2010 Macworld Editors' Choice Awards: Software

1Password 3 is a password manager that lets you save login and retrieve information to its encrypted database. 1Password includes a powerful password generator, and also saves secure notes, software licenses, personal identities, and credit-card info. 1Password can sync its database with Dropbox, making your info accessible from any browser on any computer, and on your iOS device. ($40; five-users, $70)

Apple added a handful of great features to Aperture 3 that made it an appealing option for photographers who had outgrown iPhoto as a photo manager. Though typically aimed at more professional shooters, Aperture 3 added consumer-level features such as book design, Faces, and Places. These features, combined with the program’s intuitive layout and easy to understand tools, make it a great crossover application for all levels of photographer. Serious users got great additions in the new version as well, including new quick brushes and curves adjustment tools. ($199)

Whether at your computer or on your iOS device, you can save a Webpage, audio clip, text, and more to Evernote and it’s available everywhere that you are. You can use scanners to scan items directly to Evernote. You can take pictures with your iSight camera from within the Evernote application, save audio notes, and capture your entire desktop screen (or portion thereof) into a sortable, searchable entry in Evernote. With the Trunk (the company’s catalog of third-party apps and extensions) you can find dozens and dozen of widgets that can enhance the application’s mobile and desktop prowess. (Free with ads; $5 per month for ad-free)

With Excel for Mac 2011, the interface was completely redesigned to promote efficiency. Spreadsheet users will love features like sparklines, which displays charts within a single cell, and the new PivotTable Builder that eases building and modification of pivot tables. Macros also made a triumphant return in Excel 2011. If you’re still using Excel 2004 (or you actually were daring enough to upgrade to Excel 2008), it’s time to step up to Excel 2011. The new features strengthen Excel’s place as the best spreadsheet program for the Mac. ($119)

With iMovie ’11, Apple included tools that let you make more-complicated edits, but in that easy, accessible way that iMovie is know for. A major new feature is the Single-Row View that looks more like the traditional timeline view. With the new One-Step Effects feature, adding an effect like fading a clip to black and white can be done in a few seconds. And Apple’s fun new Movie Trailers feature helps you create quick videos in the style of the movie previews you see at the theater. Most importantly, Apple improved the audio editing features in iMovie ‘11. (Part of iLife ’11, $49)

Imagine if, when coming across an interesting—or too-long-to-read-now—Web article, you could just click a button to save that article to a personal repository of Stuff To Read. As it turns out, the Instapaper Web service by Marco Arment does all that and more. Just click a bookmarklet in your browser and the current Web article is archived to your Instapaper account. You can read a device-optimized copy of any archived article, stripped of ads and other distractions, using any Web browser or the outstanding Instapaper iPhone and iPad apps. (Free; iOS reader apps, free or $5)

Chronos’s iScrapbook 3 is a scrapbook design package that stands out for its quality, originality, and shear abundance of design goodness. It offers its artistic, conceptual audience depth and variety from the free smart templates and searchable iScrapKits that pull a book’s look together to the new font preview feature that lets you see how your text, headlines, and captions will look in different fonts, styles, and sizes. These elements are visually stunning, professionally designed, and implemented to hold together a presentation, whether it be a family album or a business proposal. ($50; $90 family pack)

Photoshop CS5 focused a concerted effort on boosting technical advancement, usability, and performance. Photoshop CS5’s Smart Radius technology enhances an already capable Refine Edge feature, making selections even less of a pain. There is something magical about the ability of the Content Aware Fill feature, which lets you easily remove unwanted parts of an image and replace it with whatever would have been there if the object or person or other eyesore were not. Photoshop CS5 also has many new painterly features, including a completely rebuilt brush engine. Last but not least, HDR (High Dynamic Range) and Lens Correction features provide a host of professional tools to enhance photo exposure, focus, and special effects. ($699)

As a writer, Scrivener 2.0 is my weapon of choice because it handles all the business of writing from research to producing your finished manuscript mScrivener took home an Eddy award back in 2007, but its developers have hardly been resting on their laurels. The major 2.0 update brings not only a handful of new features (such as the ability to export projects as both iBooks-compatible ePub files and Kindle-compatible .MOBI files) but interface enhancements such as a freeform corkboard and the ability to create ad hoc collections of project elements. And best of all, writers who want to take their projects on the go can take advantage of the new support for syncing with DropBox or Web service Simplenote. ($45)

Chances are you’ve benefitted from Andy Matuschak's Sparkle without even knowing it. Sparkle is a bit of code that developers can easily add to their own applications to get a built-in update-checking and -installing feature. Sparkle is responsible for the window in your favorite program telling you, “A new version of applicationname is available,” displaying detailed release notes about the new version, and providing you with a convenient Install Update button that makes the software magically current. Sparkle is now a part of hundreds of Mac programs, and while the Mac App Store may bring easy app updating, Sparkle has streamlined updates for millions of Mac users, and will continue to do so. (Free)

It's a little creepy: Spector Pro Mac 2010 from SpectorSoft is a program made to monitor and record all of the activity you perform on a Mac. But it's necessary for many folks, and it’s full-featured and well designed. Spector Pro can take pictures of your computer screen at regular intervals, provide transcripts of iChat and other IM programs, detail sent and received e-mails, list visited Web sites (even with Safari’s private browsing turned on), and a lot more. And it can do all of this without the user even knowing that the activity is being recorded—a little creepy, sure. But if you own a business and suspect improper use of your computers, Spector Pro can help track down the malefactor. ($100)

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty is an opus of violence, fire, and flawed humanity. After years of development, Blizzard has delivered one of the best real time strategy games of all time and one of the most powerful single player campaigns in recent memory. Thanks to an equally strong multiplayer, StarCraft II has once again raised the bar for all others to meet.After playing ten years of games trying to be StarCraft, it’s nice for Blizzard to come back with StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and once again raise the bar on sci-fi real-time strategy. ($60)

The Steam online gaming service is more than just an iTunes Store-like place for games; the free service from Valve offers exemplary social functions and demos of many of the games. Steam has become the go-to place for gamers to shop for and try out everything from blockbuster releases to indie hits, find new friends to frag with, and stay up to date with the latest patches. A Steam buddy list lets you see which of your friends are online. It’s an exciting time to be a Mac gamer thanks to not only Steam’s impressive list of games now available on the platform, but also because the promise of future titles making their way to a MacBook, iMac, or Mac Pro near you. (Free)

In March 2010, Smile released TextExpander 3.0. That rev added a bunch of nice new features, including keyboard shortcuts for creating snippets; “fill-in” snippets, which could incorporate user input; and the ability to sync snippets between Macs via Dropbox or MobileMe. In June 2010, it released 3.1, which brought more hotkeys, search improvements, and interface tweaks; that same month, the company also released an iPad version of TextExpander touch, the Mac utility’s iOS companion. In October 2010, version 3.2 added improved backup and restore functions and yet more keyboard shortcuts. What makes TextExpander a great app isn’t just that it’s so handy and so capable, but also the fact that it’s constantly evolving—refining its core tools, adding new ones, and adapting to an ever-changing technology landscape. ($35)