Now I can save PDFs from my iPad! I bought Printopia because I wanted to be able to print from my iPad occasionally, and it's a lot cheaper than buying a new Airprint-compatible printer. Well, it turns out I'm using it a lot more to create PDFs than to print. Until Apple adds "save as PDF" to iOS, Printopia does a great job of filling the gap.
Fantastic! I asked these guys to add the ability to press the "C" key on my keyboard to clear the calculator, and they did. Really good customer service to match a really good app.
Zoom It is a super-useful with Photoshop, especially as CS5 on my Mac Pro keeps defaulting to the small font UI setting. I use dual 30-inch monitors, so I'm far enough from the screen that the tiny font is difficult to see at times. Previously, I would have to stand up and jam my nose up against the screen to see what opacity a level was set at, for example. Now I just toggle Zoom It on, do my thing and toggle it off (or just toggle it on temporarily if all I need to do is read a tiny number).
I took off half a star because the menubar icon is coloured (I changed that right away, but it's a pain to have to hack the app every time there's a new version). I contacted the dev about this who said that a monochrome icon has been a popular request, so I expect I won't have to be hacking too many more versions.
An excellent piece of software that does the wonderful deed of enabling me to avoid the hideous interface of Address Book in Lion, as well as providing more functionality (I particularly like being able to find contacts by company name).
I emailed the dev asking how I could script JABMenu to dial my landline with PhoneAmego, and he responded within the hour with a script, detailed instructions and a short video screencast. Talk about customer service!
Clockwork has become a Lion-only app called Swiss (http://benedictcohen.co.uk/swiss/), and it is still great! I was a happy Clockwork user until i switched to Lion. I ended up using Today, which I don't like as much, especially as the current version of Today forces a dock icon on me, in addition to the menubar icon. I was happy to find Swiss, and to find that it as good as Clockwork was, while working well on Lion. The only thing I wish that Swiss would do is provide the option to show tomorrow's events as well, and then it would be perfect.
DragonDisk saved me hours of painful effort. I had a bucket that JungleDisk left behind with 30,000 files in it. For some unknown reason, Amazon won't let users delete buckets if they have files in them, and Amazon's web interface doesn't provide a way to delete more than one file at a time. Googling around I found information on scripts and other hardcore techie ways to bulk delete files, but I didn't relish the thought of having to learn how to use these tools for what would hopefully be a one-time effort. I tried a couple of other S3 browsers, which choked on the huge number of files in my leftover bucket. Then I found DragonDisk, which wiped out all 30,00 files in about half an hour. I am happy happy!
I'm keeping DragonDisk on my Mac as it looks to be a great way to access files on Amazon S3. I didn't think it was appropriate to give DragonDisk a rating based on my limited use of it to date, but I would give it 5 stars just for being able to quickly delete thousands of files without choking or crashing.
Version 2 of Handy Calculator eliminates my two previous complaints (see below). I felt it warranted a new rating so I gave it five stars partly because it is now a much more useful calculator, and partly to offset the three stars I gave it before. It works and looks great, and is now my go-to calculator, so much so that I've assigned it to one of the unused function keys on my keyboard.
I was using SymbolicLinker to create symlinks, but it was taking up room in my Services menu (which I try to keep under five items so it doesn't end up as a branched menu). SymLinker does the same job without adding to my Services menu, and the symlink ends up where I want it, so for my needs it's the best option. Thanks to the dev for this!
Fantastic utility when it works, but it disappeared as soon as I restarted my Mac after updating to Safari 5.1. Now there's no icon, even though a Mail Unread Menu process is running. I wrote to the dev but have not received a response. Too bad, because I really liked this.
When Switché is active, some keyboard shortcuts that include the Command key are rendered inactive in all applications. Cmd-H to hide and Cmd-, for prefs, for example.
I installed version 3.0, launched HoudahSpot, got a dialog box telling me my licence is out of date, clicked the "Upgrade" button, a blank window flashed on the screen for a split-second and that was it. No HoudahSpot, no option to upgrade, and nothing in the developer's store on his website.
Fortunately I had a copy of version 2.7.4 so I was able to downgrade easily enough. Looks like I'll have to wait until there's a new version or the developer adds an upgrade option to his online store.
The idea sounds great in principle, but I couldn't get it to work. I launched the app, clicked the OK button at the prompt where it tells me it's running in demo mode, and then it froze. I had to force-quit. I tried it again with the same result, so I dragged it to the trash.
MDRP creates a hidden ".dvdcss" folder in a user's home directory. This folder contains a record of every DVD that MDRP has ripped. It would be nice if MDRP removed entries from this folder at the conclusion of each rip, or cleaned this folder out on quit.
Turly (the developer) was unfortunately involved in a collision with a bus a couple of months ago, and as a result has warned FinderPop users not to expect a 10.6-compatible version for a while. See http://www.fnarr.net/fp/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17 for details. Here's hoping Turly recovers quickly and completely.
Like many others, I have become totally dependent on FinderPop, and will be at a complete loss when I upgrade to Snow Leopard next month. I would welcome any suggestions for apps that offer some of the functionality and ease of use of FinderPop, that I could make do with until FinderPop is upgraded for OS X 10.6.
As a previous reviewer noted, running iDefrag on a Mac with Time Machine enabled results in Time Machine backing up many of the defragged files. Too bad I didn't realize this before I ran iDefrag. Time Machine is now backing up a whopping 371 GB of files, none of which have actually changed. My 1 TB Time Machine volume was full, which means I have now lost a whole bunch of backups from several months ago so that Time Machine can squeeze in 371 GB of not-at-all-new files.
Because of this, I will no longer be using iDefrag. I'd rather have a fragmented disk and keep my old backups.
A follow-up to my earlier report. I contacted Coriolis technical support, who indicated that Time Machine should not be re-backing up defragged files. They indicated that following a similar report they received earlier, they tested this and were not able to reproduce the problem I experienced. So, as always, YMMV.
The one thing that's been driving me nuts with EyeTV 3.0.1 is the constant prompts to authenticate as an administrator (I run EyeTV from a standard account, as I do with all apps).
I tried changing permissions on the com.elgato.* prefs files, and on a few other files I found in the Application Support folder, but with no luck. I contacted Elgato's tech support, and received the following answer:
Thank you for contacting Elgato Systems.
We are aware of a problem with non-admin accounts and EyeTV 3.0.1. There is a problem with saving a setting to our global preference when quitting out of EyeTV. Hopefully our Engineers will fix the problem soon.
Some of my customers have been able to click Cancel and bypass the admin password entry. Another changed permissions for ~/Library/Preferences so the non-admin accounts had Read/Write permissions.
[Version 3.0.1]
Please login or create a new MacUpdate Member account to use this feature
WiFi Explorer
Drdul rated on 13 May 2012
[Version 1.2.3]
Printopia
Drdul reviewed on 10 Apr 2012
Handy Calculator
Zoom It
Drdul reviewed on 18 Feb 2012
I took off half a star because the menubar icon is coloured (I changed that right away, but it's a pain to have to hack the app every time there's a new version). I contacted the dev about this who said that a monochrome icon has been a popular request, so I expect I won't have to be hacking too many more versions.
JABMenu
Drdul reviewed on 15 Feb 2012
I emailed the dev asking how I could script JABMenu to dial my landline with PhoneAmego, and he responded within the hour with a script, detailed instructions and a short video screencast. Talk about customer service!
+1
Clockwork
+1
DragonDisk
I'm keeping DragonDisk on my Mac as it looks to be a great way to access files on Amazon S3. I didn't think it was appropriate to give DragonDisk a rating based on my limited use of it to date, but I would give it 5 stars just for being able to quickly delete thousands of files without choking or crashing.
Handy Calculator
Drdul reviewed on 31 Jan 2012
+1
SymLinker
Drdul reviewed on 13 Jan 2012
Hex Color Picker
Drdul reviewed on 29 Dec 2011
Mail Unread Menu
Switché
+1
HoudahSpot
I installed version 3.0, launched HoudahSpot, got a dialog box telling me my licence is out of date, clicked the "Upgrade" button, a blank window flashed on the screen for a split-second and that was it. No HoudahSpot, no option to upgrade, and nothing in the developer's store on his website.
Fortunately I had a copy of version 2.7.4 so I was able to downgrade easily enough. Looks like I'll have to wait until there's a new version or the developer adds an upgrade option to his online store.
Rulers
iTunes Consolidator
+1
Mac DVDRipper Pro
+2
FinderPop
Like many others, I have become totally dependent on FinderPop, and will be at a complete loss when I upgrade to Snow Leopard next month. I would welcome any suggestions for apps that offer some of the functionality and ease of use of FinderPop, that I could make do with until FinderPop is upgraded for OS X 10.6.
+2
iDefrag
Because of this, I will no longer be using iDefrag. I'd rather have a fragmented disk and keep my old backups.
+264
+1
EyeTV
I tried changing permissions on the com.elgato.* prefs files, and on a few other files I found in the Application Support folder, but with no luck. I contacted Elgato's tech support, and received the following answer:
Thank you for contacting Elgato Systems.
We are aware of a problem with non-admin accounts and EyeTV 3.0.1. There is a problem with saving a setting to our global preference when quitting out of EyeTV. Hopefully our Engineers will fix the problem soon.
Some of my customers have been able to click Cancel and bypass the admin password entry. Another changed permissions for ~/Library/Preferences so the non-admin accounts had Read/Write permissions.