A big part of the iOS app ecosystem consists of paid apps, more so than its Android counterpart, the Google Play store. In this way, iOS is much like Mac OS X; it’s very common to shell out a few bucks for software now and again. Of course, you don’t have to cough up a lot of money to find great apps for your phone or tablet. Here, we’ll show you how to meet your video player demands with exclusively free iOS apps.

Shelfari and Goodreads are both online tools to manage your book collection. Both websites help you create lists of books read and books yet to read, with reviews to help you decide and tips from friends to keep you going. I got started with Goodreads, but moved to Shelfari for its visual appeal. Shelfari’s integration with Amazon also added to the bargain.

Multitasking is not always a choice. When you have to write up a report, you need access to your text processor, but also to your reference material. While working, I often end up working with five applications at once. Sometimes multitasking is a necessity, but if you’re working off a laptop, it can also be a real annoyance. Windows are lost between countless others, and you switch to the wrong application every five minutes.

So you like to download. Maybe we’re talking eBooks, comic books, or TV shows. We already wrote a lot of articles concerned with the act of actually downloading things. In fact, MakeUseOf wrote an excellent primer on torrents, with The Torrent Guide for Everyone. Just last year, I wrote about 3 Mac OS X applications to speed up your downloads. Today, I’d like to show you the other Mac OS X utilities that help me while downloading (anything).

Having been brought up on western comic books, it’s refreshing to be introduced to a wholly different comic book culture. Those of you that have already had the pleasure to make acquaintance with manga (Japanese comics) will agree on the certifiable wealth of stories contained in this comic book branch. And what better companion than your trusty iPad to journey through the manga landscape?

I used to play most of my games on the computer. All of that changed when the next (that is, current) generation of consoles came out. For one, these devices had a considerable assortment of games and great graphics. Another consideration – perhaps most vital in putting me over the edge towards console gaming – was the price-quality. In terms of hardware, consoles function as an opposite of gaming PCs.

A few years ago, attending university, I started renting an apartment. I took over the current electric plan and went to a different Internet service provider, but the television provided a bit of a conundrum. Cable television had become an intrinsic part of my day-to-day routine, but was it worth the money? Or was it even worth the hassle? In the end, I decided to cut the cable. Abstaining from cable television has a number of advantages.

Computers often pose a dilemma of power consumption. You’d like to do batch jobs like downloading, system repair or back-ups at night, when you aren’t bothered by it. Then again, it seems a bit wasteful to keep your computer running all night long, especially if it should finish its work in an hour or three. Sure, it’s easy that way, but it’s also an incredible waste of energy.

We’ve talked about, and recommended getting to grips with your computer’s command line terminal numerous times in the past. Tina wrote a good primer for Windows users with A Beginner’s Guide To The Windows Command Line. Abraham provided a similar service for Linux users, with An Introduction to the Linux Command Line. In a vast array of articles, MakeUseOf has explored other uses of the command line.

A Macbook Air doesn’t measure up to the iPad in terms of portability. Lounging on the sofa, or lying in bed, the iPad remains the tool of choice. In an ideal world, your device would have the portability of a tablet, but the processing power and application range of a laptop computer. It may be some time yet until Apple releases a de-simplified tablet – if it happens at all – but until then Splashtop does the job for us.

Network structure and management have their own lingo. Some of the terms thrown around will likely already sound familiar to you. Ethernet and Wi-Fi are largely self-obvious concepts, although it may require a little bit more effort to understand the intricacies of the different Wi-Fi standards. Knowing the meaning of these terms, and grasping the underlying concepts will help you to get a better grip on your own home or office network.

We jailbreak our iPhones and iPads. We tweak our system to enable infinite icons on the dock, and add better messaging capabilities. We could go on—great Cydia tweaks are legion—but there’s one specific tweak I’d like to highlight here today. iFile, which allows you to access and play with the iOS file system, is the main reason I’ve taken to jailbreaking my iPad.

We’ve previously covered different ways to create automatic workflows that separate important tidbits of information from the mundane. This article is about how you receive the information. The most obvious (and often also the easiest) choice is to keep notified via email. A relatively simple way to separate one from the other is to reroute selective notifications to a personal ‘notifications’ RSS feed.

For me, RSS feeds are the ideal way to keep up to date with all the websites I’m interested in – a centralised news-pool, so you don’t have to check your browser every five minutes just to stay on top of the news. Google Reader does a great job organizing your RSS feeds, and Reeder wonderfully integrates Google Reader on your Mac. There’s no shortage of ways to access those RSS feeds, but part of the problem remains.

Display resolutions can be a rather cryptic business, with multiple standards used to describe the same display resolution in 10 different ways. All of those technical terms tend to change based on the display’s purpose (television versus computer monitor) and even your region (the meaning of HD Ready). Today, we’ll help you make sense of the different terms people tend to throw around when describing display resolutions.