BRIAN KENDIG  This is a terrific program, but unfortunately it seems to have a lot of incompatibilities with Snow Leopard - for some people it errors when they try to back up, for other people it errors when they try to restore from a backup. If you're on Snow Leopard, I recommend staying away from Winclone until the problems are addressed. See their forum at 'http://www.twocanoes.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=4'.  
(Version 2.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  I am thrilled that we finally have a decent BlackBerry syncing solution on the Mac. PocketMac was terrible, and so was Missing Sync; both have a long history of deleting and corrupting information and of randomly throwing up errors.

Admittedly, at its worst, BlackBerry Desktop Manager is no better; lots of people have been reporting these same kinds of problems with it. But at its best, it works well for syncing, and it also brings in the abilities of the Windows BDM that the other Mac syncing products have lacked: backing up and restoring your phone, and managing applications installed on it.

Before using this software, read some comments and troubleshooting tips about it on BlackBerry discussion forums. (For example, "http://forums.crackberry.com/f62/".) And then make a backup of your Mac's Address Book (export it to a file), and use this software to make a backup of your BlackBerry, so you have something to revert to if things don't go well.

When I first tried to sync, it simply errored out and said that the sync failed. But after some finagling and trial-and-error, now I've got syncs running smoothly. I'm happy with this software for now, and I hope that RIM fixes a lot of bugs in subsequent versions!  
(Version 1.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  Quick note - this is not a "Demo", it's the real thing, and it's free.  
(Version 1.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  Nocturne 2.0.0 is out, and downloadable from some sites (Google for it), though not from the developer's own site for some reason.  
(Version 1.0.4)

BRIAN KENDIG  This really is a terrible product. I purchased and used version 1, until I got a BlackBerry with OS 4.5, which required that I purchase and use version 2. I've been using it for more than a year now.

Missing Sync for BlackBerry corrupts my data often. Multi-day appointments on my iCal are truncated to one day. Contacts in my Mac's Address Book have their tags changed around; once it changed everyone's 'mother' / 'father' / 'child' / etc. values to 'brother'. And then the corruption gets synced back to the Mac, screwing up my data and then syncing with .Mac and screwing up my other computers' data. On several occasions this has even corrupted my Mac's sync repository, requiring me to reset the Mac's sync.

MarkSpace gets a point for trying to implement so many features, including notes sync and even iTunes sync, but ever since I upgraded to version 2 I have never had a 'successful' sync because it always ends in a error for not being able to sync my iTunes streaming radio entries. Of course it won't be able to sync these, but I wish it wouldn't give me an error every time.

Lately Missing Sync has stopped working at all for me, instead giving me an error that I need to restart the Missing Sync app on my BlackBerry. I've done this, and even rebooted my phone, to no avail.

The only reason this product gets any sales is because it's slightly better than the abysmal PocketMac for BlackBerry, and otherwise it's the only game in town. This will change later in September when BlackBerry releases its own BlackBerry Desktop Manager for Mac, at which point I expect (and hope) that no one will darken their door with this app ever more.

In short: Missing Sync for BlackBerry corrupts my data on a regular basis, it has for a long time and for a lot of people, and that's completely unacceptable.  
(Version 2.0.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Version 1.8.4, available from the developer's page (click More Information above), works with 10.6. As shareware, it's been changed so that it'll stop working after 30 days (I think earlier versions had no time limit), but the developer's page says that licenses aren't working yet so there's a 'click here to register' link that automatically enters a working registration code. (I have no affiliation with this program; I just did some legwork when I found the old version broke under 10.6.)  
(Version 1.8.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  This is almost a wonderful program - it plays music just fine, it shows videos just fine, but I can't get it to play any videos from my Mac on my PS3. I can browse through them on the PS3, but then when I try to play, it has a black screen for a few seconds then says the video file is corrupt.

These files aren't corrupt, and I've tried several different files in various formats: QuickTime, MP4, and a handful of formats that VLC plays without trouble (I think MKV is one of the ones I tried). I try to play them 'straight' or through the copy in the '#TRANSCODED#' directory. All of them fail the same way.

Is there some configuration I have to do in PS3 Media Server first to get videos to play on my PS3?  
(Version 1.10.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  2.1.1 appeared today, and looks like it solves the problem - just now a backup with 2.1.1 succeeded.  
(Version 2.1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  WinClone prompted me to upgrade to the new version 2.1, which I did. Launching that prompted me to download and install NTFSProgs, which I also did. But 2.1 won't back up my Windows partition - when I try, it gives me an AppleScript Error: "stat: /Volumes/Mac: stat: No such file or directory" "stat: Backup: stat: No such file or directory (1)"  
(Version 2.0.9)

BRIAN KENDIG  That's not happening to me here. I have a single Firefox 3.5 window open, I resize it, and then I close it; when I open a new window, it has the same placement and dimensions as the previous one. Maybe your preferences are corrupted?  
(Version 3.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  Xcode 3.1.3, with some bugs fixed, was released a few days ago.  
(Version 3.1.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Obsolete, now that OmniDiskSweeper is free and does the same exact thing in the same exact way.  
(Version 4.4.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  If you need the latest update for version 3, you can download it here:

http://download.parallels.com/v3/en/GA/Parallels-Desktop-5626-Mac-en.dmg  
(Version 4.0.3540)

BRIAN KENDIG  Crashes on launch for me, too. (G5, 10.5.5) Console says: "dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib"  
(Version 0.10)

BRIAN KENDIG  I have Halo 1.5.2. The 2.0.3 updater wants to update something named "Halo Universal", and will not update my version. I have no idea how to get from 1.5.2 to 2.0.3.  
(Version 2.0.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  A terrific program! Lots of options, lots of graphics, lots of preset styles and the ability to easily make my own. I've been looking for something like this for years, and it's free! Finally puts Mail Factory out of its misery.  
(Version 1.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  Download link is broken; nothing's at danbathgate.com any more.  
(Version 2.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Before I installed this update, Windows Vista on my MacBook Pro (Mid 2007) would not realize that it was plugged in to wall power (the battery would charge, but Windows would behave as if it were running off the battery) until I unplugged the MagSafe power connector and plugged it back in again. After I installed the update, the computer successfully recognizes the power plug.  
(Version 1.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  Running Leopard on an unsupported machine still means it'll be a lot slower than Tiger because Leopard dropped support for the video acceleration in unsupported Macs, right? For example, if you put Leopard on a Sawtooth G4, the graphics will be painfully slow?  
(Version 1.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  A pointless 'game', apparently made more as a joke than anything else. Gameplay consists of clicking on a cartoony tank and selecting 'Repair Tank' and waiting for half a minute while a progress bar fills up, then doing it again and again. But be sure to click 'Toilet Break' before the bladder meter fills up!  
(Version 1.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  $9.95 is a problem for you? I honestly think it's a really great price for such a useful bit of software!  
(Version 2.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  easer: Parallels is a Mac program which lets you run another operating system inside it. You can install Windows, or Linux, or DOS, or OS/2, or any other operating system which runs on a PC, and it'll run inside the Parallels window and you can use that operating system's programs at the same time as you use your Mac's programs. Parallels itself doesn't come with any operating system; you'll have to buy Windows (or download Linux, or otherwise obtain any other PC operating system) to use with it. When you use it with Windows, it features better integration with Mac OS X, letting you open Windows windows side-by-side with Mac windows. It's similar to Virtual PC, except since Parallels runs natively on your Mac's Intel chip, it's not an emulator - it runs a hosted operating system at (or close to) full speed.  
(Version 3.0.5582)

BRIAN KENDIG  At $15 or $20, this would be an awesome piece of software. At its current price of $40, it's much too expensive for what it does.

I want software to print return address labels, and Mail Factory makes beautiful ones, but I'm not going to pay $40 for this.

Mail Factory Home Edition was perfect for this task at $20, but it's been discontinued.  
(Version 2.6)

BRIAN KENDIG  A terrific little program; it's a shame it's been discontinued in favor of the 'full version' that's twice the price.  
(Version 2.4)

BRIAN KENDIG  Still works under Leopard, still fun, but still overpriced at $30 per license. This makes a multiplayer game prohibitively expensive. Make it $5 or $10, and you might get some life out of it again.  
(Version 5.0.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  The current version at http://www.entropy.ch/software/macosx/php/ is 5.2.4.

This is the same version as the PHP that ships with Leopard, so there's currently no reason to try installing this on Leopard.  
(Version 5.2.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Won't install on my G5/1.8GHz (single) tower running 10.5.1. I click 'Continue' to the installer's 'Welcome' screen, then it asks me 'How do you want to install this software?' and both 'Install for all users of this machine' and the 'Continue' button are both greyed out.  
(Version 1.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Thuper! I'm tho glad thith ith out there!  
(Version 1.0.12)

BRIAN KENDIG  Now that Leopard's built-in Spotlight can find and launch applications, I tried doing without LaunchBar for a while. But I found that I just can't live without it - Spotlight has no idea that typing 'ff' means that it should launch Firefox, for example.  
(Version 4.3.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  TiVo Desktop 1.9.3 works with Mac OS 10.5, but Mac OS 10.5.1 apparently breaks it. Since I upgraded two of my Macs to 10.5.1, my TiVo says "A problem occurred while accessing the server" whenever I try to access music or photos from either of them. Or sometimes it works extremely slowly, taking several minutes to display the next page of an album list, for example.  
(Version 1.9.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  Actually, wait, the -x option to 'find' prevents it from going into other drives. So it looks like this might be completely safe with Leopard. On my Mac, though, it seemed to take an awfully long time to run, much longer than before Leopard.  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  This tool works under Leopard, with one caveat: it goes into your Time Machine backup drive and deletes language resources from there too, which may not be what you want. Unmount your Time Machine drive before running this. If you're curious, here's the exact command that DeLocalizer runs:

/bin/sh -c find -x / \! \( -path 'dev*' \) \( -path '*Japanese.lproj' -o -path '*Spanish.lproj' -o -path '*Portuguese.lproj' -o -path '*German.lproj' -o -path '*Italian.lproj' -o -path '*French.lproj' -o -path '*Norwegian.lproj' -o -path '*Dutch.lproj' -o -path '*Finnish.lproj' -o -path '*Korean.lproj' -o -path '*Danish.lproj' -o -path '*Swedish.lproj' -o -path '*Icelandic.lproj' -o -path '*de.lproj' -o -path '*en_GB.lproj' -o -path '*en_AU.lproj' -o -path '*es.lproj' -o -path '*fr.lproj' -o -path '*it.lproj' -o -path '*ja.lproj' -o -path '*nl.lproj' -o -path '*da.lproj' -o -path '*fi.lproj' -o -path '*ko.lproj' -o -path '*ni.lproj' -o -path '*no.lproj' -o -path '*pt.lproj' -o -path '*zh_CN.lproj' -o -path '*zh_TW.lproj' -o -path '*ca.lproj' -o -path '*cs.lproj' -o -path '*el.lproj' -o -path '*eu.lproj' -o -path '*fr_CA.lproj' -o -path '*hu.lproj' -o -path '*id.lproj' -o -path '*pl.lproj' -o -path '*pt_BR.lproj' -o -path '*ru.lproj' -o -path '*sk.lproj' -o -path '*sl.lproj' -o -path '*sw.lproj' -o -path '*th.lproj' -o -path '*tr.lproj' -o -path '*sv.lproj' \) -type d -exec rm -R \{\} \; >& /dev/null  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Answer: no they haven't! Bleah!  
(Version 3.1b2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Agreed! I just wanted to mention it in case anyone else is confused.  
(Version 9.0.98)

BRIAN KENDIG  My Flash Player.plugin file is version 9.0r98, but Adobe's site still says I have 9,0,97,0 installed. I'm on a Power Mac G5, not an Intel, so this could have something to do with it.  
(Version 9.0.98)

BRIAN KENDIG  This page says it's Adobe Flash Player 9.0.98, but after I install it, Adobe's web site tells me I have version 9,0,97,0 installed.  
(Version 9.0.98)

BRIAN KENDIG  Okay, Parallels Desktop 5540 was working okay for me until today. Now it crashes the entire Mac every time I try to start up Windows (I get the 'please hold down the power button for a few seconds' notice), and it's even corrupted Windows - when I try to Boot Camp into Vista, it bluescreens. I think Parallels Desktop just isn't yet ready for prime time.  
(Version 3.0.5540)

BRIAN KENDIG  Have they fixed the problem where if I wanted to subscribe to two hundred LiveJournal friends RSS feeds, I'd have to enter my LiveJournal username and password two hundred times?  
(Version 3.1b2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Okay, I finally got Parallels Desktop working, kind of, with the latest build (5540). Again, this is with completely fresh installs of Leopard and Vista under Boot Camp, on a brand-new MacBook Pro with 2GB RAM.

About half the time when I boot into Leopard and immediately try to start Parallels, it gives me an error right away - either that it can't allocate virtual machine memory, or else that it can't communicate with one of its drivers. Sometimes a reboot solves the problem; other times I have to uninstall/reinstall Parallels.

The first time it successfully started booting Vista, Parallels told me not to do anything with the virtual machine until after it had installed its drivers - problem was, it was waiting for Vista while Vista was stuck on a boot menu because the previous attempt to start it had failed. I was eventually able to boot to the Vista desktop, and Parallels installed its drivers, though there were lots of long pauses and confusing "driver not signed, install anyway?" dialog boxes. Finally it appeared that Parallels was finished installing everything, but the Vista session just sat there, so I shut it down and restarted it on my own. Everything *seems* to be running all right now, when it runs.

When Parallels works, I'm generally happy with it, though I wish I could hide the startup window - the Vista splash screen takes up my whole MBP's display while it's starting up, until it goes away and Coherence mode takes over. And it took me a while to figure out how to get rid of the Windows taskbar (why is this setting in a separate menu, and not in the virtual machine configuration settings?).

I really hope there's another patch soon that adds stability with Leopard and Vista.  
(Version 3.0.5540)

BRIAN KENDIG  I have a brand-new MacBook Pro 15" 2.2GHz on which I did a format-and-install of Leopard, and then a clean install of Vista Ultimate via Boot Camp. Nothing else is installed on this computer.

I installed Parallels Desktop 3.0 and updated it to version 5160, the latest supported build. I was able to get it to install its drivers into Vista, but then when it rebooted the Vista session, Vista bluescreened. I can't get Vista to work under Parallels, but it still worked under Boot Camp.

So I tried installing build 5540, the latest beta. This tine, Windows refused to boot because it said the session does not support ACPI. I had to stop the session despite the warning that it might corrupt Boot Camp, and that's what it appears to have done - Vista bluescreens under Parallels and under Boot Camp.

I'm reinstalling Vista from scratch now, and I'll try it again.  
(Version 3.0.5540)

BRIAN KENDIG  There's a typo in the link on the page for the 1.74 patch download; they misspelled a word as 'patcches'. Delete the extra 'c', or just download it from: http://downloads2.macgamefiles.com/files/aspyr/patches/Civ4_1.74.dmg  
(Version 1.74)

BRIAN KENDIG  Tried 'Rescan All', but that didn't help. I'll ask on the forums. Thank you for the tips!  
(Version 4.3.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  I've been using LaunchBar since version 3, but somewhere along the way it went weird on me - sometimes typing application names brings up something completely unexpected, and I can't figure out how to correct the behavior.

For example, typing 'ICA' brings up iCal, but typing 'ICAL' brings up 'Applications Folders' instead.

What's going on and how do I fix it?  
(Version 4.3.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  If I have Windows Vista installed on a Mac under Boot Camp, can I use that same Vista installation under Mac OS X with Parallels Desktop? Or do I have to have one Vista installation to use under Boot Camp and another to use with Parallels? I wouldn't imagine I could share one Vista installation, I figure each time I switch it'll think it's running on a different computer and pretty soon I won't be able to re-activate it any more... is this the case?  
(Version 3.0.5120)

BRIAN KENDIG  Still the best out there at what it does, but I wish it could separate out sites whose cookies I really do want to keep. If I turn off "group by domain" then I can click the lock to group all "locked" cookies together, but I want to go a step further and keep all cookies that my favorite sites give me, and see grouped together all the unknown sites that have given me cookies.  
(Version 0.9)

BRIAN KENDIG  Holy delayed response, Batman! ;)  
(Version 0.9)

BRIAN KENDIG  So, what is this? Is it a free tool to let me write Flash applications? Or some kind of front-end if I already purchased the Flash developer kit, or what?  
(Version 1.0b1)

BRIAN KENDIG  You know, I don't think I ever got around to asking for a refund, or maybe I did but I never got a response. I remember it was hard to figure out exactly where to go to ask for it, where the right place was to send in my request. Either way, I never used the plugin, because it never worked for me.  
(Version 6.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  Aha, the previous version is still available at:

http://www2.entropy.ch/download/entropy-php-5.1.4-5.tar.gz  
(Version 5.2.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  I missed that because previous PHP 5 packages have installed on 10.3. This installer attempts to install on 10.3, but fails at the end. The developer's site states that "older, unmaintained, unsupported, ppc-only packages of PHP 5 are available for Mac OS X 10.3", but I can't find any linked from that site. So, user beware.  
(Version 5.2.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Note that this package will ONLY work on Mac OS 10.4, NOT 10.3! I installed it on 10.3 and the installation failed at the end, and then the Apache server would not restart because it could no longer load the php shared library. I can't find any precompiled version of PHP 5.2 available for Mac OS 10.3.  
(Version 5.2.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  A terrific program - copies stuff off an iPod quickly and easily, and the price is right! My only complaint is that the interface is rather unattractive.  
(Version 1.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  A really useful program. The only annoyance is that it mishandles the height and width of video files - for example, I have an mpeg file recorded from TV in 4:3 aspect ratio, and ffmpegX says that the video is "480x480" resolution; and when I select a Quick Preset to convert it to, it defaults to wanting to make it "640x352" which is 16:9 widescreen (which ends up stretching the video). Every time I select a Quick Preset, I have to hit the Video tab and change it back to 4:3 output.  
(Version 0.0.9xr2)

BRIAN KENDIG  The only problem I have with StepMania is the interface. It tries to be too close to DDR to be a really pretty app, but it also tries to throw in too much eye candy to be an authentic-looking DDR clone. The result is that it comes off looking like it was made by DDR fanboys trying to make an app that looks "cool". If it tried harder to copy DDR's interface, *or* if it abandoned that goal and developed its own look and feel, Stepmania would be a far more attractive game.  
(Version 3.9)

BRIAN KENDIG  I was browsing through my subscribed RSS feeds in NetNewsWire Lite, same as I do every day.  
(Version 10.4.8)

BRIAN KENDIG  Today - a day after upgrading from 10.4.7 to 10.4.8 - my G5 gave me the first kernel panic it's ever had.  
(Version 10.4.8)

BRIAN KENDIG  I purchased this so I could edit some MPEG-2 files that I converted from my TiVo. Problem is, this plugin lets me hear the sound okay but the video freezes after a few frames, so it's useless for my purposes. I'm going to contact Apple for a refund.  
(Version 6.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  This program appears to have a built-in BitTorrent client which tries to download stuff and let other computers in as soon as I launch it. Nowhere can I find any information on WHY it has a built-in BitTorrent client, or what it's trying to download. So, I'm not entirely comfortable running it.  
(Version 0.101.12)

BRIAN KENDIG  Works just fine for generating test tones, and there are lots of options to play with. I don't know what the limitations of the unregistered version are.  
(Version 1.11)

BRIAN KENDIG  Trying it on a G5 running Mac OS X 10.4.7; no audio devices come up in the pulldown menu, so the app doesn't do anything.  
(Version 1.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Triangulate a position on a two-dimensional grid! This text-based game is the sort of thing that would run on a mainframe in the 1970s. It won't have a wide fan base these days, but it's a bit of nostalgia coupled with a bit of geometry.  
(Version 1.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  Still runs just great under Tiger! Still does what it does really well!  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  This kind of looks like a programming class assignment - it's not even interactive; it asks the user a few questions and then computes the results to display in an AppleScriptable text editor (which comes with it). Not really worth the download, but make it interactive and animated and it could be fun!  
(Version 1.2.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Even with the patch, this game brings my G5 (1.8GHz single) to its knees. Don't try this game unless you have a lot of patience.  
(Version 1.61revA)

BRIAN KENDIG  If you have a printer that works perfectly well and still has ink in its cartridges, why replace it?  
(Version 5.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  This seems like a great little program - better than the other cookie managers out there! Just one minor question: "Remove All" really means "Remove All Except Locked", right?  
(Version 0.9)

BRIAN KENDIG  I'd like to use psync so that I need only copy changed files each time, but the version of psync that CCC provides says it's incompatible with Panther - and therefore, I assume, also Tiger.

There's an 'unofficial patch version' of psync which claims to remove the incompatibility, but I don't like trusting my backups to an unofficial patch version.

I hope that CCC soon incorporates an official build of psync which works on Panther and Tiger.  
(Version 2.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  This is a really promising program. It found lots of songs I had with typos in the artist's name, and if even found a bunch of iTunes entries for podcasts which were long gone from my music library, so I could go delete the orphaned entries.

The only downside right now is that it doesn't appear to sync its changes up with iTunes; changes I make in beaTunes aren't reflected in iTunes. Maybe this is a feature I haven't figured out how to use yet, but it's easy enough to let beaTunes find the problems and then to fix them myself in iTunes. Also, the beaTunes interface needs quite a bit more polish before it looks properly Mac-ish.

But, great start, and already very useful!  
(Version 0.8)

BRIAN KENDIG  The problem is, a Sudoku puzzle is *required* by definition to only have one possible solution as given. The only way to make progress in a Sudoku puzzle is to prove that there's only one possible number that can go in a particular location. If there's more than one possible solution, then the person won't know whether maybe he's just not finding the one number in the one specific place that he's supposed to be finding, and if he proceeds by guessing, he might be messing himself up later.

There are proper Sudoku-generating algorithms out there; you should replace Mario Sudoku's engine with one of them.  
(Version a.0.0.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  This is a wonderful bit of software - a must for any iSight user!  
(Version 1.3.4)

BRIAN KENDIG  I just tried to install this on my 1.8GHz single-processor Power Mac G5 running 10.4.5, and it told me that my computer doesn't need the update.  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  It's an interesting app, something of a "Delicious Library" Lite. It's a great start, and with some more work, it could become really quite good.

The problems right now are rough edges to the interface. It's trying to be similar to iTunes, which is good; but I should be able to see an enlarged book cover by clicking on the book cover image without a need for a separate button, and I should be able to delete lists and smart lists by pressing Delete without needing a separate "Remove List" button. "New Smart List" should behave like iTunes and automatically ask for my criteria without requiring that I click on "Edit Smart List" every time. The first time I launched the app and tried to add a book, it told me I had to set the preferences and it tossed open a preferences window, but I didn't see anything I needed to change from the default. ("Quickfill Plugin" is a confusing name; it should do a better job of indicating that it's the default database on which it searches for my book info.)

Mainly, though, what makes it a bit clumsy to use right now is the quickfill - if it selects the wrong book info, there's no way for me to correct it without deleting this book and trying again. Like, I entered "Harry Potter" and clicked Quickfill, and it selected "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". I don't see any way to get a list of other matches I can pick from in case I meant some other book.

Some more refinements to the interface, and especially the addition of an HTML export feature, will make this a really terrific app to have.  
(Version 3.0a8)

BRIAN KENDIG  The new download runs just fine. Thanks for the prompt attention.  
(Version 3.0a8)

BRIAN KENDIG  I launch it, it asks me whether it should check for updates on launch; but when I click either 'Yes' or 'No', it then crashes immediately. The error that shows up in Console is "Uncaught exception: [ valueForUndefinedKey:]: this class is not key value coding-compliant for the key listKey."  
(Version 3.0a8)

BRIAN KENDIG  A followup to this: go to the Lemkesoft web site and download the copy of Graphic Converter that is *not* the Universal Binary version, and the non-UB version will read the old preferences file just fine.  
(Version 5.7.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  The name of the preferences file has changed in version 5.7.5. Previously it was "com.lemkesoft.graphicconverter.plist"; now it is "com.lemkesoft.graphicconverter.powerpc.plist". Version 5.7.5 doesn't appear to read a previous version's preferences file; this is why it thinks it's unregistered when you launch it. (Though if you give it your registration number from a previous version, it accepts it.) I tried renaming my preferences file from the old name to the new name, but something in it makes GraphicConverter crash on launch. There appear to be a few bugs here to work out.  
(Version 5.7.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  macam and iGlasses serve different purposes. macam lets you use webcams with your Mac. iGlasses lets you manipulate the image from your iSight.  
(Version 1.1.4)

BRIAN KENDIG  Only plays through software instruments; no way to get this app to play to an external MIDI synth. And the interface is extremely ugly - it looks like it dates from System 6 days.  
(Version 4.1.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  This application is the ONLY way I've been able to find to play a MIDI file from a Mac to an external synth, ever since QuickTime stopped supporting this.  
(Version 1.7.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  How's this compare to CarbonCopyCloner?  
(Version 2.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  Just out of curiosity, I tried going to the project page and clicking "try it". The link went to a legitimate page on the BolinOS site. I tried going to hotscript.com, but that site isn't responding. I don't see any foul play going on right now, but it's possible that whatever was going on earlier has stopped.  
(Version 4.5.4)

BRIAN KENDIG  A great RSS client, but it's still got some rough edges. One is that I can't figure out how to get it to leave the channel names as they were in the OPML file I imported from LiveJournal - so instead of seeing my friends' usernames, I see the clever descriptions they entered for themselves, and I can't tell who's who. Another problem is that this app needs an impossibly wide display - it puts the source list beside the channel list beside the item list beside the item view, meaning I have to squash everything horizontally. I wish there were a way to view things in separate windows, or even have a 'top' and a 'bottom' to the window.  
(Version 2.4)

BRIAN KENDIG  This would be an awesome app to use for reading LiveJournal RSS feeds, *but* for the fact that it makes me enter my LJ user/pass for every individual friend feed I'm subscribing to. If I have two hundred friends, I have to enter my user/pass two hundred times. It doesn't realize that my login is the same across the entire site.  
(Version 2.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Great name for the product. :)  
(Version 1.5.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  I can choose from Apple's list of podcasts, but if the ones I listen to aren't in the list, there doesn't appear to be a way to use iTunes to listen to them...  
(Version 4.9)

BRIAN KENDIG  Cool! Let us know when you have the first release of your "performance" branch ready for public download.  
(Version 0.97u1)

BRIAN KENDIG  When I download this, it makes a disk image titled "Install iGlasses v1.1.3 Demo" - should registered users not install this?  
(Version 1.1.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  This really is a terrific piece of software. Lots of features, stable, and a terrific price.  
(Version 4.1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  SpamAssassin is superb, especially when paired up with a mail server that makes good use of it. I have a Mac OS X 10.3.9 machine (not Server) on which I run the Exim mail server software, hooked up to SpamAssassin via SA-Exim. It's all free software. The mail server uses SpamAssassin to identify spam before it's accepted, so that it can refuse delivery. The result is that the spam never even appears in my junk mail folder; it's refused before it even gets to me.  
(Version 3.0.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  Neat that the concept has some history, but all this screen saver does is blink the text 'BUY NOW' in white on a dark blue screen. Unless you're nostalgic for Be OS history, this screen saver will hold no interest for you.  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  No software? Skype is the software you use...  
(Version 1.0.0.15)

BRIAN KENDIG  Look at the crash log (run Applications/Utilities/Console to see it); that will show you why it's crashing.  
(Version 1.0.0.15)

BRIAN KENDIG  It's nice that it's free, but it feels clumsy to use. It's not very Mac-ish, and it doesn't support a lot of Mac keyboard shortcuts. It feels more like a Linux port.  
(Version 0.90)

BRIAN KENDIG  Why?  
(Version 2.0.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  This is a great app, but since a version or two ago it's been eating up 100% of my CPU while it's running (even if it's not doing anything) and it crashes a few minutes after I launch it. I tried deleting the app and all its library files and reinstalling it, but still no go.  
(Version 117.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Go into Settings > Main Menu and turn Shuffle Songs on (it's near the bottom of the list). Or, use Reset Main Menu to get the new default menus.  
(Version 2005-02-22)

BRIAN KENDIG  If it ain't broke, don't fix it!  
(Version 2005-02-22)

BRIAN KENDIG  Interesting that it uses the "Journey Into Imagination" icon from the "EPCOT Network Nodes" icon set from iconfactory.com.  
(Version 1.0c)

BRIAN KENDIG  A great app - but it's started crashing for me, within the past couple of days, three or four minutes after every time I try to use it. This gets logged to the console:

SEVERE: IOX reading file

java.io.FileNotFoundException: ./pub1.key (No such file or directory)

I tried deleting all its files from the Library folder and reinstalling it, but, same deal.  
(Version 116.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  I use LaunchBar 3.3 and it's indispensable. A terrific app. I registered it.

But I don't see any compelling reason to pay the $10 fee to upgrade to version 4.0. I only use LaunchBar as an application launcher, and Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is right around the corner with its Spotlight stuff.  
(Version 4.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  Ditto on missing the point. Typing Command-Space and two letters and Return to launch an app is a heckuvalot quicker than digging around for it in the Applications folder and a heckuvalot neater than having to cram all my apps into the dock.  
(Version 4.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  Just one bug to note - if I paste colored text into Fishpad, there's no way to change the foreground or the background color. I can change the font, but the color will remain for anything else I type into Fishpad, and there's no easy way to get rid of it.  
(Version 2.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Delicious Library is a brilliantly clever idea, but it can't find the vast majority of books I've tried to scan. Even when I search by title, it can't find them. As such it's not all that interesting to me yet.  
(Version 1.0.6)

BRIAN KENDIG  This looks like a really cool app! Can it publish its database to a set of web pages, so I can let other people browse through to see what I've got on my shelves?  
(Version 1.0.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  VERY VERY COOL. Apple should have put this stuff into iChat in the first place! It's unconscionable that iChat wouldn't even have a way to adjust the camera brightness... but iGlasses does that remarkably well, even picking me up just fine in a poorly-lit room. And the other features are just cool. Highly recommended.

One cool feature I'd love to see: being able to put a still image or movie "behind" me so that it looks like I'm somewhere else. :)  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Great software - it created an image of a DVD of home movies which Apple's Disk Utility software errored out in the middle of.

The only problem with DVD Imager is that it only copies a VIDEO_TS folder, not the VIDEO_RM folder which some DVD recorders create - and without it, the DVD is not playable on a commercial player.  
(Version 1.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  No documentation or help menu, and an interface that's minimalist and unclear. And when I visit iPodder.org to get new podcasts, the site simply downloads .xml files to my desktop and I have no idea what to do with them. I can't figure out how to get iPodder to do anything useful.  
(Version 1.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  What does this firmware update 5.1.5f2 fix over 5.1.5f1, specifically? I'm of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" school, especially when I see what problems people have been having with the previous firmware update. Why should I install this one?  
(Version 5.1.5f2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Very cool software - one bug I've found, though; even if you select "Only Show Active Storms," the inactive storms remain clickable on the map. I was trying to double-click on Ivan, but it kept bringing up Charley (which followed much the same course) even though Charley was hidden.  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  iSync 1.5 still hangs when syncing calendar data, just like 1.4.  
(Version 1.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  I like the simplicity of the interface, but BitTorrent crashes on me often, after anything from a couple of hours down to a couple of minutes.  
(Version 3.4.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Graphics are a bit slow and jerky on my G5/1.8 with the default settings; raise the settings much above the defaults, and it becomes unplayably choppy.  
(Version 1.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  This app could use a lot of polish. Menu items such as "Dist-upgrade Packages" and "Selfupdate-rsync" are as cryptic as trying to figure out what the same commands do in command-line Fink. The icons in the toolbar make little sense (why is there an "Install" and an "Install Binary", and what are "Positive" and "Negative" for?) The readme file provides nothing useful about how to use the application. And the app icon is jagged and grainy compared to other Mac OS X icons, and I don't understand why it has an X Windows logo on it, seeing as how the application doesn't run under X Windows!  
(Version 0.5.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  A simple way to get useful software, but it's poorly documented, and there's no way to change the directory it uses from the weird nonstandard "/sw" to an appropriate place like "/usr/local/fink".  
(Version 0.7.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  Anyone know whether this is supposed to be able to do incremental backups? For me it backs up everything every time, even stuff that hasn't changed since the previous backup. It's a big waste of DVD's.  
(Version 2.0.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  I used to be a great fan of Monolingual. But the recent reports here of it eating more than it was supposed to worried me, so I tried Delocalizer instead. I've now thrown away Monolingual, because Delocalizer is MUCH faster (about one minute to run on my iBook/300, versus twenty minutes or more for Monolingual), and it finds and removes more unneeded foreign-language resources than Monolingual did.  
(Version 1.2.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  Very cool! I just see one bit of oddness: when a lightcycle makes a right-angle turn, it takes a moment to reorient itself into the turn, so for a fraction of a second it's sliding sideways through its own wall and any other walls nearby until it rotates to the new direction. In the movie, don't lightcycles immediately jump to their new direction without having to rotate?  
(Version 1.0.2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Nice-sounding loops, but I can't get them to show up in the loop browser, even after I dragged them from the Finder into the loop browser.  
(Version 1.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  Halo is an okay single-player game, with graphics that were good in 2000 but are commonplace in 2004, and levels which are large but extremely repetetive -- some areas are identical copies of each other, and then the plot brings you through many of them twice.

The multiplayer aspect of the initial Mac release was okay for Slayers (deathmatch) games, but team-based games were a terrible haven for teamkillers. Someone could run around gleefully killing his own team, and he couldn't be booted off, and all the people he killed would have a PENALTY for having been teamkilled and would have to wait a few extra seconds before respawning!

Thankfully, the 1.0.3 patch has made multiplayer mode a LOT nicer. The penalty for being tk'ed is gone, and teamkillers get a larger respawn delay the more people they kill. And the networking is smoother and more stable, and best of all, there are suddenly a whole lot more servers to choose from.

Halo is still not up to the level of 1999's 'Tribes 2' on the PC, which to me has been the pinnacle of team-based multiplayer games so far -- Halo needs message binds and voice binds and animation binds, and could also really use a smaller font, more lines, scrollback, and more color in the message area. Most of all, Halo needs a horn on the jeeps, and a way to tell a driver 'wait up, I want to get on' other than having to shoot at him. But in general Halo is a fine multiplayer game, and a fun one too.  
(Version 1.0.3)

BRIAN KENDIG  A WAY cool iTunes effect. Fix the problem with it not filling up a Cinema Display in full-screen mode, and it'd be perfect!  
(Version 0.0.2a)

BRIAN KENDIG  It seems to be running despite that odd error, but the longer it runs, the slower it goes... I have a G5 and a library of 4000 songs in iTunes, and it made good progress in the beginning, but now it's about 75% finished and practically at a standstill. It's a terrific utility and a really great idea, but I think something about it needs to be optimized?  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  I get an AppleScript Error as soon as I launch Fetch Art: "Can't make «class pLoc» of «class cURT» id 8418 of «class cUsP» id 8415 of «class cSrc» id 32 of application "iTunes" into a string. (-1700)" Also, every time I switch to another app then back into Fetch Art, I get another AppleScript Error: "NSContainerSpecifierError (2)"  
(Version 1.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Beautiful! Fun! But why does the installer need my admin password?  
(Version 1.3.5)

BRIAN KENDIG  If you have Panther, you don't need this; the Mac OS X 'Preview' application is a whole lot quicker at opening and looking through PDF files. Acrobat Reader has become slow and bloated. And what's with the description of this software starting out with 'You may not know what a PDF file is'?  
(Version 6.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Works just fine, does the trick! The only enhancements I'd like are a 'Stop' button, a progress bar to tell how far it's gone through the files it's handling, and a status message saying what file it's working on. Right now there's no way to stop it and no way to know what it's doing while it's running.  
(Version 1.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Quick, simple, and easy, but crashes hard if you feed it a file whose name has a single-quote in it.  
(Version 0.8b)

BRIAN KENDIG  Some more oddness: Opening the Preferences window collapses the song list, there's no About menu item, and I can't find any way to add new stations to the list it captures songs from. I really like this program, I think it's a very clever idea that's well-executed, but there are still some rough edges to work out and I can't find any email address to send proper bug reports to.  
(Version 0.99c)

BRIAN KENDIG  Wimpus is an intriguing application, definitely worth a try. But it has some interesting bugs, like the fact that clicking the up/down arrows in the scrollbar for the Available Genres list actually adds genres at random to the Selected list. And it's nice that Wimpus can play the songs it downloads, but there's no indication in the list of downloaded songs to say WHICH song it's playing.  
(Version 0.99c)

BRIAN KENDIG  Whups, I can't send a bug report to the developer, because I can't find his address anywhere in the files that come with FishPad or on the web site, and I can't launch FishPad to get the address! So I'll report the bug here: whenever I launch FishPad, I get an 'unexpectedly quit' dialog, and this gets written to the console log: "*** Uncaught exception: *** NSRunStorage, _NSBlockNumberForIndex(): index (497) beyond array bounds (497)"  
(Version 2.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  Actually, it worked for a while for me, but now it crashes every time (even after many reboots). I'll mail a bug report to the author.  
(Version 2.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  If you have any trouble with MacMAME, make sure you read the help files in the Documentation folder.  
(Version 0.74u2)

BRIAN KENDIG  Thanks for fixing it so quickly! I had just come back to this page to look for your email address so I could email a bug report on it to you, and I was surprised to see that the bug is already squashed! Great work!  
(Version 2.0.1)

BRIAN KENDIG  I like Fishpad a lot, but version 2 lacks something version 1 had: the ability to remember where I left its window the last time I used it. Version 2 always opens its window in the middle of the screen.  
(Version 2.0)

BRIAN KENDIG  All it does is install the binary 'tf' and its support files into /usr/local, and put a simple GUI config utility and a bare-bones launcher into /Applications. But that's all it needs to do, and it does it just fine!  
(Version 40s1)