Apple World

Nothing is worse in life than when you feel like you don't have any control over your electronic devices. Yeah, when the iPhone is flashing on and off and your MacBook just won't start up, you might be thinking that it's too late to really save it. A great way to prevent this from happening is to monitor your devices with free apps that can tell you what's going on under the hood. And thus...

Cell Phone Minutes

With data no longer unlimited, and the rising costs of talk time, you might have cut back on your cell phone bill to save a little bit of money. However, trimming the bill also means that you'll have to change your habits. No more late night phone calls with your lady, or the psychic who keeps claiming you'll hit the jackpot soon, and you'll have to keep track of your conversations with Cell Phone Minutes. This free app keeps track of the talk time of your last call and lets you input the limit specific to your own contract. Stop paying those overage fees!

FreeMemory

Ugh. I have to tell you, my biggest gripe in life is that I never have enough RAM. In my MacBook Pro, I am definitely lacking. With only 4GB worth of memory and a Core i7 processor fueling Lion, I sometimes feel like I'm computing in the Ice Age. Yeah, when Mastadons and Saber-toothe Tigers were clocking in memory at 512MB. But the best way to get around this is to figure out what's hogging all of those resources, and when it's the worst time to fire up RAM-intensive Steam games.

FreeMemory lives up in your MenuBar and can be launched at login or from Launchpad. It gives you detailed stats of what's going on with your RAM, and flashes red when your Mac is having a slow down. Like it's not already apparent from how everything stops loading for a second. Sigh.

Mini Usage

This is a really fantastic free application that basically simplifies all those confusing numbers in Activity Monitor.