AAUG Reviews

by Steven Aufrecht, AAUG Member

Ten for X is a set of actually 13 applications to enhance how you use your OS-X. I still have lots of things that came with my MacBook that I don’t even know exist., so adding all these other items is something that I’m not too sure about. Another web review says that Allume “asked dozens of Macintosh Gurus and Power Users what utilities they can’t live without.” Since I’m more novice than Guru, everything about this package was troublesome, starting out with getting a serial number to get access to the disk. I did use Clipboard, which gives extra clipboards and you can see a whole list of what is on the clipboard. It doesn’t seem to work for all applications and I’m not sure how to get it to turn on or off.

Another potential problem is that this package is pretty old. The documentation talks about Panther, nothing later than that. So, in my relatively novice state, I’m wondering how applicable these things are to Tiger. And I’m not sure I want to load a lot of stuff onto my hard drive that I’m not going to use. So, in order to keep Guy happy, I’m going to simply give an overview of the features on this that comes directily from the various forms of documentation for each of the products.

1. DockFun - has a cool video that shows what it can do. Basically it allows you to create additional docks.

2. Zingg! is a contextual menu for the Mac OS X Finder. Install it, control-click (or right-click if you have a two-button mouse) on any file in the Finder and you’ll see something like this:

The submenu contains all recognized applications (or a subset, depending on your configuration) that can open that particular file’s extension or type. Just select any application from the list, and that file will be opened by it. If you clicked on a folder or volume, applications that can process folders will be listed.

But no zingg in the folder.

3. What is Default Folder X?
Default Folder X is a Mac OS X system enhancement that improves Open and Save dialogs. It makes it easier for you to manage files by adding features and correcting flaws in the OS X file dialogs. Among the enhancements Default Folder X makes are:

1. It shows you where you are. The top menu in a file dialog lists the active folder and its enclosing folders, just as it did in Mac OS 9. Apple dropped this feature in OS X in order to overload the menu with recently used items, favorites, and other navigational tools.
2. It lets you navigate through folders via menus. You no longer have to navigate one folder at a time. You can now quickly descend into multiple levels of folders through the Path, Recent, or Favorite folder menus.
3. It gives you access to windows you have open in the Finder. A popup menu gives you a list of all of the windows open in the Finder. Selecting one from the menu, or simply clicking on the window you want, switches the file dialog to that folder.
4. It quickly takes you to recently used and favorite folders. Default Folder X’s popup menus track folders you’ve used recently and give you fast access to your favorite folders. You can even assign command keys to your favorites to save more time.
5. It lets you click on a filename to copy it. In Save As dialogs, you can click on the name of an existing file to copy it to the edit box. No more retyping the same or similar filenames.
6. It lets you rename, delete, and get information on files and folders without leaving the file dialog. Default Folder X provides many useful commands so you don’t have to leave the file dialog to do some basic operation, such as renaming a file.
7. It “rebounds” back to the last item that you selected in a folder. You no longer have to hunt through the file listing for a particular document you were working on before lunch - this gets you to work much faster.
8. It opens folders for you in the Finder. When you really need to do more with a file or folder, Default Folder X tells the Finder to open the folder shown in an Open or Save dialog. You can also assign hotkeys to your favorite folders to open them instantly in the Finder.
9. It lets you set a default folder for any application. The first time an application presents an Open or Save dialog, the contents of the file dialog may show your Documents folder or some other location that’s not where you want to be. Default Folder X allows you to choose the initial location shown in Open and Save dialogs.

4. Fire.app is an Instant Messenger client. It is currently in active development (January 2005).

Fire.app is released under the terms of the GPL (enclosed with this package).

Fire.app is copyright 1999-2005 epicware, Inc. (epicware@epicware.com).

5. KeyCue is a simple utility application that helps you find, remember and learn keyboard
shortcuts for menu items. Just hold down the command key for a while to see a table of all
currently available menu shortcuts.

6. MenuMeters is a set of CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for MacOS X. Although there are numerous other programs which do the same thing, none had quite the feature set I was looking for. Most were windows that sat in a corner or on the desktop, which are inevitably obscured by document windows on a PowerBook’s small screen. Those monitors which used the menubar mostly used the NSStatusItem API, which has the annoying tendency to totally reorder my menubar on every login.

The MenuMeters monitors are true SystemUIServer plugins (also known as Menu Extras). This means they can be reordered using command-drag and remember their positions in the menubar across logins and restarts.

• The CPU Meter can display system load both as a total percentage, or broken out as user and system time. It can also graph user and system load and display the load as a “thermometer”. The menu for the CPU Meter contains several pieces of information I like to have a single click away (uptime, load average, open Process Viewer/Activity Monitor, open Console).

• The Disk Activity Meter displays disk activity to local disks on the system (anything that is a IOKit BlockStorage driver). It is hotplug aware, and will show activity on FireWire and USB disks as they are mounted. The Disk Meter menu shows volume space details for local drives (it does not display mounted network volumes for speed reasons).

• The Memory Meter can display current memory usage as either a pie chart, thermometer, history graph, or as used/free totals. The Memory Meter menu shows a breakdown of current memory usage and VM statistics. The Memory Meter can optionally display a paging indicator light.

• The Net Meter can display network throughput as arrows, bytes per second, and/or as a graph. Both the arrows and the graph are scaled using a user-selected scaling factor and calculation. Scaling can be done on the basis of actual link speed reported by the network interface or peak traffic and can use one of several scaling calculations. The Net Meter menu shows current interfaces and their status. Interface information is gathered from the SystemConfiguraton framework and thus is MacOS X network location aware (to prevent interfaces from appearing in this menu see the FAQ).

7. What does Nudge do?

This Contextual Menu “nudges” the Finder to update the information it displays about a file or folder. Use it on any item (or groups of items) if you suspect the Finder hasn’t updated its view. This should work for most attribute changes, icon changes, size changes, files that have been saved but don’t appear, and so forth.

8. PopChar X is a utility application that lets you insert characters from all installed fonts into
your documents. You never need to search for and remember keystrokes any longer. Just
pop up the PopChar X window, click the desired character, and the character will appear in
your current document.
9. RCDefaultApp is a Mac OS X 10.2 or higher preference pane that allows a user to set the default application used for various URL schemes, file extensions, file types, and MIME types. MacOS X uses the extension and file type settings to choose the application when opening a file in Finder, while Safari and other applications use the URL and MIME type settings at other times for content not related to a file (such as an unknown URL protocol, or a media stream).

Finder’s Get Info panel can be used to set the default application for file extensions and file types, but it’s not intuitive. Apple’s Internet preference pane in MacOS X 10.0 through 10.2 (Jaguar) allowed you to set the Web and Email applications, but no other URL handlers. In MacOS X 10.3 (Panther), these settings have moved to Safari’s and Mail’s preferences — meaning you have to run those applications if you want to choose to not use them. RCDefaultApp allows the setting of all of this information, and ties everything together in one preference pane.

10. Safari Magic adds powerful tools to Safari that make it easy for you to gather, edit (Safari Magic includes a built-in editor), save, and print just the information that you want from the Internet. In fact, Safari Magic gives you instant and total control over the information that’s displayed on the Internet! With Safari Magic installed, you are never forced to waste time — and money — saving or printing information you don’t need or want. Additionally, Safari Magic eliminates printing problems such as ending up with missing or cutoff text and images.

Safari Magic also lets you instantly collect and organize text, graphics, and pictures from multiple web pages and non-contiguous sources. And Safari Magic lets you instantly add your own notes and time-date stamps to your data. Safari Magic is a powerful and an easy-to-use tool that’s especially essential when you’re using the Internet for doing research related to work, school, home, and virtually anything else.

Here are just some of the things you can do with Safari when Safari Magic is running — be sure to look at Safari Magic’s concise built-in Help file and Help Tags for more info on Safari Magic’s features and for helpful tips.

11. TinkerTool is an application that gives you access to additional preference settings Apple has built into Mac OS X. This allows to activate hidden features in the operating system and in some of the applications delivered with the system

TinkerTool does not provide any features itself. Its single task is to give you an extended interface to your personal preference settings. The tool will never change anything in the operating system. For this reason, the integrity of your system is not put at risk. All settings are restricted to the user accounts that launch TinkerTool. If you have multiple user accounts on your computer, settings of different users will not affect each other.

The feature set of Mac OS X varies greatly between different operating system versions. For this reason, TinkerTool must automatically adapt to the system it is running on. The settings available in each system version are listed at the download page.

When you detect a preference setting that causes a compatibility problem with a third-party application, you can simply reset this or all preferences to their previous values.

12. What is xBack ?

xBack is a utility that allows you replace your desktop with a screen saver. With xBack, you can bring your desktop to life.

13. Why Use XRay?
The Mac OS X Finder’s “Get Info” windows show a variety of information about files, folders and drives. However, some important items are not available or not editable; XRay tries to show much more information and allows you to edit it whenever possible. If you have an Administrator password you’ll be able to do many things for which root access or terminal commands would normally be needed. (You can also render your system completely inoperable, so don’t use Administrator-level stuff unless you know exactly what you’re doing!)
XRay tries to deduct more information about a file or folder than competing utilities. For applications, it shows whether it’s a Classic, Carbon, Cocoa or Java-based application; for bundles it consults an extended list of types; for files, if all else fails, it analyzes the first few bytes of the file for hints about the data. Files containing resources have the resource index checked for integrity.
XRay can batch-process the contents of a folder. You can change permissions, owner/group information and Type/Creator, clear the “locked” and “invisible” flags, or remove the resource fork for all contained items (with certain restrictions).
XRay also allows other developers to write plug-ins that manipulate files, folders or drives. Hex editors, resource editors, anything should be possible. A simple plug-in for developers in included (but initially disabled). Subsequent versions should come with a file previewer plug-in, a custom icon plug-in, and complete API specifications for writing new plug-ins. Plug-ins will be installed via drag&drop.

by Elaine V. Robinson, AAUG Member

Spring Cleaning is advertised as an all-in-one cleaning and privacy solution that finds extraneous files and frees up disk space. The manual says Spring Cleaning can boost performance by cleaning out stray or forgotten files, protect information by creating encrypted archives on your Mac, and see all of the changes that an update or installer made on your Mac and more. I found the manual (or I should say 7 page pamphlet) not to be much help other than instructions on installing/uninstalling and a list of features. There is a Spring Cleaning Guide found in the top menu under [Help] that is very thorough. The table of contents scrolls on for 3 screen heights. I don’t like to do lengthy screen reading. I prefer .pdf files where you can print selected pages. I know I can cut & paste to a text editor but then I miss out on the images unless I want to work overtime.

Spring Cleaning installed very easily as you follow the installer instructions. There is a newer version 9.0 so I am not quite sure why I was asked to review version 8.0. Version 9.0 has added four more features that I could find but I am not reviewing 9. To view all the featuresof 8.0, please see this page.

The Spring Cleaning 8.0 folder contained the actual Spring Cleaning 8.0, and the following included applications: Quick Compare, SC Super Access (? just opens Spring Cleaning), SC Menu (would not launch), and System Snapshot. (more…)