we're trying not to eat around here...all we know is that it will definitely be running on the Motorola Xoom tablet, which was the big winner of the whole show according to surveys....

Then there were these guys, causing a ruckus at CES wherever they went, looking for free food and gadget giveaways...this duo also found us the wackiest gadgets they could find for iOS at CES...someone even gave one of them a gun! a gun!...then they crashed our Microsoft Keynote and went off for some length during our live mock; great having them around...another keynote we found not very impressive was the uninspired series of gadgets and such thrown out by the Sony people who just wanted to bury us in how much their stuff hurts to look at these days...we also tackled the Verizon keynote which was a little of a let down and a bit of a tease...but they redeemed everything with this gallery of galleries, chock full of the best of the best at CES 2011.