I really like Movist 1.x. There are plenty of reasons for this, but maybe the biggest standout is Movist's superb handling of subtitles. As I understand it, Movist loads and renders subtitles independently from the video (embedded subtitles are demuxed first). This allows Movist to display more cleanly rendered and readable subtitles, and to display them on the letterbox without altering the picture it's displaying. MPlayerX (also a great app) now has the ability to display subtitles on the letterbox, but to do this it has to alter the video frame so that the letterbox, and in turn the subtitles, are part of the picture (MPlayerX and every other video player on OS X that I'm aware of render subtitles as part of the video). This then requires additional processing power, because a larger frame is being rendered, which in turn increases the chance of stuttering during playback. (The point of that comparison is not to criticize MPlayerX, but to explain how Movist's subtitle handling is unique.) The inability to load embedded subtitle fonts in MKV containers is, for me, an insignificant price to pay for the advantages that Movist's subtitle handling confers.

Very useful app for me. primarily use XLD for ripping and transcoding, but xACT is my go-to app for editing metadata and verifying checksums for my FLAC collection. xACT seems to be a very capable ripper and transcoder as well, though I haven't tested these features extensively. Thanks to the dev for this free utility.

Since this has come up a couple times, you can easily change keyboard shortcuts for any menu item in Iron (or any other app) like so:

1. Open System Preferences
2. Select "Keyboard" pane
3. Select "Keyboard Shortcuts" tab
4. Select "Application Shortcuts" in the left pane
5. Click the "+" button to add a new shortcut
6. Select the app you want to change from the application list, enter the exact name of the menu item (I.e., Select Next Tab), then enter the desired shortcut.

That's it!

This utility works well enough and can be quite convenient, though I think a little flexibility would go a long way. I'd like to politely suggest an option to have a secondary click on the red button quit the app, so the button's normal functionality could be retained as well. This seems especially important in Lion with its Resume feature, as you may sometimes want to close a particular window before quitting an app to prevent a particular document or file from reappearing next time you start that app. Oh, and an option to make the app menu bar and/or faceless instead of Dock only would also be great. Anyway, thanks for the free app!

Cookie is a fantastic app for simple and effective cookie management. It handles Flash cookies and local storage as well (including the ability to automatically protect Safari extension storage), and offers four ways to clear cookies you don't want (on quitting Cookie or quitting a browser, by timer, and manually). In the short time it's been out, Cookie has gained tracking cookie support, and increased its browser roster from Safari only to include Firefox, Camino, and Chrome/Chromium. There have been a couple of bugs in the last couple versions, but Russell provides great support, and he always works quickly to resolve any issues that pop up.

Now for the inevitable comparison... I've tried Cookie Stumbler, which is a fine app in its own right, but I much prefer Cookie overall--I find its approach to cookie clearing and its interface more intuitive and usable. A couple of major advantages that Cookie has over Cookie Stumbler: 1) It recognizes the individual cookies from each domain, allowing you to remove tracking cookies while retaining the cookies needed to stay logged in to a particular site. Cookie Stumbler only allows you to keep or clear all the cookies from a particular domain, even though they may not all be tracking cookies. 2) Cookie provides more fine-grained control of the browsers it supports, allowing you to set different favourites for each browser in addition to a global list.

All that said, Cookie Stumbler has its advantages too, and both apps have demos available, so I certainly encourage any prospective users to try both and see what works best for their needs. Those who are accustomed to Safari Cookies (the donation-ware SIMBL plugin by the same dev) will likely find Cookie a nice fit, and it offers enough advantages over SC to justify its purchase price.

This is rather annoying. I have a TechTool Pro 5 license from a MacUpdate bundle a while ago, but this includes access to a 5.0.4 version of the TechTool Pro DVD, the installer from which will not work, presumably because I'm on Snow Leopard. So, I have no way to install the program and update to a new Snow Leopard compatible version from within, and of course it's not possible to do something as simple as download the installer from the Micromat website. What a bunch of crap. I understand that they don't provide free updates to the DVD, which is fine, but all I want is the little installer app, which I think I should be able to get without having to register on the Micromat website and contacting technical support.

CopyPaste Pro used to be great, but lately it's been very unstable for me. It's prone to frequent crashes that seem to occur most often when I'm accessing the clip browser. The real problem is that after the crash, all clipboard history since the last time the app was quit is lost. I'd love to wait around for this to be fixed, but the constant risk of losing all of my clips at any moment is more than I can live with. I'm currently looking at alternatives to CopyPaste. PTHPasteboard Pro seems to be the only one with comparably advanced functionality.

Transmission 1.76 does not correctly report uploaded and downloaded data amounts to the tracker. It's already been banned by at least one private tracker that I'm aware of. I strongly suggest that anyone using private trackers, where accurate data measuring is important, stick with 1.75 or revert to it if you've already upgraded.

I'm having a major issue with version 4.01. After upgrading, my mouse doesn't respond to left clicks about half of the time. This gets annoying really quick. I've emailed a bug report to the developer. SteerMouse is great, and I hope they're able to help me resolve this. I'm using a Logitech MX Revolution on Snow Leopard 10.6.1. Anyone else experience a similar issue?

Just a heads-up: The 10.6.1 Snow Leopard update, which updates Mail to 4.1, breaks Dockstar along with several other bundles that worked under 10.6. Hopefully it's a minor fix and won't take too long to show up.