Last Friday Apple overhauled the Mac Developer program for the first time in years. Gone is the tiered system, replaced with a single $99 price. But also gone is the hardware discount. Thought some developers point out that with a $99 program replacing a $500 one, the savings are close to the hardware discount anyway.

Unlike the iPhone Developer Program, the Mac Developer Program isn't required to develop Mac software. Apple does not control the distribution of Mac software like it does for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. So membership in the Mac Developer Program is voluntary, with support being the primary benefit.

Game developer Valve announced that it is bringing the bulk of its game library to the Mac in April. Games include Left 4 Dead 2, Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike, Portal, and the Half Life game series. In addition, new games were being developed for simultaneous deployment on PCs and Macs. This follows EA's lead from a few years back when it started deploying games on the Mac at the same time as for Windows.

Apple removed more apps from the App Store this week, this time targeting Wi-Fi "stumblers" -- apps that look for and display the names of nearby Wi-Fi signals. The reason for the purge this time is simply that many of these apps use part of the iPhone OS that is restricted by the iPhone Developer agreement. These are referred to as "private APIs" and can cause the app to stop working correctly when that part of the iPhone's OS is updated, which is why Apple prohibits their use. Some Wi-Fi finder apps that did not use this functionality remain in the App Store.

Do you use Apple Mail as an RSS reader? If not, then you might want to take away the RSS feeds from Mail, as it takes up time and bandwidth keeping those up-to-date. You can do this by right clicking or control+clicking the RSS feeds in the left sidebar and deleting them. You can also go to Mail preferences and look for the RSS tab. Set the "Check for updates" to "manually."

The free Mac OS X extension Growl allows some of your applications to send you screen and audible notifications when events occur, like incoming email or completed downloads. You can even pass these notifications on to your iPhone. Check it out to see if it is something you can use.

When you print documents from your Mac just to read them away from your desk, you can choose Layout in the print dialog to save paper. You can put 2, 4 or more pages onto one sheet of paper this way. It is handy for long documents and multi-page receipts.

You can easily export vCards from the Mac OS X Address Book and send them in email messages. The recipient can then easily add all of your contact information to their Address Book or other contact management software.

Now that I am building iPhone apps, I find the need to track downloads and sales. As most iPhone developers know, Apple's developer site presents data in an almost unreadable format. So a lot of third-party developers have stepped in to provide applications that will present the data in a useful way. I use AppViz which gets download and sales data, reviews from all countries, and even checks rankings. It has become an invaluable part of my business day.

A new iPhone game from CleverMedia (parent company of MacMost) is Moon Lander. This is like the classic arcade game. You try to land a ship on a moon, past rocky terrain and outcroppings, before you run out of fuel. The main game has 25 levels, and there are two bonus challenges as well.