One of my favorite programs for the Mac is from a company called Objective Development -- Little Snitch -- and it's a host-based firewall that alerts you anytime something on your computer tries to reach the Internet for the first time (or you can set to always ask all the time, which I wouldn't recommend just because of the alert volume). I personally like to know what programs and apps are doing and with whom they are communicating, and this app is a useful if imperfect way of doing that.

The most jarring aspect of Little Snitch is how some programs suddenly phone home but you have no idea what's going on because the requested IP is some shared Amazon cloud server or something. Even after spending a few minutes digging on the IP, you probably still won't find a hostname and you're no closer to gauging whether you should allow the connection or not. But most of the time the program is silent, operating the background to block or allow various connections that you have specified previously.

Anyway, what I wanted to share that's neat about Little Snitch is when you install an app that you've had on your phone or iPad onto your Mac, suddenly you have a much better idea of where (if not who) your apps are communicating with, and maybe even a little more info about what these apps are actually doing in the background.