JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  It's an appreciated fact that most viruses today are written to be nearly invisible, to operate as bots in a botnet, and to server a purpose in collecting valuable data and forwarding it. Because OS X is a *nix variant, it's just plain impractical to try and write a virus that will do much of anything other than cause the user pain. 30 years ago, that was cool. Today, virus writers have better things to do and so that's why they are still going after Windows: because the it's just much easier to gain *known* privileges when infiltrating Windows than it is in *nix. Sure, it's possible to crack into a Mac if you know certain 3rd party software is present. But the beauty of Windows is you don't need ANY 3rd party software present. You just need the core system. That's it. Once you are in, you have all kinds of freedom to do all kinds of creative data mining in almost silent, invisible ways.

The best reason for a Mac user to use anti-virus software is to filter out Windows-oriented viruses before they get forwarded to unsuspecting friends or network associates. Personally, I'd stay away from VirusBarrier. There are better open source tools for this sort of work.  
(Version 10.5.10)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  with 5.5.5 and Mac OS 10.6.1 I'm getting a spinning beachball when ever I attempt to initiate a contextual menu. While somewhat slow in 5.5.4, at least it worked. I have to force quit PF 5.5.5 if I attempt a CMM.  
(Version 5.5.5)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  I want to second the suggestion to manage updates across the LAN. We have 5 users in our family and I manage all the updates through a single system. With a 50GB cap on monthly bandwidth, I try and conserve this when possible. Please allow the software to identify a 'central' download directory for all users so that updates can be applied locally when available.  
(Version 5.0)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  Mr. Gecko was able to answer my questions and I am a little more confident than I was that it is safe to use the software. I'm going to continue to use it for the time being and see how it fares, and, hopefully, if I get VideoBox working correctly again or they fix whatever is preventing it from working with WebKit, I can compare the ease of use. Personally, I'd prefer the approach YouView takes. It would be nice if I could have an 'Open In YouView' option in Safari's Develop menu, as some point, or a way to direct youtube URLs to open automatically in YouView.

One nice thing I enjoyed in VideoBox was the ability to que up a dozen youtube clips and then download and convert them all at once. So, it may be I'll need both apps and pick the right tool for the particular job. I've also tried yFlicks and it's installed on another computer. It's not as intuitive, but it's more into media management than just transcoding/downloading.

For the happy browser, YouView is very handy. For someone needing to download and transcode, it's got real promise, so I'm raising my rating to 3, but it's starting to lean toward a 4 and may eventually get there as it's still being developed, I think.  
(Version 0.3)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  I just downloaded this today because I was having trouble with VideoBox plug-in for some reason, perhaps since I installed then uninstalled Safari 4 Beta, so I looked around for something that would be handy for viewing and converting youtube videos for use on iTunes to sync with my iPhone and this looked promising. The free version worked fine for viewing so I went online and donated some money for key and received an email response almost immediately. I then was able to watch AND export a youtube clip (didn't try HD, yet) and it worked pretty well, although it doesn't automatically add it to iTunes like VideoBox would have done.

My concern at this point is that an hour or two later I received an email from the developer asking if I had 'moved' the app, I guess wondering if I was using multiple copies or had put it on another network, which I hadn't, and a link if I wanted to 're-register' the key and a warning that it can only be re-registered 3 times per year.

Thus, my concern is that somehow their spyware-bot is not only sending out information about my location, but is actually not doing it correctly, since the app was in the same place on the same network it had been since I downloaded and tested it shortly before. The gobal IP is the same, although my firewall would likely vary the publicly visible ports and will masq the MAC addresses to protect against intruders.

I've emailed my query to the developer but have not heard back, yet. Any other donators having this problem with their key?  
(Version 0.3)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  I don't think the auto updates will work since they are not asking for administrative privileges before attempting to run the process.  
(Version 3.0.2.348)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  I have emailed the support email twice in November and December asking why the two registration numbers I purchased in September have ceased to work and cannot be input. I'm pretty certain I was able to use Hookup successfully between my G5 and an iMac when I purchased the two licenses, and now that our older son is home from Oxford, I thought we could use the second license as well, but now I see none are working and when inserted, the modal box says these are invalid or expired. Anyone know if the developer is answering emails? The software directs me to "team@dottunes.net" for help, but I have received no response and it's been 6 weeks since I began to inquire. Perhaps there is another email address I should be using, or perhaps they are busy with the holidays and preparing for MacWorld? Any help is appreciated.  
(Version 1.0.0.292)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  I already ordered a copy and I'm ordering another for my son. Great tool. Thanks, MacUpdate!  
(Version 1.8)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  Okay, the latest 1.9.116 version still crashes at launch on any of our G3 iBooks, even though they have the video ram qualifications to play the game. They work on older version 1.9.66 and previous, but the 3rd party missions are not available on those versions.

On the PowerMac G5 and the PowerBook G4s the latest version continues to work fine and restores the functionality of 3rd party missions. That's a good sign. Just wish all our iBooks would also work with this so everyone could join the same mission.  
(Version 1.9.116)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  This is a much needed work in progress, and hopefully will see fulfillment in a truly stable, cross-platform release in the not too distant future. As it is, if you are a Descent lover, remember to keep the incremental updates around, just in case a new update breaks on your particular setup. That way you can get back to the older version and continue playing at least.

1.9.69 and 1.9.91, the most recent updates, are broken on our iBook G3s. 1.9.69 just freezes in the startup screen, leaving a black, blank window. It eventually crashes after a few minutes. 1.9.91 crashes almost immediately on launch. So we continue to use 1.9.66 as the most recent version that works on those.

1.9.69 and 1.9.91 do work fine on the G4 PowerBook and the PowerMac G5.

3rd party missions also no longer work on any of our systems, iBooks, Powerbooks, or G5s. They just are not being read by the program. I've heard from other Mac users that the missions recently stopped working for them as well. Hopefully we'll get a fix for this. Someone is looking into it.

Overall, the game plays very well, considering the difficulty the developers must have in attempting to do what they are doing without much funding or support. Kudos to them for the time and effort put in to what I think was one of the all time best 3D games ever devised.  
(Version 1.9.91)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  I have missed this product for a few years now, since I was not only an early adopter of OS X, but also left Classic more than 2 years ago. We don't use Classic on any of our 6 Macs, and have an older Mac around that can run OS 8 just in case we need to access some old data or disk. So I haven't had TextSpresso on my systems for at least 2 years, probably 3, and in our publishing workflows it's sorely missed. SmartWrap is helpful in some cases, but we needed the robustness and customizing capabilities of TextSpresso.

Anyone who has to repurpose text from one format to another really needs this. One feature that I'd like to see in a future version would be to be able to open PDF files, like Preview does, and then convert them to other formats such as RTF or HTML or plain text.  
(Version 3.0b1)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  I use PhotoZoom for photos, particularly portraits and people oriented. I use Fractals for graphics, such as Illustrator designs, and Architectural photos or any image with a lot of well defined edges.  
(Version 1.2)

JEFFREY MCPHEETERS  I have used iView Media Pro since around 1.2 when I migrated from Portfolio, which I had used for a few years previously. My main reason was the ease of managing varied types of media: fonts, graphics for web design work, photos from photography work, PDF documents from publishing projects, audio clips for multi-media projects, video, etc. iView has always excelled when handling mixed media archives.

Since version 2.x, it has also been a great time saver in that it manages large catalogs speedily. I have some catalogs with over 50,000 images; many or most in the 10+ MB range. It is stable and dependable. I can keep it open all day, using it with a dozen different catalogs spread and mixed on two or three Cinema displays while using Capture One Pro and Photoshop (just have a dual G5 and lots of ram to do this).

Version 3, which I studied first before upgrading to, is a worthy update, in my opinion. I like the lightbox, which helps me when I import my RAW photos (often hundreds per project) to quickly assess which ones are my picks, which are maybes, and which are trash.

I don't consider Aperture a true competitor in my space, because I need to manage media in various formats and venues, and Aperture is too narrowly focused for my needs. I might use it someday, but I don't think it can replace iView in my workflow.

Aperture does have a beautiful, richly textured interface, but I'm not interested in spending hours looking at an interface. I'm more interested in quickly identifying or locating media files, tagging them appropriately, and then outputing them to other final editing software, like Photoshop.

BTW, Aperture is NOT Photoshop + iPhoto. It's to iPhoto what Final Cut Pro is to iMovie. Photoshop has added some media management services, none as good as iView or possibly Aperture, but it goes way beyond anything either iView or Aperture do in image manipulation. Pro-photographers may not need anything more than Aperture, assuming they only do RAW image capture and need to quickly ID final selections for rapid output. But anyone with more than two or three formats, who also does extensive post-processing and archiving, probably needs a tool like iView.

For RAW photo work, I recommend Phase One's Capture One Pro as a better overall tool than Aperture, at least for now.  
(Version 3.0.1)