How To Print Cards, Flyers, Brochures, Labels On A Mac

Remember faxing? It used to be all the rage before email. How long before email becomes history and what will take its place?

Remember newspapers? In the digital age of the newspaper’s demise, personal printing still seems to be a need for most of us. Who do you know who owns a computer, Mac or PC, and does not have a printer?

I thought so. I have two, and I admit to wanting another based solely on Kodak’s new gimmick to give you more ink that Canon, HP, Epson, Lexmark, Brother and friends.

Whatever printer you choose, your Mac is a printing powerhouse with the right software. Your Mac prints nearly anything and everything from whatever Mac application you’re running at the time.

But what of those specialty printing requirements that go beyond iPhoto? You know, business cards, flyers, brochures, catalogs, CD and DVD covers, letters, labels, and envelopes?

Sooner or later there’s a need to print something beyond an email, a web page, or a photo, right? Alright, marry that need with a trend toward digital packaging. Some sites get a dozen Mac software makers together and package a few hundred dollars of software for well less than $100.

Other Mac software makers have enough software of their own to do the same thing. One of Mac360’s favorite software publishers is BeLight. Through the years we’ve reviewed many of their applications and utilities. They get the Mac, and it shows in Mac friendly software.

Printfolio is BeLight’s package deal; a whole bundle of Mac software for printing this or that, for about half what it would normally cost. Look, we’re in an economic recession today, so saving a few bucks here and there is popular.

Personal printing is dying the slow and painful death of, say, The L.A. Times, or the N.Y. Times, or whatever local Times is near you. Need to print personal covers for your CDs or DVDs? Try DiscCover, which pulls in information and photos from iTunes and iPhoto.

Wait? Aren’t CDs and DVDs a thing of the past? Steve Jobs probably thinks so, but, for now, all these relics still get used. Take business cards, for example. Big business is laying people off by the tens of thousands. What happens to those formerly valuable employees?

Many of them go into business for themselves, and, guess what, they need inexpensive business cards. Business Card Composer to the rescue and design your own business card.

If you’re unemployed, or looking for work, what better way to look professional and valuable and smart and with it than with custom labels and addresses? And what better tool to use to send those umpteen gazillion resumes and CVs out the door than with Labels and Addresses?

You see where this is heading right? Each of those Mac software packages costs hard earned money individually. Collectively they make an inexpensive bundle. But wait. There’s more.

Printfolio also comes with Swift Publisher for desktop publishing that’s about half a thousand dollars less than Adobe’s InDesign, Image Tricks Pro so you can take photos and images and get creative even if your creative bone has been replaced by a titanium hip.

What all this boils down to is BeLight’s way of helping Mac users during a worldwide economic meltdown, the greatest worldwide depression in 100 years, an economic and financial free fall… wait. I’ve been reading too many newspapers.

Maybe that’s why their circulation and subscriptions and advertising sales are way down. Who wants to pay for a newspaper to feel bad about what they read? Unless people really have a lot of fish to wrap everyday, or one really big parakeet.

Anyway, all these goods as well as templates and images and more come in Printfolio for $89, which is less than if you buy it at the Apple Store, and individually it would all cost almost $200, so it’s a real bundle of real Mac applications that saves real money.

I hereby ask Apple to follow BeLight’s lead and offer us a comparable Mac bundle. Say, a 24-inch iMac, a MacBook, and iWork for $1,999.