After a two-year hiatus, Polaroid is back with an instant camera that has a whole new look and feel. The Polaroid 300 instant camera is a cross between the company’s now-antiquated One600 model and the i-Zone pocket camera from the early 2000s, and taking photos with it is just as much fun as it was with its predecessors.

Almost six years after its release on Windows, the legendary Half-Life 2 has arrived on the Mac thanks to Valve’s Steam digital distribution channel. For newcomers to the series, Half-Life 2 is everything the Mac hasn’t had since the halcyon days of Marathon--it’s a terrific sci-fi/horror first-person shooter with a brain.

The iPad is great for video, but after about 15 minutes of holding it up, we start looking for ways to use it hands-free. Griffin’s A-Frame gives your arm a rest and sports a minimal style that doesn’t detract from the iPad itself. If it weren’t for the logo plastered on the front, it could almost pass as a piece of modern sculpture. But don’t be fooled--there’s quite a bit of substance here to go with that style.

For everyday snapshots of your kids, your dog, and your road trip to see the world’s largest ball of twine, your Mac comes with iPhoto, a simple way to organize and edit your photos. But pro shutterbugs and photography enthusiasts need far more serious tools to manage ever-growing libraries of tens of thousands of images. Adobe’s latest iteration of Lightroom aims to answer that call with pro-level organization and photo management, as well as robust editing tools for perfecting your shots.