How to satisfy your craving for Mac eye candy

Why do Mac users love their Macs? It’s the pretty package, right? After all, there’s the beautiful screen, the firm and solid feel of an aluminum unibody case, the professional keyboard, the elegant Apple logo, the glitter and glamor of Mac OS X. Or, is it the quiet competence of a computer that seldom crashes, avoids malware and viruses like Fox News avoids fair and balanced, and comes with most of what you need right out of the box? Nah. It’s the eye candy.

Functional Eye Candy For The Masses

True, I’m into functionality. My MacBook Pro and iMac are functional first, trustworthy second, and elegant third. But just like Donald Trump needs a trophy wife for his nightlife, I go for a little glitter and glamor on my Mac.

What better way to add some color and life and shine to your Mac than a Dashboard Widget that combines the perfect blend of form and function.

A Widget?

Sure. Specifically, iStat Pro, the little Widget that gets a girl’s geek on with colorful charts and graphs and visual status eye candy that actually has meaning, if not value.

But, are not all Dashboard Widgets, by nature, a little bit eye candy—oversized, gaudy, and of dubious need? Perhaps, one man’s waste of time is merely another girl’s candy coated treat.

iStat Pro monitors your Mac. It’s constantly checking your Mac’s CPU, your hard disk drive(s), the network, temperatures, fans, memory, and a bunch of other processes, including how much juice is left in your MacBook battery. Take a look at the visual goodies (click the image for a larger, pop up view).

How can anything so pretty not be just as useful? I’m sure Marla Maples had the same question about herself.

Unlike Marla, iStat Pro comes with nine different skin colors, so you’re sure to find one you like, and, just like The Donald, once you tire of one, you can switch to another and not lose any functionality at all.

iStat Pro has settings on the back to control which components are viewable, which are not. You can even turn off certain functions with a click. I set up Dashboard to pop up when I move my mouse pointer to a corner on my screen. No clicking. All the Widgets just appear with a little swish of the wrist.

It’s like getting a quick dose of visual candy when I’m beginning to feel that my eyes are slowly being water boarded by hours of staring at text on my Mac’s screen. Even better, iStat Pro is free.