Cocoa Musings

Update on Chimoosoft

2008-09-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

It has been quite awhile since my last post - I have been occupied with starting an awesome new job and moving from California to Pennsylvania! Due to my new employment, I no longer have much time to devote to Chimoosoft activities and have tried to open source as many programs as possible. Portions of AP Grapher are protected under an NDA which prevents its open sourcing, however I hope to have time to release TubeTV as open source. For the foreseeable future, I will not have time to work on Chimoosoft software; if you want to see the products move forward perhaps you can work on them yourself or find others interested in doing so. Thanks for your support and understanding, and I apologize if I have not answered an e-mail you've sent; I simply don't have the time anymore.

Terrabrowser Open Source

2008-05-22T14:18:00.001-07:00

The time has finally come to open source one of Chimoosoft's largest and oldest projects: Terrabrowser. Terrabrowser has a long history with the first version appearing back in 2003. I have unfortunately not had as much time to work on the project as I would have liked, and hence the code base for Terrabrowser has more or less languished for the last three or four years.

Since it was (at one time) an interesting project which a lot of people were excited about, it seems only fair to release it as open source in the hopes that some other programmers will have time to improve the software. It would be nice to see the GPS waypoint/tracklog/route support improved, improved GPX file support, and possibly the addition of other mapping sources such as Google Maps or Yahoo Maps. In many ways, Terrabrowser was one of the first Mac equivalents of currently popular (but then unavailable) software such as Google Earth. I feel that the product had a lot of potential, so it has been somewhat sad to see it live by the wayside as other products have overtaken it. Let's hope this gives the old boy a fresh breath of life!

Open Source

2008-05-02T16:09:00.000-07:00

Finally got around to open sourcing some Chimoosoft projects. So far, Kissphrase, Speech Toggle, and Simple Search. If you have the interest and expertise, feel free to head on over to the open source project page and have a look. Note that the code in some of these projects is quite old and hence isn't the cleanest bit in the world.

Dictate 1.0.1 Review

2008-05-01T16:06:00.001-07:00

Until recently, the options available for dictation software on Mac OS X were severely lacking. The most popular option was a product called iListen by MacSpeech which was based on the Philips speech recognition engine. Although this product worked, it had severe limitations, crashed frequently, and behaved in general more like a Mac OS 9 application than it should have.

Introduced at MacWorld 2008, the new MacSpeech Dictate which is based on the popular Windows Dragon software offers a far improved speech recognition experience for Mac users. The training is quick, the recognition is accurate and fast, and it even works with the built-in microphone on computers such as the MacBook Pro (which the author is using to dictate this review). This is a huge advantage as it enables the user to quickly dictate a paragraph here or there with a single mouse click and no need to get out a separate microphone.

Although the product still has a few rough edges and is currently missing the ability to correct dictated text via voice, it represents a huge step forward and easily integrates into your everyday workflow. Note that an Intel Mac is required for this software to work - it will not function on PowerPC (G3, G4, G5) Macs. Next time you don't feel like typing out a lengthy e-mail, why not launch Dictate instead and use your voice?

Numenta

2008-05-01T10:34:00.001-07:00

Today I'm offering up a recommendation for one of the most interesting speeches I've heard in years. Jeff Hawkins, the founder of Palm and inventor of the Treo, presents a keynote at the RSA 2008 conference about the mind's technique for processing and storing sensory information. How does a person (or a computer) tell the difference between a picture of a cat and a dog?

Yes, I know, he probably doesn't have an iPhone, but we'll forgive him for this due to his past!

His speech is especially interesting because it's not too technical for the average person to understand; even a child in grade school should find it intriguing. If you're watching this on a Mac, as I assume you are, you might want to install Flip4Mac (review) first to more easily view the WMV stream. A Flash stream is also available. You may also want to check out his company's website, Numenta and even download the research platform for the Mac.

OS X Picks Migration

2008-04-24T12:42:00.001-07:00

Finally finished migrating all OS X Picks software reviews from the main Chimoosoft site to the Cocoa Musings blog. This should provide an easier way for people to post comments about the reviews and perhaps make them easier to find as well. If you notice any broken links, let me know.

Objective-C

2008-04-13T12:35:00.001-07:00

I came across an interesting article today called "Inside the Objective-C Runtime" (see also part two). This article does a decent job explaining some of the benefits of Objective-C with Cocoa programming on OS X as compared with other object oriented languages. The article is a little dated (six years old), but most of the information is still relevant.

This led to a search for more articles touting the benefits of Objective-C. In "Objective-C: Dynamite!," the author begins with a relevant quote which should resonate with most Objective-C programmers:

"Objective-C is the result of adding object facilities to C with the goal of making programmers more productive. The result differs greatly from C++, which adds objects to C without making computers less efficient: quite a different goal." [PC Week, November 3, 1997]

Later on, for the humorously inclined:

"If a person on the street asks you for a flump, and you don't know how to respond, do you exit with a core dump?"

.Mac iDisk Woes & Warning

2008-04-09T14:45:00.001-07:00

I use Apple's .Mac iDisk syncing feature to store some commonly accessed files locally and have them automatically sent to Apple's servers as a backup. Today, on a whim, I decided it was time to change my password and did so through the .Mac web interface. I then tried to access my iDisk in the Finder, and of course, the password was wrong so the access was denied. I opened the .Mac System Preference pane where it showed me an error message stating that my password was invalid, so I clicked the "Sign Out" button and then signed back in with the new password.

A naïve user wouldn't expect this to cause any problems, however signing out appears to have deleted the locally cached copy of my iDisk! It also forced me to reset all of my .Mac settings including which items are synced, and then re-downloaded the entire iDisk contents to the local disk. All I can say, is it's a good thing the iDisk had just finished it's last automatic sync before I changed my password, otherwise I could easily lost a lot of data! It would have been nice to have some sort of a warning when signing out of .Mac that the local iDisk contents would be lost.

So consider this as a warning to others; be careful how you go about changing your password and make sure to sync your iDisk first if you use syncing at all. For those of you that just access your iDisk over the network and don't sync to the local disk, this shouldn't be an issue.

Addendum: Turns out that the previous local iDisk was saved to my desktop as "Previous local iDisk for username.sparsebundle." This removes the previously mentioned concerns about data loss, but it still would have been a hassle to merge the freshly re-downloaded iDisk and the old one had they been different.

Techno Speak

2008-04-06T17:25:00.001-07:00

"When the client process sends a message to the NSDistantObject object, the proxy captures the Objective-C message in the form of an NSInvocation object and forwards it to its NSConnection object. The NSConnection object encodes the NSInvocation into an NSPortMessage object, using an NSPortCoder object, and passes it to an NSPort object connected to an NSPort object in the server process. The client’s port sends the encoded data to the server’s port which decodes the data back into an NSPortMessage object. The port message is then sent to the NSConnection object which converts it into an NSInvocation object, using an NSPortCoder object. The invocation is finally dispatched as an Objective-C message sent to the vended object. Any return value from the object is passed back through the connection and returned transparently to the client process."

Yikes, that's really something, isn't it?

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/DistrObjects/index.html

Online Photo Backups

2008-04-02T17:15:00.001-07:00

Common wisdom these days states that a file doesn't truly exist unless it exists in at least two places (one of which is off-site). Of all the files people back up, photographs may be the most important. For many people, they're high on the list of items they wouldn't want to lose in the event of an unforeseen disaster.

Several different online options exist which can be used for backing up photos; some are designed with photos in mind, and some are simply for generic file storage. I have chosen a few of the more common ones and written up a brief comparison of them below (in random order). Each option looks at the cost for backing up 30 GB of photos; this size was chosen to reveal price differences as your photo library grows.

Flickr

One of the most popular options, and also the cheapest. The Flickr Pro account starts at $2.08/month and provides you with unlimited storage, unlimited uploads, and unlimited bandwidth. The only serious drawback to Flickr is the lack of RAW file support (JPEG only). Additionally, the associated hassle and organizational issues that go along with having your backups stored in the same place as the photographs you'd like to share with everyone else. When backing up, remember to mark the photos as private, sort them into a different Set/Collection, etc.

Pro:

Cheap ($2.08/month = infinite GB)
Unlimited storage
Aperture plugin
iPhoto plugin
Automator plugin
Broadly supported due to popularity

Con:

No RAW support
10 MB file size limit
Organizational issues with other sharable photos
Designed for sharing rather than backing up

Picasa

Google's Picasa service is a direct competitor to Flickr, but lacks an unlimited storage option and costs more money per month. For $1.67/month you get 10 GB; for $6.25/month, 40 GB, for $20.83/month, 150 GB, and for $41.67, 500 GB! I can't see any direct benefit of Picasa over Flickr for the task of backing up photos, although for sharing photos with friends, viewing on the iPhone, etc., it may have some benefits.

Pro:

Large capacities available
iPhoto plugin

Con:

No RAW support
Somewhat expensive ($6.25/month = 40GB)
Organizational issues with other sharable photos
Designed for sharing rather than backing up

Photo Shelter Personal Archive

Photo Shelter is actually designed for backing up photos in a permanent, redundant archive. For $9.99/month, you get 10 GB of storage, $29.99/month gets 35 GB, and $49.99/month 100 GB. Photo Shelter allows you to upload almost any format (including RAW), and the only real drawback I can see is that it's extremely expensive for the average user. This site is targeted more at professional photographers and those with money to burn - if you have the cash, this may well be the best option.

Pro:

RAW support
Aperture plugin
Large capacities available
Designed with backups in mind

Con:

Expensive ($29.99/month = 35 GB)

.Mac iDisk

Apple's popular .Mac service comes with online file storage as well as e-mail, backups, and syncing between multiple computers. The cheapest plan starts at $8.33/month, and provides 10 GB of storage. For $12.49/month you get 20 GB of storage, and for $16.66/month, 30 GB. The iDisk has the benefit of always being a single click away in your Finder sidebar and hence is fairly easy to backup photos to - just drag and drop or export directly from Aperture or iPhoto. Any file format (including RAW) is acceptable since it's simply an online disk. The main drawbacks of .Mac are that you can't view the photos online, and the extremely high expense - this is the second most expensive option considered. Yes, it's true that you can create a Web Gallery or website with photos to share, but the first option uses lower quality files (not good for backups), and the second option makes them available to everyone by default.

Pro:

RAW support
Finder file copy
Direct export to folder from iPhoto/Aperture
Multipurpose generic storage space
Designed with backups in mind

Con:

Expensive ($16.66/month = 30 GB)
Limited data storage capacity (30 GB)

Amazon S3

One advantage of Amazon's S3 service is that they charge you based on exactly how much data you store - if you only have 2 GB of data to store it will cost you significantly less than if you have 30. S3 provides 10 GB for $1.50 a month, 20 GB for $3 a month, and 30 GB for $4.50/month. As stated above, you can scale this to whatever storage size you need (a big advantage) although it becomes expensive when you get up to 70 or 80 GB. As with .Mac, absolutely any file format (including RAW) can be uploaded since it's simply online file storage. Amazon does charge a $.10 per GB upload fee unlike the other services, but since you're using this for backup, the one time fee shouldn't affect you too much. The main drawback of this service is the lack of convenience, and the price if you need a large capacity.

Pro:

RAW support
Multipurpose generic storage space
Large capacities available
Don't pay for capacity you're not using

Con:

Somewhat expensive ($4.50/month + $3.00 upload = 30 GB)
Have to use a third party tool to upload

Conclusion

Not surprisingly, Flickr offers the best value - for a whopping $2.08/month, you can have unlimited photo storage. The major drawback is the lack of RAW support, but for the price it's probably still the best choice. For someone like me with about 60 GB of photos to backup, Flickr is still $2.08/month, whereas Picasa would cost me $20.83/month, Photo Shelter would be $49.99/month, S3 would be $6 upload plus $9/month, and .Mac doesn't even appear to allow that much data storage, maxing out at 30 GB. If I had money to burn, I'd lean towards Photo Shelter since it's geared directly towards backup and archiving use. As it is, Flickr remains the best option for me, but your mileage may vary as they say.

Comments/corrections with your preferred online backup solution are encouraged.

iPod Touch Versus iPhone

2008-03-26T10:11:00.001-07:00

Having recently acquired an iPod touch to use for software development work, a brief review comparing it with the iPhone seemed in order. First impressions? The Touch is much thinner than the iPhone. I knew this from brief encounters with it in the Apple Store, but actually having one around the thinness really becomes apparent; especially since my iPhone nearly always lives in a protective case whereas the Touch sits in its birthday suit on the desk.

The touch is less comfortable to hold than the iPhone; the bevel around the front of the screen is actually kind of sharp! I don't consider this too much of a problem however since the lightness and thinness assuages my pain.
The home button is smaller than on the iPhone.
The headphone port is on the bottom next to the dock connector rather than on the top - so far, I prefer the iPhone's design.
The iPhone earbuds don't appear to fit in the headphone jack which is kind of a hassle - I didn't want to push too hard, so maybe they actually do…
The lock button is on the opposite side from the iPhone! This one is actually pretty annoying since I am so used to the iPhone and switch between the two devices. Why on Earth did Apple decide to do this?
I don't miss the volume buttons on the side yet - the Touch always leaves its screen on unless you lock it (it auto dims) so the volume is accessible just by touching the screen. Of course, I'm using this as a development platform so I haven't actually tried taking the touch outside yet - if it was in my pocket this would probably be a bigger issue.
I miss the built in speakers more than expected - no more quick trips to YouTube or listening to podcasts without headphones.
It comes with a cute little plastic stand (iPhone has a dock instead) which lets the Touch sit at a nice viewing angle on your desk.
No bundled AC power adapter or dock like the iPhone.
Back is the same shiny iPod metallic material used on previous generation iPods so it finger prints like nobody's business. I prefer the brushed aluminum look of the iPhone.
It's kind of nice not having the cellular radio in the Touch - I'm not afraid to leave it next to my head at night for the urgent need to google something which always seems to arise.

So there you have it: a brief comparison of the Touch and the iPhone. I don't really see any reason to own a Touch if you already have an iPhone except possibly as a bedside web browser or to keep docked in a set of iPod speakers.

Kissphrase

2008-03-24T16:11:00.001-07:00

The Kissphrase release is going fairly well so far - positive reviews have been coming in. Check out this link for a nice little review.

Bugs reported so far: after installing, you must add at least one of your own keywords (or edit the existing "test" keyword) before Kissphrase will start auto-completing. Also, the first word word typed in a document won't auto-complete unless at least one space is typed preceding it. These will both be corrected in the next release.

Feel free to report any other problems you encounter either in the comments, or by the usual contact page.

Kissphrase Released

2008-03-20T14:41:00.001-07:00

The first release of Kissphrase is now available! Version 0.5 is still considered a beta, so any feedback about how it works for you would be appreciated. Kissphrase requires Leopard or later to function and probably will work best for people with their computer's language set to English.

iPhone Takes Over the World

2008-03-06T12:42:00.001-08:00

Exciting news in the iPhone world today from Apple: third party developers (e.g. Chimoosoft) will finally have a legal way to develop software for the iPhone. In addition, our software will be made available through iTunes and through an installer app on the iPhone itself called "App Store" which will let users install software on the go. Apple will let developers sell their apps (Apple takes a 30% cut) or distribute them freely. For all you iPhone owners out there, you're about to see a huge torrent of applications available for you! In this context, the word "about" means June, 2008 (but developers will have been working away on their software for three months by that point).

The other most important news is that the iPhone will fully support all the common enterprise needs such as Exchange, push email, remote disabling (and erasing) of stolen phones, etc. This is significant, and will go down in history as... the day the iPhone took over the world! Prepare to see as many people walking around with iPhones as you currently see people with iPods!

Kissphrase

2008-03-03T13:32:00.001-08:00

A brand new program is nearly ready for its first release: Kissphrase. Developed partially to assist with answering support emails, Kissphrase will be a freeware auto-completion style program to assist with typing frequently used phrases. Look for it soon!

Computer Comparisons and Excel Rant

2008-02-29T18:01:00.000-08:00

I am the expectant owner of a new MacBook Pro - it's about time considering that I'm still stuck with a PowerBook G4. While checking out the specifications of the new laptop, I became interested in how quickly the Macs I've used over the years have improved. I put together some graphs going back to 1984 and the Mac 128K which indicate improvements in RAM, disk, CPU speed (not benchmark, just clock speed which doesn't really mean much), VRAM, and others. The dates indicated are the Apple release dates to the nearest month.

The first graph shows how quickly the number of pixels available to me has grown. For computers I've used which weren't laptops, I've just indicated the maximum resolution the computer could output.

More charts will come in a later post when I have more energy to fight with Excel. It is honestly beyond me how companies can produce software such as Excel which is so phenomenally hard to use that it boggles the imagination. Certainly it's not that bad for people who have learned all its quirks through everyday use, but for people who only occasionally need to use such software, it's a nightmare. Aside from the graphs being impossible to select correctly (I'm always selecting the wrong component somehow), simple things like scrolling around with my trackpad don't even work correctly. I gave up when my attempts to change the maximum range on the y axis failed miserably. It would appear that this post has become more of a rant on Excel, but that's okay - software like this deserves rants.

Apple's "equivalent" called Numbers (part of the iWork suite) is definitely a breeze to use, but it can't do simple things like creating a chart with one axis based on dates (it spaces them all evenly). The graph you see above was actually created in Numbers and then exported to Excel to plot the dates correctly. The real question is why can't either of these companies get it right? Microsoft's offering is cumbersome but fully featured; Apple's is pleasing to use but missing essential features. Doh.

Smaller Boxes

2008-02-26T16:27:00.000-08:00

The trend in packaging software is certainly towards online delivery, but in the meantime it's nice to see companies like Apple reducing their packaging waste (and shelf space for the consumer). As an example of how far things have come in a couple of short years, compare the Aperture 1.5 retail box (2006) versus the Aperture 2.0 box I received last week. An amazing transformation I'm sure you'll agree. And yes, in case you were wondering, Aperture 2.0 is an incredible upgrade! I'll try to post a review at some point in the future.

TubeTV Notes

2008-02-14T15:23:00.000-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

In other news - the TubeTV 1.0 release is going well so far with only a few people reporting problems. The problems people had have been solved by either (a) updating QuickTime/Mac OS X to the latest release, or (b) removing the TubeTV preferences file (com.chimoosoft.tubetv.plist) in the Preferences folder and re-launching TubeTV.

Another user wrote in about the x264 codec causing problems and said "if you have people contact you about blurry low bit-rate video, and they have x264 installed[,] let them know to update it."

Amazingly, TubeTV has been downloaded in the month of February at least 30,000 times! Feel free to keep sending in your feature requests or ideas for future versions.

TubeTV on TUAW

2008-02-11T08:39:00.001-08:00

Thanks to the people at the Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) for their nice article on TubeTV 1.0 which appeared this morning; a pleasant surprise while drinking my coffee and browsing the news. They mentioned one of the main benefits of TubeTV over competitors - the fact that it works with many websites in addition to YouTube, not only YouTube.

PS: Here's a screenshot showing one way to create a smart playlist in iTunes to find TubeTV converted videos for the iPhone. If you use the TubeTV playlist (an option in the preferences), then you could filter for movies in that playlist instead of searching the comments for "TubeTV."

TubeTV 1.0 Released

2008-02-09T15:30:00.000-08:00

Finally! TubeTV version 1.0 was released earlier today with nifty new features including bookmarking (favorites), history, utilization of flash caches to speed download, iTunes support, and a re-worked progress window! Leopard is required for some of the new features, so if you fire it up in Tiger, you won't notice as many changes.

Thanks to Björn, Wolf-Jakob, Antoine, and Francisco for localizing this software into German, French, and Spanish respectively!

Head on over to the Chimoosoft Flickr site for some screenshots.

Objective-C Performance

2008-02-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

Just came across this analysis of common Objective-C operations and their relative speeds in nano seconds. Interesting to see how fast the Objective-C message send is - only 5 ns on a Mac Pro.

iPhone Satisfaction

2008-02-07T14:03:00.000-08:00

First of all, yes, I am obsessed with my iPhone, and I'd definitely give it high marks for customer satisfaction ;-)

Just came across this interesting graphic showing customer satisfaction for various mobile phone vendors. Surprise, surprise, Apple beats them all. Unfortunately though, for most people I know who might be interested in getting an iPhone, it's not the phone's cost that's putting them off - it's the cost of the AT&T service plan which comes to about $65 a month after taxes.

Localizing Cocoa Software

2008-02-05T14:42:00.000-08:00

Localizing software (the process of translating it to multiple languages) is an amazingly time intensive process. Apple's bundle layout, bundle loading, and localizable strings files are all very helpful, but amazingly, things always manage to find a way to go south. Today, for example, I switched all of the localized .lproj directories to use the ISO 639-1 two letter naming conventions. Instead of the older "English," "French," and "Spanish," I now have "en," "fr," and "es." Great, right? Well, not quite. Turns out I forgot to change the CFBundleDevelopmentRegion tag in the info.plist to "en" instead of "English," so any time a localization for a language was incomplete, the nibs failed to load or the localized strings files were ignored. Oops. You get the idea. ;-)

Consider the process for localizing a single nib file (which a product like TubeTV contains about ten of).

1. Look up command line options for "ibtool" since it's impossible to remember them exactly between run times.

2. Run "ibtool" to extract the localizable strings from the nib.

2. (a) Optionally, delete about 90% of the strings ibtool extracts since they don't really need to be translated and make the translator's job more difficult. Sorry to the current translators for TubeTV as I didn't realize this until after I sent you the files! ;-)

3. Submit files to people around the world (in different time zones) who have agreed to translate them for you.

4. Wait for files to come back, look for portions which may have been missed, go back to step 3 if necessary.

5. Look up different command line options for ibtool to import the translated strings into a new nib file making use of the English nib as a basis.

5. (a) If parse errors occur in the strings file (which they often do is the localizers missed a semicolon or quote), use the plutil command line tool to find them. Correct and move back to step 5.

6. Correct sizing on controls and GUI elements in the nib since translations are often longer than English. This can be very time consuming depending on the layout and must be done every time you update anything.

7. Test.

That was the procedure for one nib. Multiply that by the number of nibs in the project, and additionally, by the nibs in any internally developed included frameworks (such as our version checking system). Want to change anything in any of your nibs? No problem, just change the English language nib, delete all the translated nibs, and go back to step 5! Or you could opt to change each localized nib by hand! Ouch.

Perhaps now you have a better understanding for why much of the freeware and shareware software for the Mac isn't localized: it's a huge time commitment and it makes creating future versions much more difficult. It would be interesting to see if this process is easier or harder than the process on other platforms such as Windows (or Java). Anyone who has experience with those, feel free to post something in the comments.

TubeTV Imminent

2008-02-01T18:53:00.000-08:00

The next version (1.0) of TubeTV should be released in the near future. If you'd like the link for beta testing, visit the Chimoosoft contact page and drop me a line. Version 0.9.9 is now in the process of being localized and hopefully will be out for the public in a few days. The screenshot either directly shows or hints at some of the upcoming features.

More Cocoa Goodness

2008-01-30T09:06:00.000-08:00

Came across another nice Cocoa Blog today called Living the Life which includes some freely downloadable classes for managing preferences. The new version of TubeTV will make use of Dave's preferences class - thanks! It literally took less than half an hour from finding the classes on the web to having the entire thing implemented in TubeTV - one of the quickest pickup times for third party additions ever! Normally the problem integrating other people's work is just figuring out how in the heck you're supposed to use it, but Dave made the process entirely trivial.

Cocoa Examples

2008-01-29T15:37:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while, I like to actually post something related to Cocoa since the blog is called Cocoa Musings. Today during some research, I came across a nice page of Cocoa Bindings Examples and Hints. Anyone out there who has experienced the complexity of Cocoa Bindings would probably appreciate this page. ;-)

Netflix versus iTunes

2008-01-27T20:21:00.000-08:00

The New York Times has an interesting article about Netflix versus iTunes streaming movie rentals. Since the author neglects to mention the important fact that Netflix streaming doesn't currently work on Macs (unless you use Bootcamp, Parallels, or VMware), it's gratifying that a high percentage of the user comments at the bottom do note this. In fact, I saw some of the most well written comments about this article that I've ever seen posted online - it really seems to raise people's ire.

In my opinion, the problem is not that Netflix doesn't currently offer Mac support, but rather that all Netflix subscribers (myself included) are paying for the service whether or not they're able to take advantage of it. Charging users extra who wish to take advantage of the streaming, or discounting users who can't take advantage of it would be a more equitable solution.

I want to keep liking Netflix - they've been a great company and I have been quite happy with their DVD mail service. Netflix also has a superior user interface to iTunes; they have intelligent ratings which give customers an idea of how well they'll like a film, and they make it easy to browse for and discover interesting movies to rent. On iTunes, if you don't know the exact name of the movie you'll spend a lot of time clicking back and forth between text based lists of titles and stand alone detail pages. Going back to the list forces you to scroll back down to your previous position; the interface needs a lot of work.

Netflix is also a money saver; for $8.99 a month, unlimited streaming is significantly cheaper than $2.99 per movie (or $3.99 for HD). With iTunes, I can only rent three movies a month for the same price as unlimited Netflix streaming. Of course, there's also the caveat that Netflix apparently only offers old and somewhat obscure (?) movies for streaming while iTunes offers more recent titles. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.

iMac RAM

2008-01-25T16:09:00.001-08:00

I just upgraded the RAM on an aluminum iMac from 1 GB (Apple factory standard) to 4GB from Other World Computing. The total cost of the upgrade including shipping? $97. Ordering the iMac custom built from Apple with the same 4GB of RAM adds $850 to the price. WHAT? That's more than eight times as expensive! Is Apple just trying to make a killing on RAM upgrades, or is there really something superior about the RAM they use? It seems rather unethical to charge your customers eight times more than competitive (and well known) retailers.

PS: The procedure for installing the RAM in the iMac was the easiest I've ever followed - it literally took me less than five minutes start to finish including searching for a screw driver, so props to Apple for that.

Airy Thoughts

2008-01-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

I had another thought about the MacBook Air - Apple is really trying to position this notebook as a completely wireless solution, but what about having wireless internet access on it when you're not in range of a WiFi base station? Without having any expansion slots, is it impossible to hook this device up to a fast 3G cellular network such as Verizon or Sprint? That seems like a big oversight. Perhaps it's possible using bluetooth?

MacWorld 2008

2008-01-17T11:50:00.001-08:00

Spent the day at the MacWorld Expo in San Francisco yesterday wandering around the expo floor, playing with the MacBook Air, and generally being underwhelmed. Turns out the MacBook Air is more interesting than I'd imagined; you'll have to pick one up and play around with it to understand. It feels very solidly constructed, is amazingly light and thin, and has a beautiful bright screen. If it wasn't $1800 and had a better graphics processor, I might actually be tempted.

Oh yeah, I got in trouble with the Apple rep for spinning the MacBook air models on the string. Don't know why she was so worried - they had holes drilled through them to mount on the string, so they can't have been more than hollow cases.

My predominant thought after leaving the expo? They should really rename it "iPod World." Nearly the entire show floor was taken over with vendors selling iPod/iPhone cases, ear buds, and accessories. Oh well. They did have some comfortably cool computing chairs, nifty mounting brackets for your car, and, well, the MacBook Air of course.

MacWorld = Apple Christmas

2008-01-15T12:07:00.000-08:00

Today really feels like Christmas, an Apple Christmas that is. A free update for my Apple TV which brings high definition movie rentals, Flickr support, full music store browsing, and other changes make the Apple TV about twice as useful as before. As an early adopter of the device, I now feel much better about the money I initially spent on it.

The new iPhone 1.1.3 software update comes with improved Google Maps sporting a feature which finds my current location on the map! Cool! Bye bye GPS? It will be nice to be able to customize the home screen as well.

Thanks Apple for helping me reach a state of technological nirvana! I knew there was a reason I invested so much money in your products...

PS: I don't really care too much about the MacBook Air; pricey, under-featured, and small. Hopefully it will appeal to some people out there. The new Time Capsule wireless backup device looks pretty useful however. Why on earth is Apple stock down to $169 a share? Crazy.

iPhone Camera Use

2008-01-15T08:47:00.000-08:00

Just came across an interesting graph from Flickr of mobile phone camera use over time. As you'd expect, the iPhone has climbed the charts rather quickly only being bested by the Nokia N95 which has a much nicer camera.

Pingie

2008-01-14T09:13:00.001-08:00

Pingie is a new web service I just read about which simply asks you to enter an email address, mobile phone number, and RSS feed URL. When the feed updates with a new item, Pingie will send an SMS text message to your phone letting you know! This is exactly the kind of web site I've been waiting for - there are many occasions when this would be handy; searching for something (like a Wii) on Craigslist is the obvious one which comes to mind. Cool!

2008 and Web Stats

2008-01-13T16:25:00.001-08:00

Happy 2008 everyone! Work on TubeTV is progressing nicely and version 1.0 should be released in the near future; I think everyone will be pleased with the new (very frequently requested) features. Keep in mind that the word "near" can mean many things, so interpret that as you see fit. ;-)

In other news, here's an interesting graphic showing what times of the day people visit the Chimoosoft web site. The graph is only since January 1st, but it tends to look about the same every month. Enjoy. PS: The time zone for the graph is central time.

Photo Scanning Date Tip

2007-12-22T15:27:00.001-08:00

If you've ever tried scanning old photographs and then managing them with modern software like Aperture or iPhoto, you know that date and time stamps can be a hassle. By default, a freshly scanned image will import into Aperture with the file's creation date (i.e. today's date), not the date the photo was taken. To remedy this situation, the free command line exiftool can be used with a command like the following:

exiftool "-dateTimeOriginal=1985:12:01 12:00:00-05:00" img036.jpg

The above example sets the date EXIF tag for img036.jpg to December 1st, 1985 (the time stamp is irrelevant). Even if you don't know the exact date the photo was taken, it's helpful to at least have the correct year in the EXIF tags. After setting the date, import into Aperture or iPhoto, and the photograph will be sorted correctly by date rather than appearing at the top with all your latest photos.

iPhone Web Sites

2007-12-19T14:12:00.001-08:00

For all of you iPhoners out there, I thought I'd share a few of my favorite iPhone formatted web sites to enhance your holiday browsing and bring joy into your hearts.

To begin with, although NetNewsWire is a great RSS feed reader for your Mac and has an online equivalent for your phone, the mobile version doesn't even compare to the new mobile Google Reader. Google Reader has a stunningly well designed (and beautiful) iPhone interface which automatically keeps your reading list in sync wherever you read. Read some news on your home computer, some more on your phone, and then even more at work (gasp) and Google Reader will seamlessly keep track of what you've read and what you haven't. To view Reader on your iPhone, just go to the Google home page and click the reader button at the top; going to the normal reader link on your phone won't give you the mobile interface, so make sure to navigate there from www.google.com on your phone.

Another favorite when out and about is Amazon's iPhone interface. Fairly well designed and handy for price or rating checking when browsing books at your local bookstore. Great for making sure those bargain books are really worth it! Just go to the normal Amazon site on your iPhone and it should auto-redirect you to the iPhone optimized page.

For mobile weather, Apple's built in weather widgets are great, but I often find myself wanting to see a real forecast with details rather than just a little sun or rain cloud with a temperature, don't you? One of my favorite weather sites, the Weather Underground, has finally made my dreams come true with their iPhone optimized weather site. If you forget the URL, they have a little tiny link on the top of their normal website. It's cool. Seriously.

Well, there you have it - three of my favorite little iPhone sites for getting your internet fix on the go. Enjoy.

iPhone Number 2 Smartphone Already?

2007-12-19T09:47:00.000-08:00

According to this article, the iPhone already holds 27% of the smart phone market share in North America and is second only to Blackberry! Fairly impressive for a phone which is only six months old; just wait until developers get their hands on the iPhone SDK in February and all sorts of craziness will break loose.

The study looked at third quarter sales of smartphones and found that in its first full quarter, the iPhone has already outsold all of the Microsoft Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm phones and now holds a 27 percent market share in North America.

Holiday Season

2007-12-18T10:48:00.000-08:00

It's the holiday season, and time to search for gifts for your hard to please friends and relatives. If you're considering purchasing a gift certificate from Amazon.com this year, and you buy it through this link , Chimoosoft will earn a small referral commission! What a great way to help out your favorite Mac software developer during the holidays!!

Amazon gift cards are a great idea simply because Amazon sells such a massive variety of products. Books, music, movies, computer software and hardware, TV and stereo equipment, camera gear, etc.! Free shipping on orders over $25, yada yada...

Hosting Issues

2007-12-16T10:21:00.000-08:00

Finally got around to switching web hosting providers for Chimoosoft.com away from Yahoo. Although Yahoo has been very reliable and hassle free over the years, there were several big drawbacks to it: FTP access only (no SFTP), an older version of PHP, no web statistics for PHP pages (even though they were supposed to be available), no SVN hosting, no Ruby on Rails support, no terminal access, etc..

Our new hosting provider is Webfaction which has much more customizability and should help Chimoosoft.com evolve into a more fully featured site. During the transition process, the domain temporarily pointed at nothing Sunday morning for a few hours; if you were directed to a temporary Go Daddy parking page, now you know why. Email may also have bounced back to you, so please try sending it again. Sorry for the trouble - note that this is Chimoosoft's first hosting provider change in about five years, so this doesn't happen too often!

If you're curious about Webfaction - so far, so good. I'll post more information about the provider as time passes. Go Daddy seems to have worked fine, but the site was incredibly confusing and poorly laid out (IMHO) - pretty much the opposite of Apple's clean design principles!

PS: If you get tempted by webfaction, signing up through this link will give Chimoosoft a bonus!

Cocoa Foot Dipping

2007-12-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

In my ramblings about the internet today I came across Andy Matuschak's gentle introduction to Cocoa entitled "Getting Started with Cocoa: A Friendlier Approach." I have to say I was fairly impressed with his friendlier approach and wished it was available all those years ago when I was first learning Cocoa. To any of you out there considering diving in, why not get your feet wet with Andy's introduction? What a perfect way to spend your holiday vacation time!

A quote from the article:

Now, don’t let this scare you, but I’m going to just come out and say it: Cocoa is huge. It consists of a great number of frameworks that can accomplish just about anything you need in application development.

So any attempt to “learn Cocoa” is going to result in disappointment. We’ve just got to get you on your feet and show you how to find answers. We’ve got to give you a Cocoa intuition. I have no idea how to use Bonjour, for instance, but I’m sure I could use it in an app today if I wanted to. That’s what we’re aiming for.

Cocoa Delegates

2007-12-11T16:56:00.000-08:00

I came across a couple of interesting articles about using delegates in Cocoa which may be of interest to those of you with some software design background.

The way delegation is used in Cocoa is one of my favorite aspects of programming in this environment; subclass only when really necessary.

Addendum: This article from Apple is also of interest regarding delegates.

Apple Style Guidelines

2007-12-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

It's encouraging to see that Apple has standard style guidelines which developers are supposed to apply to their software. I came across this while reading through the Apple Human Interface Guidelines.

The Apple Publications Style Guide covers style and usage issues, and is the key reference for how Apple uses language. This document is available in the User Experience Reference Library; consult it whenever you have a question about the preferred style of particular terms. For issues that aren’t covered in the Apple Publications Style Guide, Apple recommends three other works: The American Heritage Dictionary,The Chicago Manual of Style, and Words Into Type. When these books give conflicting rules, The Chicago Manual of Style takes precedence for questions of usage andThe American Heritage Dictionary for questions of spelling.

Flickr

2007-12-07T09:44:00.000-08:00

The new Chimoosoft Flickr page is now active! Head on over to view photos from the Apple 2007 World Wide Developer's Conference in San Francisco.

Apple Developer Humor

2007-12-06T14:13:00.000-08:00

While coding today, I was playing around with NSAlert and created an alert with an empty message. I was fairly amused to see the following logged to my console when running the alert.

-[NSAlert alertWithError:] called with nil NSError.  A generic error message will be displayed, but the user deserves better.

;-)

New Blog for Chimoosoft

2007-12-06T14:12:00.000-08:00

I finally decided to create a Chimoosoft blog since it's much easier to post quick notes using blogging tools than editing HTML by hand and uploading it. Old news articles from the main Chimoosoft site will be migrated to this blog, so entries appearing prior to this one are migrated entries.

Backup 3.1.2 Review

2007-11-27T17:38:00.000-08:00

Many options for backing up your data exist on Mac OS X, and with the introduction of Leopard's Time Machine, many users will never need to venture out into the wild west of backup software again. However, for users with more specific needs, software such as Apple's Backup (included with a .Mac subscription) fills an important niche.

Backup allows you to create multiple backup plans making it easy to preserve only the data you are currently worried about. When creating a plan, simple presets such as "Home Folder" and "Personal Data & Settings" can be chosen, or customize your own plan to include or exclude specific files and folders. There are also many preset data types which can be chosen including "Keychain", "iTunes Purchases", and "Pages Documents". Backup can even perform a Spotlight search at backup time to gather all files with certain characteristics; i.e., all documents containing a certain word or phrase. After choosing the files, add as many schedules and destinations for the plan as desired. For example, you can have the plan backup to your iDisk once a week and to a CD or DVD once a month. When manually performing a backup, it's easy to pick which device the backup should go to, and if you choose something too big to fit on a single CD or DVD, Backup will prompt you to insert more media as necessary.

The only immediately obvious drawback of Backup is the fact that only one backup plan can be executing at a time; it's not possible to start several simultaneous backups. Some people have also complained about the way Backup stores your files in a package, but you can always delve into the package by right-clicking on it and choosing "Show Package Contents". For the author, Backup is almost a good enough solution to justify the cost of .Mac on its own.

A free demo of Backup is available when you sign up for a .Mac trial, but it limits you to only 100 MB of backup data at a time.

AP Grapher Now Purring on Leopard

2007-10-28T17:13:00.000-07:00

A new version of AP Grapher which adds support for Leopard amongst other good things has been released.

Time Tracker 1.2.1 Review

2007-10-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

Time Tracker is a freeware (and open source) program for tracking the amount of time spent on various projects. This software is especially useful when you're working on several projects, switching off between them frequently. Add a list of projects on the left hand side, and for each project, add one or more tasks (if desired) below it. Start the clock ticking and get to work!

A handy menu extra in your menu bar allows you to see whether or not Time Tracker is running at a glance and makes it easy to start and stop the timer without bothering to switch back to the program. The software is even smart enough to notice when you've been idle (not using your computer for a while) and asks if you want the idle time to count or not. All in all, not bad for freeware!

Data Rescue II Review

2007-09-10T16:55:00.000-07:00

Data Rescue II is an example of the type of software you hope to never use since using it implies that you've lost something important and desperately want it back. When and if you delete your favorite photos and empty the trash, this software will be waiting to help.

There are several competing products for Mac OS X which offer similar features - primarily, the recovery of deleted files. After evaluating several of them and examining the pricing, Data Rescue II came out on top (a competing product suffered from a horrible user interface and crashed when trying to recover data). Recovery is simple: choose one of several scanning methods, click a button, and wait. After the scan is complete, a list of recoverable files sorted by file type will be displayed. Select any files you'd like to recover and let the software do its thing.

In addition to actually working (and completely recovering the author's photos), Data Rescue II featured a clear and easy to use user interface with built in help. For instant gratification, the software can be immediately downloaded after purchasing.

Data Loss!

2007-08-29T21:08:00.000-07:00

Due to a hard drive crash (oops!) email sent to Chimoosoft between August 7th and August 29th has been lost. If you sent an email during that time period which has gone unanswered, please try again.

Addendum: In the process of recovering lost data, Data Rescue II quite literally came to the rescue; read the Chimoosoft review. Another program to help prevent problems in the future is Apple's own Backup software, free with a .Mac subscription; read the review.

Stellarium 0.9 Review

2007-08-15T12:07:00.000-07:00

Stellarium is a free (and open source) planetarium program for Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows which uses OpenGL to render the sky. Unlike competing commercial software, Stellarium is extremely simple and easy to use - no manual required. Set your location using the map, then drag the sky around using your mouse. A toolbar along the bottom lets you toggle displays such as ground, constellations (with or without artwork), atmosphere, nebulae, and more. Simple to use time controls enable play, fast forward, rewind, and return to current time. Some nice touches including random meteors and twinkling stars are also included.

Even if you have access to commercial software such as Starry Night, you may well find yourself preferring Stellarium; it's quick, simple, and easy to use. This software does not suffer from feature bloat. Next time you're planning to go stargazing, check out Stellarium first; or even bring it along on your laptop.

Note that version 0.9 has a few quirks including a problem starting in full screen mode. These issues will likely be addressed soon, so keep an eye on their web site for updates.

iPhone Web App

2007-07-30T17:49:00.000-07:00

Our first little baby web app for the iPhone is now available! It's called SunMoon and shows you the sunrise/sunset and moonrise/moonset time for any zip code and date in the United States.

iPhlickr Review

2007-07-30T11:57:00.000-07:00

Today marks our first review of a program designed especially for the new Apple iPhone instead of the Mac. Although the iPhone is still a closed platform preventing all but the most serious hackers from altering the installed software, Apple has encouraged people to write web applications specially tailored for the touch interface and small screen.

One of the first apps to appear was iPhlickr; a fun way to browse photos from the popular online photo site, Flickr. Using the app, you can quickly browse the most recently added photos, photos by specific users or tags, your own photos, or the author's favorite feature: interesting photos today. Use your finger to scroll through the thumbnails and click on any of interest for a larger view. If you haven't already done so, try adding a bookmarks folder to the iPhone's Safari browser for storing iPhone tailored web apps like iPhlickr - ours is called "iPhone Formatted." This acts as a sort of "applications folder" for the iPhone.

Due to the nature of web apps, iPhlickr is likely to change without warning. This review refers to iPhlickr as of 7/30/2007 (no version given).

One Quarter of One Million!

2007-07-06T18:30:00.000-07:00

All Chimoosoft products taken together have now received well over one quarter of one million downloads (250,000)! Thanks everyone!

Adium 1.0.4 Review

2007-06-26T17:00:00.000-07:00

Apple's built in iChat is a great way to stay in touch with your friends or colleagues, but sometimes feels as if it's missing something. The freeware (and open source) Adium client gives users another excellent option which adds oft requested features including tabbed chats, encryption, and much more customizable chat appearances. Although iChat allows encrypted chats between .Mac users, Adium allows point to point encryption between any two Adium users regardless of network. This is a great benefit since most chatting protocols send every message in plaintext across the network making them easy to intercept (especially on public wireless access points).

One of the few features Adium is missing is easy to use voice and video chatting, although the latest versions do include SIP support which should enable this (unclear how to setup). But aside from this, Adium works well and is a good option to try out. Adium supports AIM, Jabber, MSN, Yahoo, .Mac, Bonjour, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, LiveJournal, Lotus Sametime, Novell GroupWise, QQ, SIP, and Zephyr. Also, with such a cute little duck icon, who can resist giving it a try?

By Adium.
download (freeware)
screenshot

WWDC 2007

2007-06-18T14:38:00.000-07:00

The Apple World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) was an amazing week spent learning more about Apple technologies for Leopard.

I'd highly recommended this event to all Mac OS X developers - though expensive, it's worth the cost. More photos from WWDC 2007 are available on the Chimoosoft Flickr page.

WWDC 2007

2007-06-11T12:15:00.000-07:00

Sorry, no review this week or next due to preparation for and attendance at the Apple World Wide Developer's Conference (WWDC) which takes place next week. Check back the week of June 18th.

Update: the conference was amazing - and amazingly tiring! Next review will be posted around the 25th.

Grapher Review

2007-05-28T11:55:00.000-07:00

When Apple first introduced the PowerPC based Power Macintosh computers in 1994, they included an innovative product called Graphing Calculator which was made by Pacific Tech. In addition to being a great way to show off the speed of the new PPC chip, this program turned out to be a useful educational tool and helped teach basic math skills to many grade school and college students. Unfortunately, with the switch to Mac OS X in 2001, Graphing Calculator was abandoned by Apple and users were left with a hole.

Apple responded to the need for a replacement beginning with Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) and bundled a program they dubbed "Grapher" (originally Curvus Pro by Arizona Software). Although Grapher doesn't feel as fast as the older Graphing Calculator, it offers much of the same functionality including 2D and 3D graphing, integration and differentiation support, and built in examples. In some areas such as customizing the graph display, Grapher is even more flexible than Graphing Calculator.

Grapher is freely bundled with every copy of Tiger and can be found neatly hidden in the /Applications/Utilities/ folder. Why Apple would hide this useful piece of software (which is clearly not a Utility) in the Utilities folder is anyone's guess, and as a result of this hiding many Mac users aren't even aware that it exists. Since Grapher does indeed reside on your system, it's worth checking out.

Note: Pacific Tech finally started supporting OS X independent of Apple, and you can still buy Graphing Calculator on their website today.

OmniGraffle 4.1.2 Review

2007-05-22T12:04:00.000-07:00

OmniGraffle is the premier vector based diagramming and layout tool for Mac OS X. This excellently designed program lets you produce beautiful org charts, UML diagrams, ER Diagrams, and more. A default set of "stencils" covers most basic shapes and many more are available for download from the web. Connect objects together with the line tool and drag them around or use the auto layout tool to create a balanced graph.

In addition to producing diagrams, the program is versatile enough for creating icons, web badges, or even "art." Bezier curves, shadows, gradients, grouping, and layers give you plenty of options. Many of the graphics on the Chimoosoft website were created using OmniGraffle including the RSS feed badge, most of the icons in the top right hand corners, and even the icon for Chimoo Timer. For the professionals out there, the pro version allows import and export of Visio documents.

This is one of those rare programs which is truly a joy to use; in addition to functionality, you get to have fun!

OmniOutliner Professional 3.6.2 Review

2007-05-14T17:40:00.000-07:00

OmniOutliner Pro is a versatile but lightweight program which is useful for much more than simply making an outline. It particularly shines as a list maker, but can also be used for taking notes, writing documentation, or replacing your spreadsheet for simple tasks. The multi column and summary features make it easy to add up all expenses in a column, or time spent working on certain projects. Features such as intelligent date parsing allow you to type things like "next tuesday" and have Outliner figure out exactly what you mean. Checkboxes come in handy for some types of lists, but fortunately, can be turned off for others.

OmniOutliner is designed to be used quickly and easily from your keyboard - a simple press of the return key gets a new bullet, and simple key commands (or mouse drags) change indentation. This efficiency makes it a great tool for tasks such as taking meeting notes or minutes. The styles overlay view is one of the more impressive features; it lets you easily set all imaginable style attributes (color, background, font, size, shadow, and more) for each level of indentation in the document. As new items are added, the appropriate style is automatically applied. Templates of your favorite styles can be saved, set as default, and restored later when creating new documents.

Exporting to other formats such as PDF, text, HTML, and dynamic-HTML is easily accomplished. The release notes for all Chimoosoft software were created with Outliner's dynamic-HTML export.

A cheaper non-professional version is also available (and commonly bundled with new Apple computers), but it lacks nice features such as folded editing, templates, and more. If you're tempted by the cheaper version, at least download the demo of the pro version first to see what you're missing.

Perian 0.5 Review

2007-05-07T12:05:00.000-07:00

QuickTime ships with all copies of Mac OS X and provides photo, audio, and movie playback services to many programs and the operating system itself. There are however many movie codecs in use on the web which aren't natively supported by QuickTime. Movies encoded with these refuse to play unless a specialized QuickTime component is installed.

In the past, users had to download and install numerous codecs to gain access to the full range of available movies; Perian simplifies the process. In one fell swoop, freeware Perian adds support for video codecs including AVI, FLV, 3ivX, DivX, Flash Screen Video, MS-MPEG4, Sorenson H.263, Truemotion VP6, and Xvid AVI. It also supports audio codecs such as AAC, AC3 Audio using A52Codec, H.264, MPEG4, and VBR MP3! Nearly every common format is supported with the exception of WMV (windows media) which can be added with the free Flip4Mac.

Installation is simple - drag the Perian.component file to your /Library/QuickTime folder and optionally remove any older components which Perian replaces. Congratulations - your computer will now be able to play almost any video or audio file you throw at it!

TubeTV and WWDC

2007-05-01T13:37:00.000-07:00

TubeTV has been out for a few weeks now and is doing well already having amassed over 10,000 downloads. Thanks to everyone who downloaded it and tried it out! To help encourage more applications like this in the future, consider donating to help pay for the author's attendance at the Apple WWDC (World Wide Developer's Conference) 2007.

Exposé Review

2007-04-30T11:34:00.001-07:00

Apple introduced Exposé with Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" in April of 2005, however, many Mac users either don't realize that it exists, or don't know how to utilize it to the full extent. Exposé helps you deal with the constant clutter of overlapping windows and the need to drag and drop items from one window to another by quickly getting things out of your way.

Before getting started, make sure you have set up the keyboard shortcuts to your liking - open System Preferences and choose "Dashboard & Exposé." On a laptop Mac where many of the function keys are already mapped to things like screen or keyboard brightness, it helps to double up Exposé on the two remaining keys, F11 and F12 (screenshot). On our setup, pressing F11 shows all windows, while ⌥ (option) F11 shows only windows in the current application. F12 reveals the desktop, and ⌥F12 shows Dashboard (Hint: to set the keyboard shortcut to use ⌥, hold it down while clicking on the shortcut menu.) It's also possible to set screen corner shortcuts, but many people find these confusing since they are often bumped by accident.

Aside from simply revealing your myriad windows and letting you quickly bring the desired one to the front, Exposé really shines when combined with drag and drop. Drag and drop has been a hallmark of the Macintosh experience since the beginning, but it can be difficult to use since the source and target windows are often buried under multiple layers. Exposé can help. Assuming your keyboard shortcuts are set up as indicated above, press F12 to reveal the desktop, grab a file, and start dragging it. While still dragging, press F11 to reveal windows in all non-hidden applications. Drag the file over the desired window and either press F11 again to immediately bring the window to the front, or pause for a few seconds and Exposé will bring it to the front automatically. Drop the file. You have now completed a drag and drop without moving any windows!

Variations of this can also be used to drag things between programs without involving the desktop. The key to the whole experience is to not let go of your dragged item until you've tried out various Exposé shortcuts.

TextWrangler 2.2.1 Review

2007-04-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

TextWrangler is a robust, fast, and free text editor for Mac OS X from BareBones software which replaces their older but widely used "BBEdit Lite" (first released in 1993). This editor is a good choice for those needing a powerful editor with syntax highlighting and regular expression support but not wanting to pay for a commercial editor. As with other text editors, this product is aimed at software and web developers; TextWrangler is not a word processor.

Common needs such as changing a file's line break characters between Unix, Mac, and Windows or changing the file encoding between variations of Unicode and Western (Mac OS Roman) are a single click away. Operations such as removing line breaks, processing (and searching) a file with regular expressions, or hard wrapping text are also trivial. The bundled command line tools let you easily open files from the terminal directly with TextWrangler removing the need to use older programs such as vi. TextWrangler also has better AppleScript support than almost any Mac OS X program you're likely to encounter and includes full script recording support. Simply open Apple's ScriptEditor, press the Record button, and begin working in TextWrangler; press Stop when finished and then replay your script. Unlike many other editors, TextWrangler is extremely fast and lean - this is the cheetah of text editors.

The latest versions of TextWrangler have gone a long way towards modernizing the program; a new toolbar, OS X native spell checking, and document drawer are some of the features which set this software apart from the original BBEdit Lite. Although TextWrangler covers all the basics extremely well, it doesn't do as much for you as newer editors such as TextMate which has many helpful macros and project level file management. Even if you don't use it as your main editor, TextWrangler certainly makes an excellent backup when the paid editors drop the ball on something you need to get done quickly. BareBones also offers a more fully featured commercial version called BBEdit.

Free Ruler 1.7b5 Review

2007-04-16T11:51:00.000-07:00

Free Ruler is exactly what it sounds like: a freeware ruler for your computer screen. Position one end of the ruler on the start point, drag the other end as long or tall as necessary, and move your mouse pointer around. The ruler shows the pointer's position with a dotted line making it easy to measure precise distances. Try using it in conjunction with control scroll zoom for even better results.

Why would you want a ruler? Anyone working with graphics or layout on a computer needs the ability to measure pixel distances on the screen. This program is a real help when debugging that troublesome CSS code or laying out a user interface. This may seem like a simple program, but it comes in handy more often than you might think!

Note: this may have issues when Leopard comes out due to Leopard's new resolution independence, so look for a new version from the developer at that time.

By Pascal.
download

Terrabrowser Universal Binary and TubeTV

2007-04-12T15:45:00.000-07:00

Terrabrowser is now a universal binary internally (not yet released) - after reworking the GPX file handling to make it more compatible with a wider range of GPX files, a new beta will be released. Also, a new program called TubeTV is almost finished which will allow exporting YouTube and Google Video videos to formats for Apple TV and iPod. Stay tuned.

Flip4Mac 2.1 Review

2007-04-09T11:41:00.000-07:00

Like it or not, Windows Media Video files (.wmv) are common on the web and Mac users need a good way to play them. In the past, Microsoft provided a free version of their Windows Media Player for Mac OS X, but discontinued it about a year ago. This isn't a huge loss since Windows Media Player for Mac OS X was never very well done (let's just say it wasn't a pleasure to use) and the new alternative is actually easier to deal with.

Flip4Mac allows you to play Windows Media files with the standard Apple QuickTime Player and also plays movies embedded in web page. After installing the software, dealing with wmv files is no more trouble than dealing with normal QuickTime files. The full version of the software has many more options and allows conversion from wmv files into other formats suitable for devices such as your iPod and Apple TV. The free trial allows export using QuickTime Pro (review), but places a watermark across the video.

Aperture 1.5.2 Review

2007-04-02T17:15:00.000-07:00

Aperture is one of Apple's newest and most hyped "Pro" Apps which is targeted primarily at professional photographers and advanced amateurs. If you use a digital SLR or high end prosumer camera and consider photography to be one of your main hobbies or profession, Aperture may be for you. Otherwise, you probably won't want to spend more for this software than you did for your camera! While mainly an image organization tool with meta-data support, Aperture also provides tools for the most common photo editing needs such as crop, free rotate, red eye reduction, white balance, sharpening, levels, exposure, blemish removal, and RAW adjustments. Like iPhoto, Aperture also includes the ability to produce photo books, order prints, and make web albums but all with more freedom and control. Basically, this is iPhoto on steroids.

Possibly the largest freedom which Aperture provides is the ability to edit your photos endlessly without worry. No longer will you have to think about saving copies, wasting disk space, or protecting the originals. Your master images (digital negatives) are always preserved and any and all changes you make to them can be undone or altered at any point in the future without sacrificing image quality. Instead of actually changing your photos and re-saving them (as you may have done with other tools), Aperture saves only the digital "recipe" used to make the changes. In addition to being able to easily undo your changes, this also means that extra disk space is not wasted when you make additional copies or edited versions of images. In the past, you may have restricted yourself to editing only those images in dire need of help, but it's so trivial to do with Aperture that you'll find yourself making small corrections across the board. The ease with which photos can be edited and organized in this program is phenomenal!

Other innovative features such as the ability to stack similar images on top of one another hiding all but the best (called "stacks"), and the integrated "vault" one-click backup system are a joy to use. If you really need Photoshop, Aperture even lets you send files to it for editing with one click, and as soon as you save, they come right back into Aperture with the changes! This software does so much and has so many innovative features that it would take pages and pages to even mention them all - instead, why not dive in and watch the online tutorials to get a feel?

At the time of this writing, a free thirty day trial version of Aperture is available for download from Apple's website. A discounted (half price) educational version is also available. Aside from the high cost, the only real drawback of this software is the required CPU and graphics horsepower. Warning: if you have anything older than a 1.5 GHz G4 with at least 1 GB of RAM, Aperture may cause excessive hair loss and fidgeting.

Adobe makes a competing cross-platform application called Lightroom, but if you're using a Mac, Aperture is probably the one for you. The author of this review has used both of them and far prefers the feature set and OS X integration of Aperture.

QuickTime Pro 7.1.5 Review

2007-03-26T17:42:00.000-07:00

Although the basic QuickTime Player is included with every Mac and free to download for Windows, it is somewhat crippled unless you purchase the "Pro" version. By going Pro, you gain several handy features related to saving and editing movies as well as full screen playback. Note that the Pro version usually has to be re-purchased for each "major" version of QuickTime - for example, 6, 7, and 8 when it comes out.

Many websites use QuickTime to play their movies; Pro gives you the ability to save any of these to your local computer by simply clicking on the bottom right corner popup menu and choosing "Save as QuickTime Movie..." It also becomes possible to edit movie clips in the player. You can now copy, cut, and paste sections of movies together to remove unwanted portions from existing movies or make brand new ones from scratch. For the photography buffs out there, you now have the ability to create a new QuickTime movie from a batch of time lapse photographs using the "Open Image Sequence..." command. In addition, recording movies and sound directly in QuickTime Player, and saving in formats optimized for iPod or Apple TV (H.264) is also enabled.

Possibly the feature you'll use the most in QuickTime Pro is the fullscreen movie watching - just press ⌘ (command) F to enter full screen mode complete with movie controls which appear when you move the mouse. For a full list of features, visit the QuickTime Pro web site.

GraphicConverter 5.9.5 Review

2007-03-19T11:56:00.000-07:00

GraphicConverter is many things: a poor man's Photoshop replacement, a versatile photo organizer with IPTC and EXIF tagging support, an excellent way to present a slide show, a robust photo editor, a batch processor, and an image format converter. The software has been around for many years and pre-dates OS X although it is frequently updated and now a universal binary. GraphicConverter can open files in nearly 200 formats and export in nearly 100. It is also available in twelve languages!

Since Photoshop is a bit of a beast and takes its time launching, you may find yourself using GraphicConverter for typical Photoshop tasks such as cropping, resizing, alpha layers, and basic photo corrections. GraphicConverter launches in a snap and is ready to do your bidding. The batch change feature is quite powerful (although the interface is antiquated) and makes short work of entire folders of images. It's easy to use for tasks such as creating thumbnails with different titles or file formats and is used extensively for the images which end up on this web page.

GraphicConverter may be used indefinitely with a short startup delay, however, it's well worth paying the small fee to support this fine software. The developer is also unusually responsive; if you find problems or have reasonable feature requests, he will often fix or implement them within weeks or months - quite different from the experience you'd get contacting Adobe.

The only real drawback of GraphicConverter is the sometimes obtuse user interface, portions of which (batch processing, etc.) haven't changed much since the early nineties. GraphicConverter also suffers a bit from "featureitis" and it can sometimes be difficult to find a desired feature or figure out how to set the preferences to achieve the desired goal. Still, the program is affordable, robust, fast, and hard to do without. It's a venerable workhorse and is sure to find a place in your workflow!

Carbon Copy Cloner 3.0-b5 Review

2007-03-12T16:57:00.000-07:00

Carbon Copy Cloner is a backup utility which has recently received a massive face lift and is now much more accessible to the average Mac user. Prior versions performed their task well - cloning a disk volume to a disk image or other volume, but the user interface was somewhat confusing for beginners. Version 3.0 still performs the same basic functions but is now easier to pick up and begin using without a manual.

The Mac software marketplace is currently rife with programs claiming to provide easy backup solutions, but most of them are either difficult to use, unreliable, or not fully featured enough. Carbon Copy Cloner appears to stand up well to the task, and it's donation-ware so you can pay what you think is fair! Although the upcoming Time Machine (arriving in Leopard) may alleviate the need for these types of programs for the casual user, Carbon Copy Cloner will still have a valuable place in the enterprise world for backing up servers before upgrades or providing a bootable backup of your own computer. In addition, as the author mentions on his web site, this software could be invaluable for backing up your computer before sending it in for repairs.

Using the software is fairly straight forward - choose a source volume on the left and a target volume, remote server, or disk image on the right. Press the clone button to begin the backup. Folders and files can be unchecked in the source to exclude them from the clone and disk images can be created for you at run time and even automatically encrypted. A nice paragraph form summary entitled "what is going to happen" appears at the bottom for review before proceeding with the clone operation. Other thoughtful features include the ability to restore from a clone, schedule clones to occur at regular intervals (useful for servers or desktop machines), and run shell scripts before and after a clone.

Note that the version tested is still in beta, so some features are a little rough around the edges.

Terrabrowser Universal Binary and TubeTV

2007-03-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

Development work has resumed on Terrabrowser after a long hiatus. Look for a new beta with minor changes in the not too distant future.

Capture Me and Chimoo Timer Released

2007-03-05T15:21:00.000-08:00

Final releases of the new Capture Me and Chimoo Timer are now available.

FileMerge 2.2.1 Review

2007-03-05T11:37:00.000-08:00

FileMerge is a visual diff tool freely included with the Apple developer tools. If you have installed the developer tools on your computer (they come bundled for free on the install disks which came with your Mac), you can find FileMerge nicely hidden in the /Developer/Applications/Utilities/ folder. Amazingly, many people developing software on the Mac haven't yet discovered FileMerge - if you're one of them, now is the time to do so. Apple provides lots of little goodies in the /Developer folder which are worth learning about.

Although it can be used to compare and merge any two text files you desire, FileMerge will mainly be of interest to software developers. If you've ever used the Unix diff tool, using FileMerge is like seeing the light; differences are actually visible side by side and easily understood at a glance - no more deciphering strange diff codes on the command line. As you jump to a difference in one file with the arrow keys, the second file scrolls to the same position and highlights the changes. You can also jump directly to methods/functions and choose which version of a change you want merged into the final output file. True, performing the same diff in the terminal is more condensed and geeky, but the FileMerge equivalent is much easier to grasp and work with. Many tools such as Xcode and svnX also have direct links within them which launch FileMerge for you.

By Apple, Inc.
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TextMate 1.5.4 Review

2007-02-26T12:09:00.000-08:00

TextMate is an advanced text editor designed with software and web developers in mind (chimoosoft.com is maintained with it). Notable features include tabs, project level management of files, multi-file (project) search with regular expression support, text-completion, syntax highlighting for scores of languages, a command line launcher, and countless editable macros defined for each language to reduce typing and improve efficiency. Standard OS X spell checking is also included, but with a nice twist - it's smart enough to avoid flagging items such as HTML tags. A built in web preview is available and many scripting languages have the ability to run and display their output within TextMate.

In addition to your standard and expected text editor features, TextMate can do some truly amazing things. For example, when writing HTML, select a word, press a key shortcut, and TextMate will look up the best matching link for the word on Google and insert it as a link in your HTML code! If you can't remember the appropriate key combo, a floating searchable browser is available where you can quickly find the shortcut you desire. Find the large number of features overwhelming? Check out the free online "screencasts" (iTunes link) which demonstrate how to use TextMate's powerful features or browse the extensive online help.

Chimoo Timer Pre-Release

2007-02-22T15:22:00.000-08:00

An unsupported pre-release of the new Chimoo Timer version 1.5 is now available.

Google Importer 1.0.1 Review

2007-02-19T11:53:00.000-08:00

Google Importer is a convenient Spotlight plugin which queries Google whenever you perform a Spotlight search and includes the top Google hits in the results list. This provides a quick alternative for missing local search results; when information you thought was located on your local computer isn't actually there, you can seamlessly use the top Google hits instead.

Unfortunately, results can sometimes take quite a while to show up, but this may be a fault of Spotlight and not the importer. Perform a general query which returns many thousands of results, and a long delay will ensue before the Google hits appear, however, a more specialized query produces results relatively quickly.

Note: the software was tested on a 1.5 GHz G4, so the speed should be improved on newer Intel based Macs. Since results are filed under the "Bookmarks" heading, make sure to enable this category in the Spotlight system preference pane.

Transmit 3.5.6 Review

2007-02-12T12:13:00.000-08:00

Tired of your free file transfer client? There are many different ftp/sftp clients for Mac OS X including the built in terminal commands, however the free ones often leave something to be desired. After variously using RBrowser, Fetch, CyberDuck (free), and Fugu (free) over the years, Transmit finally emerged as the preferred choice. If you want a client which offers a very Mac like interface without any hassles, Transmit may be the choice for you.

Transmit features a column browser which shows both "your files" (local) and "their files" (remote) side by side. It can be set to default to your favorite directory both locally and remotely at launch time and can even automatically connect to your favorite server. A handy synchronization feature allows you to synchronize a local directory with a remote one and includes advanced options for which types of files and modification date ranges to ignore (this is how chimoosoft.com is updated). Other handy features include queued file transfers, spring-loaded folders, linked local and remote folder browsing, drag and drop from the Finder, and editing of your remote files via your favorite editor(s). Integration with Quicksilver and Dashboard is also provided.

New Chimoo Timer Under Development

2007-02-07T13:48:00.000-08:00

A new version of Chimoo Timer is in development. The new version features OS X standard toolbars, a redesigned interface, and more extensive customization options. Stay tuned for a release within the next month or so.

RSS & Speech Toggle

2007-02-06T15:24:00.000-08:00

A new RSS feed is now available for our OS X Picks site, and another version (0.6) of Speech Toggle is available.

Quicksilver ß51 Review

2007-02-05T12:00:00.000-08:00

Quicksilver is a freeware program which offers LaunchBar like functionality and more in a prettier, free package. No more time consuming trips to the Applications folder; simply type ⌘ (command) space followed by the first few letters of the item you want to launch and Quicksilver will find it. If the wrong item surfaces, a secondary match can be selected with the arrow keys, and Quicksilver will learn to bring up the correct choice next time.

Quicksilver goes beyond a simple launcher however; hit tab after choosing a program and an entire list of possible actions appears. Want to get info on the item you selected, rename it, or move it to the trash? No problem. You can even choose to open a file with the selected program, hit tab again, and then use Quicksilver to search for the file to open - without ever touching the Finder. A plugin interface allows even more extended functionality for many popular programs.

This program does so much it's quite impossible to summarize it in such a short review. For a taste, dive into the preferences and explore the nearly 100 actions, 100 plugins, and literally tons of customizability, or explore the extensive online documentation. Suffice it to say that there is plenty of functionality hidden within this software to keep you busy for a long time. After using it for a while, you'll have trouble using a Mac without it and will be downloading and installing it on each Mac you use.

Is LaunchBar dead? Not really; it's simply a matter of preference - both tools have lots to offer. Try them both and see which you prefer.

Addendum 11/6/2007. With the release of Leopard, Spotlight is enough faster to be used instead of QuickSilver. If you've been using QuickSilver, it may be time to give Spotlight a chance again as it offers some additional niftiness which QuickSilver can't match.

LotsaSnow and LotsaWater 1.4j/1.2j Review

2007-01-29T12:02:00.000-08:00

Screen savers don't have any real use on modern LCD screens other than their entertainment value, but these screen savers definitely offer entertainment. LotsaSnow generates unique snowflakes and gently sprinkles them on your screen with options for setting parameters such as color, growth rate, and background visibility.

LotsaWater employs the much loved water droplet effect similar to the one used by Apple's Dashboard and lets water droplets fall randomly over the screen. Options to set the rainfall from gentle to pouring, water depth from shallow to deep, and others allow you to customize the behavior. Truly mesmerizing! A fairly modern computer is required for both of these; probably at least a 1.25 GHz G4 with a decent graphics card.

The Missing Sync 5.1.2 Review

2007-01-22T12:03:00.000-08:00

The Missing Sync enables synchronization of calendars, contacts, photos, music, files, and more between Mac OS X and many portable devices including Palm OS, Windows Mobile, PSP, and coming soon, Blackberry. The version reviewed only syncs to Palm OS devices, but syncing to others should be similar.

For Palm users, the Palm desktop application included for Mac OS X looks and feels like something straight out of the mid 1990's and is hardly a suitable choice. Apple's bundled iSync software works, kind of, but doesn't support many devices and can be quite slow. The Missing Sync is really the best option out there for true Mac like synchronization fully integrated with Apple applications like Address Book, iCal, iTunes, iPhoto, and more.

In addition to the tight integration with iLife applications, The Missing Sync also has multiple connection options including USB and bluetooth. If you need synchronization with your Mac and can't afford an iPhone, this is the application for you.

Wacom Graphire Bluetooth Tablet Review

2007-01-15T12:13:00.000-08:00

Mice may be ubiquitous in the modern computer world, but that doesn't make them the best choice for all activities. Aside from being difficult to use for precise graphics editing, mice can lead to or aggravate repetitive strain injuries (RSIs) - something to avoid at all cost.

Wacom graphics tablets provide a great alternative input device, and even if you don't spend all day editing in Photoshop they're well suited for mousing around as well. Another often overlooked benefit of using a pen based input device is Apple's built in Inkwell handwriting recognition technology. Inkwell allows you to write entire sentences on your tablet and have them translated to text just as if you were typing.

On the down side, clicking small targets is sometimes difficult since the pen is very sensitive and you may end up dragging rather than clicking. Also, the tablet doesn't play well with the previously reviewed Control Scroll Zoom; when zoomed, tablet clicks are offset and don't land where they should. It is unclear whether this is a problem with OS X or with Wacom's drivers. A tablet probably isn't a 100% replacement for a normal mouse or trackpad, but when used in conjunction with traditional devices (or even the included mouse), it works very well.

The Graphire wireless tablet comes with a stylus, stylus holder, two button scroll mouse, and recharging cable. Wacom's technology doesn't require a battery in the stylus, so it's very light weight and easy to use. In addition to being pressure sensitive (with applicable programs like Photoshop), the stylus and the tablet itself both have two programmable buttons on them which can be configured with Wacom's System Preference Pane.

For best results with Inkwell, try using "mouse mode" and turning "mouse acceleration" off. Also, make sure to download and install the newest drivers from Wacom as the ones included on the CD have problems with lag time.

MacWorld 2007

2007-01-12T13:24:00.000-08:00

MacWorld 2007 was a lot of fun and quite crowded! The new Apple iPhone is pretty incredible - it runs Mac OS X! Quite possibly the technology used for the touch screen came from Apple's rumored acquisition of FingerWorks, a company which previously produced the multi-touch iGesture pad and keyboard. Hordes of people were gathered around the phone which was spinning inside a plastic cylindrical podium and running through a demo.

The Apple TV also looks nice although it's not much cheaper than just buying a Mac Mini, and many people already achieve music streaming via Airport Express and AirTunes. The other most notable new product is Axiotron's ModBook which is being sold by Other World Computing. The Wacom based tablet screen seems to work very well, and Apple's Inkwell handwriting recognition is easier to use than with a separate Wacom tablet.

Cepstral Text-to-Speech 4 Review

2007-01-08T17:43:00.000-08:00

Do you enjoy text-to-speech, but are tired of the built in Mac OS X voices? Cepstral has ten US English voices available for download as well as UK English, Italian, Canadian French, German, and Americas Spanish. After installing, they appear in the speech System Preference pane alongside the traditional voices.

The quality of the voices is comparable to the best Apple provided voices, and some of them such as Callie, William, and David may be superior. Cepstral also includes a command line utility called "swift" which allows you to synthesize voice directly into an audio file. For example, swift -n Callie -f review.txt -o cepstral.wav produced this sample file. The demo voices vocally ask you to register before speaking your text but are still fun to play with.

Speech Toggle

2007-01-06T20:23:00.000-08:00

Released the first version of Speech Toggle, a menu extra to toggle speech recognition (speakable items) on and off.

AppKiDo 0.961 Review

2007-01-01T17:22:00.000-08:00

AppKiDo is a handy documentation browsing tool for Cocoa software developers which relies on the built in Apple developer documentation. Although the program allows browsing by class hierarchy, the most useful feature is the easy to use search and the option to display all instance or class methods in the same list for a given class. For example, looking at NSMutableDictionary this way also shows the methods for NSDictionary, and NSObject.

Unfortunately, the browser doesn't remember your position on the page when hitting the back or forward buttons, and the keyboard navigation could be improved. Still, AppKiDo is a nice fast alternative to browsing the web by hand or using PDF documentation. If you're a Cocoa developer, check it out! If you're not a Cocoa developer, perhaps you should become one. Happy New Year!

By Andy Lee.
download (freeware)
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New AP Grapher

2006-12-28T15:42:00.000-08:00

New version 1.1 of AP Grapher is now available.

bookit 3.7.1 Review

2006-12-25T15:17:00.000-08:00

There are many decent web browsers for Mac OS X such as OmniWeb (see review), Safari, FireFox, Camino, and Opera. Each browser offers a slightly different feature set and as expected, some browsers perform certain tasks better than others. As a result, it is often desirable to move between browsers on a daily basis; e.g., you may use OmniWeb most of the time, but Safari for a few pages, and FireFox for some others. Having your bookmarks remain consistent between all your browsers is virtually impossible to achieve by hand since there are several file formats in use - that's where a tool such as bookit steps up to the plate.

Bookit merges all your bookmarks and allows you to manage them within its interface and sync them with all your browsers. Alternately, if you have one master browser which you use most of the time and manage your bookmarks with, bookit will read them in and allow you to overwrite the bookmarks of your other browsers with the master browser's bookmarks. Other features include an optional global bookmarks menu extra and dock menu. Nearly every web browser for OS X is supported.

AP Grapher and MacBooks

2006-12-22T15:43:00.000-08:00

A few people with MacBooks and MacBook Pros (especially Core 2 Duo's) have reported problems with the scanner window of the new AP Grapher 1.0. A new version which addresses these issues and adds many more features is imminent; stay tuned.

svnX 0.9.9 Review

2006-12-18T12:08:00.000-08:00

Freeware svnX is a front end to the popular Subversion version control system. Although Xcode has built in support for svn, third party tools such as svnX offer more flexibility and support a wider range of Subversion commands. With svnX, you can manage all of your version controlled projects and repositories in the same GUI environment. Tasks such as tagging, rearranging your repository, removing files, browsing, and committing changes are easy to accomplish. Although svnX feels a little rough around the edges, it has been progressing nicely and makes a worthy companion to Xcode or whatever program you're using to edit version controlled files.

AP Grapher Universal

2006-12-13T15:44:00.000-08:00

The new universal binary version of AP Grapher has been released. It took a bit longer than expected, but this version is a huge upgrade from the old one and should be rock-solid. Check it out!

PowerMail 5.5.2 Review

2006-12-11T16:42:00.000-08:00

PowerMail is an IMAP and POP capable e-mail client which features blazingly fast and easy to use search thanks to homegrown "FoxTrot" search technology. Searching by content through the author's entire email database of tens of thousands of emails using PowerMail takes less than one second! The search function has plenty of options to help narrow down your search, it's fast, and results appear in a separate window for each query. No longer will you be afraid to look at other messages lest you lose your search results.

PowerMail also features SpamSieve integration (see review), syncing with Address Book, multiple accounts, text clippings, location specific server settings, Spotlight integration, and a built in HTML reader. It should be noted that PowerMail doesn't feel quite as refined as Apple's Mail and its handling of picture attachments and HTML email is not as smooth or seamless. However, it's a worthy client and one you should seriously consider if you are fed up with your current choice or just ready for a change.

MacTracker 4.1b2 Review

2006-12-04T12:03:00.000-08:00

MacTracker is an incredibly useful application which tracks the technical specifications of every Macintosh ever produced (including clones) as well as most other Apple hardware such as iPods, displays, and AirPort Base Stations. The hundreds of details available are very specific and even include an area for keeping your own notes and comments. Although similar information is available on Apple's web site for current products, it can often be difficult to locate for out of date machines. MacTracker makes it quick and easy to look up the details on nearly any Apple product you can think of.

Great for researching possible upgrades to your system, troubleshooting, or simply amazing yourself with the fast pace of technological innovation. Other features of note include an iPod version (via the notes feature), timeline by year of models produced, indication of Apple support status for each model, and links to firmware updates for relevant machines. This product would come in handy in any situation where multiple Mac models have to be supported, e.g., at a business or school.

LaCie Portable Hard Drive Review

2006-11-20T11:58:00.000-08:00

This LaCie 100GB portable FireWire and USB 2.0 hard drive is designed by Porsche and serves as an ideal backup companion for your lonely PowerBook or MacBook Pro. (It also gets along with iBooks and MacBooks, but the metal styling doesn't match as well.)

Available sizes range from 60 to 160 GB and the drive is bus powered via the FireWire or USB port on your Mac laptop which solves the annoyance of having to plug in a separate power cable. Unlike some other tested drives, this one is able to draw enough power from even the pickiest Apple laptops which often provide no more current than the exact bus specification (which some drive manufacturers don't follow very carefully). In the unlikely case that your laptop doesn't provide enough bus power, this drive can even draw juice from both the FireWire and USB ports simultaneously via an included cable.

The drive is stylish, small, solidly built, fast, quiet, and works flawlessly with Macs. It comes with a soft drawstring case and thoughtfully short FireWire and USB cables. Note that you should use Disk Utility (in your Utilities folder) to reformat the drive as an HFS plus volume (Mac OS Extended) before using it for optimum Mac compatibility. If you need to exchange data with Windows users, leave it with the default format.

SpamSieve 2.4.4 Review

2006-11-13T16:40:00.000-08:00

Adds bayesian spam filtering to most popular email clients including Apple Mail, Emailer, Entourage, Eudora, GyazMail, Mailsmith, Outlook Express, and PowerMail (see review). The author has used SpamSieve for several years and has achieved a 98.6% accuracy score out of 91,348 emails processed. From personal experience, it appears to work better than Apple's own spam filter in Mail. SpamSieve offers a great deal of customizability and even allows you to view the corpus of words which it uses to calculate spam scores. Integration with clients such as PowerMail is seamless via AppleScript.

AP Grapher

2006-11-13T13:29:00.000-08:00

A new universal binary version of AP Grapher with several other enhancements is in the works and should be released in the next few weeks. Stay tuned!

New Capture Me Released

2006-11-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

A new version of Capture Me has been released. This version features a French translation by Antoine of the Mac-Vidéo forum and a Dutch translation by Alexander Henket! Thanks!

OmniDiskSweeper 1.5 Review

2006-11-06T16:48:00.000-08:00

Find your hard drive filling up? OmniDiskSweeper can help. This handy little utility scans your drive and hierarchically sorts every file and folder by size - even the invisible ones. This is very handy for finding those huge cache files or old applications, movies, and music that you forgot about. The demo still sorts all your files but forces you to go to the Finder or use the Terminal to delete them manually. Pay the small fee for this software and you gain the ability to delete unwanted files directly within DiskSweeper.