GORDON142  I've found the Aero support in 3.0 (arguably the biggest new feature) very disappointing. Yes, it's aero, but it's sluggish and glitchy, and makes the entire Windows system maddeningly slow. In other words, it's there but not really usable.

I've generally preferred VMware over Parallels for a number of reasons, but I just tried the version 5.0 demo, and Parallels definitely has a much better implementation of Aero. Animations are smooth, and the system remains zippy with Aero enabled. It doesn't cause the case fan to turn on full blast either like VMware with Aero. Clearly, this is something VMware needs to work on.  
(Version 3.0)

GORDON142  Just as a heads up, if you have any address book contacts with more than two email addresses or think you might have any, stay away from thunderbird. It still after all these years limits you to two emails per contact, unlike basically every other email application in existence. Very irritating.  
(Version 3.0b4)

GORDON142  I feel the need to have to my original review. I still really like this adblocker, but I have noticed that it does miss a fair number of ads. It's using the adblock+ subscription, so I assumed it would catch any ad that adblock catches with the same list, but it does not. It misses ads on a number of pages or parts of pages. Hopefully this will be improved in later releases.  
(Version 1.1)

GORDON142  Great product. I wish it collapsed blocked elements like adblock+ for Firefox, but otherwise It's fantastic. Love that it supports Adblock subscriptions.  
(Version 1.1)

GORDON142  Download seems to be for old version. Can't find any reference on company site to this version or way of getting it.  
(Version 10.0)

GORDON142  OK, I think this is back to being my favorite universal USB HID Device Controller. This version finally allows me to use all buttons on my logitech mouse, and almost all extra functions of my Microsoft Keyboard. The new interface is elegant and easy to configure. I've been using Steermouse for a long time (an excellent programme, by the way), but I think I'm going to move to Overdrive for now.  
(Version 3.0.1)

GORDON142  You need to mellow out. I'm glad Vuze works great for you, but other people are allowed to have differing opinions.  
(Version 4.2.0.8a)

GORDON142  Very mixed bag — bloated, ugly, and by default tries to install a very obnoxious browser toolbar with the potential to destabilize your applications (you can avoid this by using the "customize" option when installing).

On the upside, stability is rock-solid, downloading is the fastest I've seen on a Mac client and never corrupts files. It's probably the fastest and most reliable client available for the Mac right now. So, while I don't really like it, it gets the job done better than the others.  
(Version 4.2.0.8a)

GORDON142  Used Transmit for a long time before getting tired of general connection unreliability. Tried Captain FTP, crashed too much to be useful. Yummy FTP was reliable, but the interface leaves much to be desired. Finally came across Cyberduck. Great interface, fast, reliable — just what I was looking for. It feels weird to be moving from a commercial client that I had already paid for to a free client, but Cyberduck just works better. I've donated to the developers to support their continuing efforts.  
(Version 3.3b3)

GORDON142  OK, any site written specifically for IE is not going to work on such an ancient version of IE for Mac. It doesn't even support most of the proprietary functionality of IE on Windows (ActiveX, for instance) that would restrict other browsers. It sounds very much like the site was just looking for an IE user agent. The user agent in Safari can easily be switched. The days when IE was required for viewing large swathes of the web are past. Firefox adoption is nearly 50% in some countries, so trying to make money on the web and not supporting other browsers just doesn't work anymore. Since Firefox generally has very good standards support, sites designed for Firefox usually work fine in Safari. That said, even Safari itself has enough market share these days that most of the big sites test and tweak their sites specifically for Safari compatibility.  
(Version 4.0.3)

GORDON142  Agreed. Very lame. There is no reason for it to be there. It is obviously not part of the core functionality of the package.  
(Version 2.3.0.11b)

GORDON142  Looks really nice, but still does not allow all buttons on the Logitech VX Revolution to be configured. Back to Steermouse for now.  
(Version 3.0)

GORDON142  This app makes save dialogs 100% more useful and is an incredible time-saver. On top of that, the developer is incredibly responsive to support requests and has always been able to solve any issues I have had with the product (even to the extent of providing pre-release or custom builds).  
(Version 4.3.1)

GORDON142  This is one of the Dashcode example projects. Literally, the exact same thing. Graphics, code, everything. The "developer" has does nothing but put his own name on it and distribute it as if it were his own work. You can create this application yourself with exactly two clicks in Dashcode.

Checking out his web page, it seems that most if not all of his work has in fact been stolen from others without any attribution. In addition to building and distributing several of the other dashcode examples, he has things like a collection of "wallpapers" that are obviously the result of about five minutes with google image search. Stay far away.  
(Version 1.0.1)

GORDON142  This is a seriously cool update. It addresses most of the pressing limitations of this app present in other versions. It's really nice being able to close windows in any application easily. I have never found the earlier versions quite good enough to use all the time, but this really is a huge improvement.  
(Version 1.4)

GORDON142  This is a pre-release version of Firefox. It is not supposed to show up as an auto-update as it is not intended for widespread public use.  
(Version 3.5rc1)

GORDON142  I can't seem to get growlmail to install. The installer asks "how I want to install the software", with the only option being "for me only." Even after selecting this option, the continue button is still greyed out.  
(Version 1.1.5)

GORDON142  This seems like a really nice application. I tried the initial 3.0 release and found Mobileme syncing to be rather buggy. I contacted the developer and was told that syncing would be improved in a forthcoming update. Trusting them, I proceded to purchase both this and the iPhone version. Unfortunately, several updates later, syncing is still virtually unusable. I've sent many support requests, and not once have I received a response since those very early promises. It's like they can't make it work so they have simply decided to end all contact with paying customers. I really have to recommend staying away from this app as the developer treats customers so poorly.  
(Version 3.0.2)

GORDON142  The problem with this is the sheer number of cookies that get set whenever you go anywhere. You'd have to click through a dozen or so dialogs each and every time you clicked on a link. I remember this feature being unmanageable years ago when it was standard in most browsers, and I'm sure cookie propagation has only increased in the last five years.  
(Version 0.6)

GORDON142  This is also my experience on the same system. Apparently you need to open the Preferences dialog and activate "compatible graphics" to get a display.  
(Version 1.3.1)

GORDON142  Very cool plugin, so it's really a shame that it doesn't seem to work in Firefox…  
(Version 3.0)

GORDON142  Check out their website. They don't seem all that interested in creating a quality toolbar. Their whole purpose seems to be to convince big companies to pay them to develop toolbars.

Their marketing hype is misleading and borders on outright lying. They claim "All dedicated Safari toolbars currently on the market are based on [our] platform." while elsewhere claiming their toolbar is "the first custom toolbar for Safari browser!" Misleading statement, does not make them look on the up and up. They also have a section entitled "Why do our clients choose us?" Again, they've made it clear that their own toolbar is the only one in existence using their code, so this begs the question "What clients?" The wording of the paragraph that follows is made to sound like the companies handles hundreds of corporations and has been established in the "toolbar" field for a long time. Again, misleading, bordering on an outright lie.

That's just my review of the company. The toolbar is pretty unimpressive as well. It lets you select from a few pre-defined search engines, includes a few links to google services, and wastes a lot of screen space in your browser. There are several free enhancements for Safari that add far more search functionality (Glims, SafariStand, Inquisitor, Saft, to name a few) to Safari, and add it directly to the existing search field without creating a wasteful and redundant search field below the existing one. If you want quick links to google services, you could easily drag their addresses into the bookmarks bar in Safari, again without wasting screen space. This add-on actually makes a good case for why third-party "toolbars" are a bad idea in general. On Windows, they are mostly installed unrequested by certain third-party apps that get money each time they manage to install a toolbar on someone's system. In most cases, the toolbar more or less replicates existing functionality while wasting space and resources. Basically, just like this one.

My thoughts: Avoid the company and the toolbar for now.  
(Version 1.1.2b)

GORDON142  I love this app. Not only does it remove distractions, but the highly configurable full screen view allows you to find the perfect settings for comfortable hours staring at a screen. I do all my work in Writeroom now, moving it to Pages for final formatting. Excellent application.  
(Version 2.3.7)

GORDON142  Jdarkroom does everything this app does the same way textedit does everything MS word does.

jDarkroom has nowhere near the options Writeroom has, and it doesn't integrate well with the Mac OS at all. For example, unlike Writeroom, jdarkroom does not support standard Mac OS text services (spelling/grammar, all OS Services menu items, dictionary lookup, etc), and for that matter, it is simply a plain text editor while Writeroom is a rich text editor with good support for formatting. It can even open and save to other formats. Again, if Jdarkroom works for you, great, but asserting that it "does everything writeroom does" really just demonstrates that you haven't used either application.  
(Version 2.3.7)

GORDON142  Not sure what to tell you. I just put it in /Library/Internet Plugins, opened Firefox and it handled any PDFs I loaded. Didn't have to change anything at all within Firefox… I'm using Firefox 3.1 beta 2.  
(Version 2.3)

GORDON142  JCraig: True, but Opera stands alone as an almost completely inextensible browser on the Mac — There really isn't a way for third-party developers to add support to it.

Opera lacks a plugin interface like Firefox, but it is also not a Cocoa application like Safari. With cocoa applications, developers can "inject" code directly into the application through the use of input managers (there are problems with these, but they do allow just about any application to be extended). With no input managers and no plugin framework, there is little a third-party developer can do. This is a definite barrier to wider adoption, and it is something only the developers can address.  
(Version 9.64)

GORDON142  Nice to see this finally updated. The good news is despite it simply talking about Safari, it appears to work just fine in Firefox. The bad news is it still doesn't support mouse wheel scrolling, something that works fine in the built-in PDF viewer for Safari, the Acrobat plugin, and the google code pdf viewer for Firefox. So you have to ask yourself if you like the added features more or being able to scroll with your mouse. For me at least, the lack of mouse scrolling is a deal-breaker. But hey, it's free.  
(Version 2.3)

GORDON142  While I understand people having different preferences on this, the Mac way of handling windows does have its own advantages. For example, on a large wide-screen monitor, there is little point in having the browser occupy the entire screen, it either does nothing since the web page dimensions are hard-coded or it strings out text and makes it hard to follow a line. On the other hand, having windows intelligently resize to fit the current content is very useful. Full-screen zooming is not a one-size-fits-all solution.  
(Version 1.1)

GORDON142  That's great until you need to setup additional email accounts, or have all your mail accessible and searchable offline, or use encryption, or lots of mail windows open, or drag and drop attachments, etc, etc. Basically you simply can't compare web-based and software email clients. Web-based mail may be fine for some people, but it lacks a whole host of features people who use software clients rely on. Your review is very non-specific - basically you seem to want software clients to be stripped down and just like gmail. However, this is not at all what the people who actually use these clients want.  
(Version 3.0b2)

GORDON142  Unfortunately, free in this case also means this is a dead project according to Omnigroup's site. Who wants to use a browser that will never be updated with the latest bug fixes, features of the day, and new web standards support?  
(Version 5.9)

GORDON142  In the bottom left corner of the top sites view is an "Edit" button. Click this button and you can both pin sites you want to always appear and remove sites you don't want.  
(Version 4.0b1)

GORDON142  I have over 150 programmes installed on my Mac, and Office 2008 is the only one to completely fail at working with Spaces in Leopard. Switch spaces and parts of Office randomly follow you. You'll end up with the dialogs that go with windows spontaneously migrating to another space, or even more perplexingly, elements like the tabs in Notebook view will somehow manage to get onto a completely separate space from the Notebook they are part of. I swear, they had to work to make it function this badly.

Oh, and the apps in general are just really buggy. Reproducible crashes, and lots of assorted weirdness requiring me to frequently quit and relaunch projects to make the applications work right again.

It's kind of like the entire suite is designed to convince you how much better the Windows version of Office is and how it was foolish of you to try and use a Mac in a business environment anyway.  
(Version 12.1.5)

GORDON142  The auto-update feature absolutely kills this application.

Unlike every other application which checks for updates only when launched, Picasa requires you to install an auto-updater that launches at starting and runs in the background, downloading and installing updates to google software whether or not you are using it.

Basically, the application installs a background process that will be running at all times, and is in no way essential to the functioning of the application.

The only way to uninstall it is to remove ALL google software and simply wait. Google claims the updater will remove itself after 24 hours if no google software is found.

This is both obnoxious and unethical. Again, there is no way to refuse to install the software update. Even if you remove it, the next time you launch Picasa it will be installed again.  
(Version 3.0.3.363)

GORDON142  If you want to play this game, you really need to simply use Boot Camp and get the Windows version.

This port is truly terrible. Not only is it unstable, it runs unplayable slow. This game was first released in 2003, mind you, and no modern hardware should have any trouble running it. Even with all the settings turned down, this version is so stuttery as to be unplayable on a 2008 MacBook Pro. Mind you, the Windows version runs perfectly smooth on highest settings on the same system.

Oh, and if that isn't enough for you, there's the issue of price. You can get the Windows version for like $5 used on Amazon.com or $15 new. By comparison, the mac version costs a whopping $52 (not including shipping).

I've basically stopped buying Mac games since the Intel switch, and things like this are exactly why.  
(Version 1.1revA)

GORDON142  This really is an excellent app. My only complaint was the DVD playback problem, which has now been fixed. Highly recommended.  
(Version 1.4b1)

GORDON142  Best Mac DVD Ripper out there. Works with every disc I've thrown at it, couldn't ask for more.  
(Version 1.1.5)

GORDON142  The features are very nice, but the real winner is the ability to sync effortlessly with the iPhone version. The easiest way yet I've found to take my important info on-the-go.

Some small bugs when entering contacts, and the import function is pretty clumsy — it only supports CSV files, seemingly, you have to important different CSV files for each category of your old app and import them one at a time, the drag them into the new categories and remap all the fields (it does not seem to preserve the field names in the CSV file, even though the there are present in said file. There is no way to map to the "Notes" field.  
(Version 3.0)

GORDON142  I've been using this application for years, but last month finally switched to one if its competitors. Development for this programme seems to have badly lagged, unfortunately. It's not even new features I'm concerned about — I was OK with the existing feature set — it's the fact that the application is chronically unstable. At least once a Day it either quits or freezes. I'd gotten so used to restarting it periodically that I hadn't occurred to me that this behaviour wasn't typical for an iTunes controller. Well, my new controller hasn't crashed once, and it never freezes or delays when switching tracks. It's great.

I've given this app positive reviews in the past, but I can't recommend it any longer unless something serious is done to improve stability.  
(Version 3.2.1)

GORDON142  Cool idea, nice implementation. Really needs to be resizeable. Trying to click on the strip on a high-resolution display takes quite a bit of dexterity.  
(Version 1.2)

GORDON142  ah, convenient new user who exists only to rate this one product. Don't rate your own product, developer, and don't try to be sneaky about it by not giving five stars.  
(Version 0.7b)

GORDON142  Yeah, that's the problem. You're assuming that every other system will have exactly the same system files as you. Not a safe assumption. If someone is running a different version of Leopard or has installed a specific Apple update their webkit install is potentially different from yours. You simply cannot assume that the system components you have are and will always be safe to load onto other people's computers. Remove means you put back what was there originally, not that you put back something from your own system that you believe ought to be equivalent.

It's not that hard. Just archive the existing files before the installer replaces them (a simple shell script will do the trick), and uninstall by expanding the archived directory contents. No reason not to do it this way.  
(Version 0.7b)

GORDON142  except it doesn't. The uninstaller package contains the complete webkit and javascriptcore packages. This makes the assumption that the ones in your package are identical to the ones that were originally on the system. This isn't a safe assumption. Apple can and does modify both these components in system updates from time to time, so you have no way of ensuring that yours are the ones that originally existed on the system. The proper way to do this would be to backup the original webkit files and restore them from the backup using the uninstaller.  
(Version 0.7b)

GORDON142  This Installer replaces critical system components with its own and provides no documentation on what changes are made to webkit to provide the claimed performance boost. The installer does NOT backup your existing webkit install. The "uninstaller" simply installs another copy of the webkit components that are included in the uninstaller bundle - it does NOT restore the original webkit files that resided on your system prior to installing the modified versions. You have to trust that the version the uninstaller provides is the same as that which was originally on your system, which it will most certainly not be in the event of any Apple software updates targeting webkit or javascriptcore. In other words, this is not a safe product and I would most definitely stay away from it.

In addition, the product website just reads like the marketing hype you get in spam emails - making wildly unrealistic claims ("twice as fast!") and providing no details on the actual functions of the product. No good!  
(Version 0.7b)

GORDON142  Well, WhatSize has a nicer interface, but DiskSweeper lets you use basically all its functions without registering, which means its still my tool of choice. Honestly, $7 is about the upper limit for an application of this type, I think, but everyone wants more…  
(Version 1.6.1b1)

GORDON142  Best keyboard shortcut manager I've come across at a price that can't be beat.  
(Version 3.0b7)

GORDON142  Echoing what others have said. It's a cool idea with a pretty nice implementation. The author needs to rethink the price though. $20 I *might* buy it, $15 I would probably buy it, but at $30 there is just no chance.  
(Version 1.0)

GORDON142  Best secure data storage app I've come across. Simply, easy-to-see interface, powerful feature-set, has never crashed on me. A winner.  
(Version 1.4)

GORDON142  "Upgrade"? What upgrade? All I see is a small list of bug fixes. A licensing system that finally works like every other mac app, and a couple bug fixes regarding features we already paid for and therefore have a reasonable expectation of working properly without paying additional money.  
(Version 8.0)

GORDON142  Doesn't seem to work right with Spaces. Only sometimes displays Windows from non-active spaces.  
(Version 2.0)

GORDON142  You should instead get the latest FireFox 3 beta at http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/all-beta.html . It has all the goodies you're talking about, but is far more stable and tested. FireFox 4.0 won't be released for a year or more, and the builds are extremely preliminary.  
(Version 2.0.0.13)

GORDON142  The full release is out. Check out the developer's website. This game was delayed to a ridiculous degree, but I must say, the end result is fantastic. All the levels from the original two Dark Castles are perfectly reproduced with tasteful upgrades to the graphics that in no way detract from the gameplay. The control system and responses are identical to those of the original games. The game seems to be thoroughly debugged, and I have yet to encounter any glitches whatsoever (rare in the first release of a platform game). I would have appreciated a little more variety in the music (the same few tracks are repeated for most levels), but hey, the originals didn't even have background music, so this is a small complaint.

Basically, if you were a fan of the original dark castle games, you won't be disappointed by this. If you've never played dark castle, get this anyway, as it is one of the best platform games available for any system.  
(Version 1.1)

GORDON142  This version just gives me the following error when Safari launches:

"Failed to load the Keywurl plugin.

*** -[NSCFNumber objectForKey:]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x214450"  
(Version 1.3.1)

GORDON142  It's a two-click operation in iTunes to convert an MP3 to an AAC file. As of the current version of the iPhone software and iTunes, all you really need to do is change the extension of an AAC file to .m4r and drag it into iTunes to have it recognised as a ringtone. You could write a simple applescript to automate the process if you really wanted to. I just don't see how it's worth $15 to perform this task.  
(Version 1.0.4)

GORDON142  The application MakeiPhoneRingTone seems to do the same thing, only for free . . .  
(Version 1.0.5)

GORDON142  The reason Alsoft is always slow to update is that they do it right. People use DiskWarrior because it is the most reliable and effective when it comes to repairing your disk. If you want this level of reliability, you have to be patient while they do extensive testing to ensure that any new version works as well as previous versions. You can either have frequent updates, or you can have *good* updates.  
(Version 4.0)

GORDON142  Please stop doing this. A webbrowser is one of the most difficult applications to do well. People need to stop just releasing the first webkit front-end they create while playing in Xcode. You can make a webkit webbrowser without even entering a line of your own code.

Before even thinking about releasing a webbrowser, you need to consider the following:

1. What important features or user experience am I going to introduce that is not found in any existing browser available today?

2. Do I have the experience and skills to effectively undertake this very extensive task?

There are useful applications that can be created without years of programming experience (How about making a preference pane to manage Input Managers?), but browsers are not one of them.  
(Version 0.1b)

GORDON142  Firmware updates just fix problems, they don't add new features. Apple releases firmware update even to models that were discontinued years ago if there is a specific issue for which an update is needed. Why do you think your firmware needs an update?  
(Version 1.2)

GORDON142  Seems very cool. I only wish it was setup to handle more than just licence files, because while its licence-handling abilities surpass those of Steel (my current secure-storage app), it is not very practical for the storage of other types of records, and I don't wish to migrate one data type only to an entirely different application.  
(Version 1.0)

GORDON142  I recently heard from the developers. Apparently, the game is pretty much level and feature complete at this point, and they're claiming a summer release date. Of course, after 5 years, I'm a bit skeptical, but it's still nice to hear work is being done on the project.  
(Version 0.9b13)

GORDON142  OK, I'm trying to figure out what exactly you downloaded. Enhancer 3.x doesn't touch the resources related to the menubar, so I don't see how it could possibly effect the "mail link" items in any way. In addition, Enhancer 3 should be compatible with any version of Safari officially available for OS 10.4...  
(Version 3.3)