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User "Tomis" Profile
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About Tomis
Posts:154
Last Login:9 Feb 2008 06:00
Recent Downloads:
  1. Deluxe PocMon
  2. AirTrafficControl
  3. CoverSutra
  4. Cover Stream
  5. Force Quit all Applications
  6. JollysFastVNC
  7. Yahoo! Messenger
Software Wish List:
Members can add software listings on MacUpdate to their wish list for others to view for software gift ideas
User Reviews
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Type: Comments
Date: 27 Jun 2008 21:09

Methinks the download is linking to the wrong thing. When I ran the app iTunes asked me if I was sure I wanted to quit while downloading podcasts. Doesn't seam like much of a Force Quit to me...

That being said, this appears to simply be an Automator workflow front end to functionality which is already available in several places in MacOS X.

I'm not sure what the point is, but I'm also not sure why there are so many negative comments about it. It's simply another way to accomplish a task.

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Type: Comments
Date: 24 Jun 2008 01:04

I found it unbearably slow compared to the system's built-in VNC/ARD server.

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Type: Comments
Date: 19 Jun 2008 05:28

For anyone who finds the download ends in .dmg.bz, change the extension to simply ".dmg" before opening the file, the DMG will now mount properly.

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Type: Comments
Date: 2 Jun 2008 10:18

The Download links to the 0.7b4 source code, you will need the Apple developer tools to compile it.

The last MacOS X binary (ie, built application) was version 0.7b1, you can download it at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/hugin/HuginOSX-v07b1.zip

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Type: Comments
Date: 7 May 2008 06:30

Don't waste your bandwidth. The interface needs a complete overhaul. Very bare-bones and awkward. Feels like a weird cross between the old Carbon port and a modern Cocoa app. It's going to be a while until this is anywhere near being a replacement for iChat.

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Type: Review
Date: 18 Apr 2008 06:21
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:1 Star

If you're on an iBook G4 with 10.5, avoid this program.

Works fine until it's time to start the gameplay. Then all it does is play cool music while displaying an amazingly corrupted screen. I couldn't command-q or force quit the app. Had to restart. Completely useless.

Fullscreen mode is the same deal, except all you get is black, no screen corruption.

So sad, it looked like an awesome game from the screenshots...

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Type: Review
Date: 1 Apr 2008 19:46
Features:4 Stars
Ease of Use:3 Stars
Value:4 Stars
Stability:4 Stars

Wow. I've been wanting something like this for a while. I always wondered why Apple didn't include something like this in the developer tools, or in Activity Monitor. Great work!

Overall I give it a 4/5. The basic functionality is there, and it's superb, but the interface could use a bit of polishing. And maybe a couple other views to provide other useful information, possibly graphs of some sort.

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Type: Comments
Date: 1 Apr 2008 19:38

Totally pointless and yet, totally awesome.

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Type: Review
Date: 1 Apr 2008 19:10
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:2 Stars
Value:3 Stars
Stability:1 Star

A good idea with what looks to be a promising interface at first glance. But one look at the awkward preferences window tells you everything you need to know.

Recommendations for the Developer:

* Enable all features during the trial period, I'm not paying for something I can't fully try out

* Cut back on pointless interface customization options that only clutter the interface

* Get rid of custom interface elements that serve no purpose (re; weird black sheet dialogs, Tab Options link, etc)

Weird interface + crashed during the first run, so I'm giving it low marks for now.

It's a promising app.

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Type: Review
Date: 26 Mar 2008 06:24
Features:2 Stars
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:1 Star

A great idea implemented very poorly.

Oddly slow scrolling of the main list, weird design choices, buttons that appear disabled when they aren't, the main window isn't resizable. I could go on.

If the developer takes the interface back to the drawing board I think they could have a winner.

Additionally it couldn't find one of my filesharing Leopard machines that appears in the Finder sidebar with no problem. Though it found my Tiger system fine.

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Type: Comments
Date: 29 Feb 2008 18:03

If I wanted something that just "mostly got the job done" without any sense of proper interface or reliability, then I'd be using a different OS. That's why I gave it 1 star in those areas.

I expect applications on MacOS X to do the job they set out to do, do it elegantly, and do it without unwanted surprises.

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Type: Review
Date: 26 Feb 2008 19:18
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:3 Stars
Value:1 Star
Stability:1 Star

It mostly does the job it sets out to. But has a horrible interface, and it doesn't use the standard authentication dialog, which makes me wonder what they're really doing with my password...

After messing with a few settings I clicked "Restore to Defaults", it gave me the fake authentication dialog, I clicked cancel, and it proceeded to reset the dock to the system defaults anyway!

Please Mr. Developer, take a look at Xcode and Apple's interface guidelines.

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Type: Review
Date: 19 Feb 2008 14:29
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:2 Stars

Recommendation: Avoid

Incredibly buggy. Refused to run from the disk image. Lots of interface glitches, windows popping up randomly and unexpectedly. Very slow. Feels like a Java port.

Doesn't respect the user's wishes. Annoyingly presented a window asking to be set as the default app for numerous archive formats, closed the window, only to discover that it had set its self as the default app!

Upon first opening a ZIP archive it loaded the file browser and loaded the file previews, then proceeded to close the file browser, open a "User Agreement" and open an "sample archive"!

It's really too bad. The core functionality is great. Everything else about the app is utter junk. Needs to be re-written as a proper Cocoa app.

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Type: Review
Date: 13 Feb 2008 09:12
Features:4 Stars
Ease of Use:5 Stars
Value:5 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

Now this is what I call essential freeware. It does what it's designed to and no more. No muss, no fuss.

The only thing I could possibly ask for would be for the option to apply global keyboard shortcuts for rotating the displays.

Something like command-option-right for rotating 90 degrees right, command-option-left for 90 degrees left. And maybe include number keys if you have more than one display... I'm sure the developer can think of something more elegant though.

Thank you for the great work. This is an excellent piece of software.

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Type: Comments
Date: 19 Jan 2008 18:39

But I don't see how this is any more efficient than Safari honestly. Sure the application size is different, 7MB for Safari 2.5MB for this app. But the advantages stop there for me. Having to launch a second 1.7MB app just to download content to my hard drive?

The interface is far too limited, and as such it makes my browsing experience inefficient. Perhaps that's because the only things I find inefficient about Safari are really problems with the rendering engine. Namely RAM usage, stability (or lack of), and rendering speed of highly complex pages.

If you seriously want a no-features browser which is just an address bar and back/forward buttons, this is the browser for you.

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Type: Developer
Date: 8 Jan 2008 12:10

Sounds like you've selected "Always Use Safe Sleep"

To turn this off, select "Only Safe Sleep in Emergencies" (which is the default behavior for machines that ship with safe sleep enabled) or "Disable Safe Sleep"

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Type: Review
Date: 2 Jan 2008 11:31
Features:5 Stars
Ease of Use:5 Stars
Value:5 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

It couldn't be any easier than this! Works beautifully for creating .gz files for my website using mod_gzip

Drag & Drop, and it even overwrites the existing .gz file if there is one. Simple and elegant!

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Type: Review
Date: 14 Dec 2007 07:24
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:2 Stars
Value:1 Star
Stability:4 Stars

Horrible, awkward interface. Makes Spyder look well designed. Points for trying I suppose. It's just horribly awkward and hackish. But hey, they're only at 0.5, hopefully they'll have given it a complete polished Leopard-esque overhaul by 1.0

Though it is one of those 8MB REALbasic apps so... who knows

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Type: Comments
Date: 6 Dec 2007 09:33

Check out SafeSleep, hosted here at MacUpdate : http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/25065/safesleep

I developed it on and for my iBook G4

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Type: Comments
Date: 1 Dec 2007 09:11

Bummer, doesn't work at all in 10.5, installed in ~/Library/InputManagers , restarted Safari, no go.

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Type: Review
Date: 15 Nov 2007 01:57
Features:5 Stars
Ease of Use:4 Stars
Value:5 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

1.0 adds the ability to get rid of any visual indicators, making the virtual KVM experience completely seamless. There are a couple bugs still. Mainly with teleport remembering disconnected displays and not letting me re-arrange current ones if they overlap the disconnected ones. Deleting the prefs always solves this.

Absolutely essential for someone with a desktop and laptop. Apple really should hire this guy. The setup and usage is dead easy.

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Type: Review
Date: 7 Nov 2007 20:19
Features:5 Stars
Ease of Use:5 Stars
Value:5 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

An essential piece of software for Mac laptops. It's been painful using Leopard without it. Apple's similar features in recent laptops pale in comparison to the ease-of-use that SideTrack offers.

The developer is very clear that it should be considered an unstable beta. That being said, instal went smoothly and I haven't experienced any system instability yet.

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Type: Review
Date: 7 Nov 2007 15:25
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:4 Stars
Stability:3 Stars

I just want a faceless iTunes media server so I don't have to keep that bloated program running just to access my media on other computers. This looked like the ticket for sure. But without documentation it was confusing to setup.

There's two faceless apps, a server and a client. It would appear I have to have both running on my machine in order for other iTunes' to access my media.

A few things this needs:

* Support for iTunes playlists (right now it just serves up your library with no playlists)

* A readme or documentation of some sort

* A graphical configuration app

I'll be keeping my eye on this. It looks promising.

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Type: Comments
Date: 24 Oct 2007 22:42

This picker does the job, but I must say I prefer the HexPicker from Waffle Software at http://wafflesoftware.net/hexpicker/

It has a couple nice extras beyond the basic hex functionality.

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Type: Comments
Date: 15 Oct 2007 19:28

I have the same issues with Navigator that I have with Firefox. It doesn't use native interface widgets and therefor it feels like a cheep port from Windows.

How many times do I have to say it. Use native widgets for the platform you're targeting, or don't even bother porting.

And this weatherbug thing is a buggy mess. I can't disable it. View>Toolbars>Weatherbug, totally ignores the fact that I've unchecked it.

Do the Netscape developers even use Macs?

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Type: Comments
Date: 14 Oct 2007 18:21

Download is down, the developer has discontinued the product.

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Type: Comments
Date: 3 Oct 2007 01:43

Download is dead, the developer's site say CoverTunes is no longer in existence.

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Type: Comments
Date: 23 Sep 2007 21:20

The developer would do better to help out on the open source Shiira browser instead of trying to start yet another WebKit browser.

This browser has one redeeming feature: a nice toolbar icon set that I can pull out and put into Safari.

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Type: Review
Date: 10 Sep 2007 04:58
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:3 Stars

Opera may be a great browser on Windows. But on the Mac it still feels like a bad OS9 port.

Each time I try it I hope they've gotten a clue and completely re-written the interface to use native toolbars, native widgets, and throw out the cruft. But they never do.

The rendering engine may be great, but you'd never know because the rest of the interface is a piss-poor mess. Convoluted configuration dialogs and poorly done graphics abound in Opera. It may be the norm on Windows but it's absolutely unacceptable on my Mac.

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Type: Review
Date: 7 Sep 2007 06:54
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:3 Stars

So Yahoo finally gives Mac user chat room support. And it's a complete joke.

You have to go to their website to fill in a "captcha" each time you join a room. Every single time you change rooms, they give you a link that you have to go to to fill in the "captcha". Completely asinine.

And to top it off, the "user list" for chat rooms consists of a row of horizontal icons of all the users in the room, you have to mouse-over the icons to see the user names. I suppose if you go around adding everyone to your buddy-list this is good as you can see their custom user icons. But in practice it means you have a row of generic icons. Just give us a normal list of user names!

Oh, yea this version also ads tabbed chat. But they still haven't fixed innumerable other problems that make the yahoo chat/IM experience too painful to use. Back to Adium.

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Type: Review
Date: 26 Aug 2007 09:30
Features:4 Stars
Ease of Use:4 Stars
Value:4 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

I really like this utility. It's very thorough.

Only thing I wish it had: an option to remove .DS_Store files when converting.

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Type: Comments
Date: 3 Aug 2007 01:24

Ok so it has the basic functionality, but the overall design is poor. It just needs some nice graphics to look right sitting next to all my other pretty aqua icons in the the dock.

Additionally, the website show screenshots of all sorts of preferences and setting it has. But you can't access any of these features until you register!! How can I tell if the software will do what I want unless I can actually use it. I wouldn't buy a car without a test drive, etc.

I'd suggest going back to the drawing board. Learn ObjC and Xcode, learn a bit about elegant MacOS X interface design, and do some beautiful graphics for the clock. Then you'll have a great product. Right now it feels like someone's fun weekend project app.

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Type: Comments
Date: 13 Jul 2007 18:45

The correct description would be:

Netscape revolutionized Internet browsing by providing an easier and more personal way to use the Internet. It was designed around the things people did most online - browsing, e-mail and newsgroups - and brought them all together for the most convenient and customized experience possible at the time.

There are some cool add-ons included that differentiate it from Firefox. But that's it basically. Just some built-in add-ons and a new skin. The development efforts would be better spent improving Firefox than trying in vain to keep an old dead brand name product alive while Netscape.com tries (badly) to compete with Digg.com

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Type: Comments
Date: 13 Jul 2007 04:29

While the radio subscription model is something that makes sense to me, I find it dangerous to base it around an iTunes Plugin. While the integration is great, Apple could release an update that suddenly breaks these 3rd party plugins at any time.

I would find it much more comforting to have a stand-alone app to access the service with possible iTunes integration. The additional upshot would be less initial system overhead as iTunes is quite a beast of a program just for listening to music.

I found no information on the website about how the profits from the monthly subscription are shared with the radio stations. Are they shared equally among all the stations? Or only to the stations I listen to? Is it based on how often I listen to said stations?

Currently I'm quite happy donating money to Radio Paradise and I haven't found a better eclectic radio station. But I'll keep my eye on iRADIOmast.

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Type: Review
Date: 8 Jul 2007 14:33
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:2 Stars

Safari 3.0.2

As far as I can tell this software does absolutely nothing. I ran the installer. I restarted Safari. I went to Apple's QuickTime trailers page, started watching a trailer and... I can find absolutely no interface to view the movie in fullscreen. No contextual menu, no extra item added to the menus in the menubar, tried just clicking the movie. Nothing.

Oh well. It's not that hard to look up the movie URL in the activity window, copy, and load in QuickTime Player anyway. If I was really lazy I guess I'd make an AppleScript for it.

At least they provide a nifty un-installer.

2 stars on stability for not crashing Safari.

1 star on everything else.

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Type: Comments
Date: 8 Jul 2007 14:17

While I prefer just using a folder in the dock to perform this functionality, this looked like a nice alternative.

Unfortunately the developer choose to go the odd route of SITX compressing a DMG. Perhaps he is not aware that Apple ceased bundling Stuffit Expander with MacOS X years ago. I am glad to be rid of it. Hopefully he will release his next version in a standard MacOS X archive format (compressed DMG, or ZIP).

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Type: Review
Date: 7 Jul 2007 13:46
Features:2 Stars
Ease of Use:3 Stars
Value:2 Stars
Stability:2 Stars

I was expecting to leave a happy-go-lucky review like "Completely useless but also completely awesome!! 4/5 stars!"

But sadly the software does not do what it says. Instead of "leaving a trail of stars" it creates short explosions of stars as I move the pointer around. Definitely not the same thing.

It's a good start. But I have seen other examples which achieve this effect much better.

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Type: Comments
Date: 7 Jul 2007 00:56

How does this differ from "Rebuild Mailbox" in Mail.app?

I'd really like to know.

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Type: Comments
Date: 7 Jul 2007 00:51

In Safari 3 beta on MacOS X 10.4.10 you can already save as PDF. Safari 2 apparently can't.

Go to menu File>Print then click the "Preview" or "PDF" button. Either way you'll get a PDF with active links included.

If you want a JPEG or other image format then click Preview and then do a "Save As" from Preview.app

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Type: Comments
Date: 7 Jul 2007 00:34

So encryption is not used... Well I see no reason to switch from using MacOS X's encrypted sparse disk images then.

Just open Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities/), make a new disk image, choose an insanely high storage size, select "sparse" for the type, and choose an encryption. And you're done.

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Type: Comments
Date: 15 Jun 2007 04:36

Q: What do you call beta software which acts more like an alpha?

A: Safari

And on Windows it's even worse. Apple had a good thing going with the iPod and the iPhone,but no iPhone SDK, and the craptacular quality of Safari on Windows may well have undone a good portion of the goodwill they built up with Windows users.

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Type: Comments
Date: 12 Jun 2007 13:59

Works great except the programs icon shows up in the dock, which is a show-stopper for me. Making the program a background-only app (by editing it's Info.plist) breaks the fake transparency feature.

Hopefully the author will fix this shortcoming by removing the dock icon and adding a quit button to the preferences window.

10.4.9 PowerPC

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Type: Comments
Date: 10 Jun 2007 09:30

It just keeps getting better with each release!

It's funny that it has a GUI now, as I wrote up my own GUI front in in AppleScript yesterday. I would prefer that the GUI use the native Authentication dialog, so I think I'll be sticking to my own front-end for now.

The only way this could be better is if it were a MenuExtra. Keep up the great work!

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Type: Review
Date: 6 Jun 2007 20:04
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:2 Stars
Value:3 Stars
Stability:2 Stars

The read me says the program is $99, the Installer says it's $49, trying to register took me to their homepage where I had to hunt around to find the price listed as $49. After the initial setup in the absurdly large preferences dialog they use, I tried it out.

The real advantage of CutX is in it's content filtering. It blocks pages and web addresses which contain banned keywords. This is also its downfall.

I found that on large websites it consistently locks up Safari as it goes through checking every piece of linked media. Additionally, it's not hard to get around the initial blocks by simply running websites through a translation service.

If you are looking to protect young users from inappropriate content on the internet then the solution is MacOS X 10.4's whitelist based parental controls paired with simply being in the room.

The basic idea behind this software is decent. But the implementation doesn't feel professional, and the cost can not be justified.

To sum it up, when CutX blocks a website it display a static page with the words "YOU CANNOT ACCESS TO THIS WEBSITE" in giant letters. I think the poor grammar of this statement is a good metaphor for the program on the whole.

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Type: Comments
Date: 6 Jun 2007 19:26

Well the software does its job. And it's certainly easier than editing your hosts file.

On the downside, I'm leery of installing anything into the InputManagers folder as it could potentially compromise the entire system. And the frames blocker is apparently broken.

But, judging by his replies to a few of the reviews here, the developer needs to take some anger management courses. So I will abstain from giving a rating. I would give high marks but I don't believe one should be rewarded when they're a jerk to users asking honest questions.

it's too bad, because this is a great piece of software that's being hindered by the arrogance of its developer.

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Type: Review
Date: 4 Jun 2007 10:30
Features:4 Stars
Playability:5 Stars
Graphics & Sound:3 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

This game should be a model to all software developers. This program comes in at under 200k and it's a Universal binary!

The game play is sparse but accurate. It does exactly what it needs to, and nothing more. No useless bells and whistles to bloat it up.

Excellent.

My only suggestion is that the game play needs to be varied more in the harder levels. Perhaps having the target shift slightly, or starting the craft at a much higher altitude, or even having the craft start at slightly random angles and decent velocities.

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Type: Review
Date: 31 May 2007 21:32
Features:4 Stars
Ease of Use:5 Stars
Value:5 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

This is the feature Apple forgot. This truly makes the dashboard technology useful.

I haven't had a single problem. And the purchase process was painless. I definitely recommend this app.

The only way it could be easier is if they included a quick widget browser within the drop window so I don't have to dig through my system folder when I want to convert a widget. A nice little popup with widgets separated into system and user-installed sections.

Other than that, it's perfect.

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Type: Review
Date: 31 May 2007 20:47
Features:5 Stars
Ease of Use:5 Stars
Value:5 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

This is perfect. Apple should include this with every mac.

Excellent when you want to kill the screen but let processing continue, or go away for a quick second and save battery life without the sleep/wake delay.

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Type: Review
Date: 31 May 2007 04:17
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:1 Star

I had high hopes for this software but it's just riddled with bugs. Not to mention the confusing interface.

Suggestions: Make it a 2 step process to get the files one needs from the iPod, 1 select the ipod 2 press a "get data" button, and a 1 step process to upload the changes

While getting the resources it sat there chugging away for a few minutes, then error'd out telling me it couldn't find the destination folder that I pointed it to. Even though the folder was still sitting right there!

Then it refused to quit. It would just beep at me each time I tried to quit. So, Force Quit, and right to the trash with this one.

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Type: Comments
Date: 26 May 2007 13:55

It tells me it needs to download and instal a plugin?

Widgets should be self contained. They should not need to instal crap in my system in order to work. This is totally absurd. Right to the trash with this one. And a quick search for "unity" brings up the plugin sitting happily in my internet plugins folder. Right to the trash with that too.

They could have implemented this using flash or shockwave and had a seamless user experience. Heck, even Java 3D would have been a good idea.

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Type: Review
Date: 20 May 2007 22:26
Features:5 Stars
Ease of Use:5 Stars
Value:4 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

It does one thing, it does it very well, it's under 1MB and it's free!!

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Type: Comments
Date: 20 May 2007 22:10

Just a front-end for the built-in UNIX renice command. There are other, free, GUI front ends that do the same thing. No point in paying for something that's included with your OS already. Not to mention that it only "increases" the front application's performance by decreasing the performance of the rest of the OS.

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Type: Review
Date: 20 May 2007 22:06
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:1 Star

Totally 100% froze my system while "Verifying startup disk" I couldn't even force-quit, had to force reboot my mac. Utter crap. Right to the trash with this one. So much for MacOS X being more stable than Windows.

If one app can bring down the whole OS so easily, imagine what a virus writer could do.. scary.

1Ghz G4 768MB RAM, OSX 10.4.9

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Type: Review
Date: 17 May 2007 05:28
Features:4 Stars
Ease of Use:4 Stars
Value:2 Stars
Stability:2 Stars

Definitely cool. Unfortunately the "Invert Hue" only causes display distortion and nothing else. There are a couple other bugs as well. Still needs a bit of work, but it's definitely a good start.

So nice having all these settings in one place instead of having to use a combination of the Universal Access settings, and a program to alter the RGB gamma.

MacOS X 10.4.9 - iBook G4

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Type: Review
Date: 17 May 2007 05:16
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:1 Star

This package of programs act in a way that can only be defined as spyware/trojan-horse.

Don't bother. Preview.app's deficiencies are not worth the loads of utter crap Adobe's PDF reader loads into your system against your will.

Someone should slap the engineers responsible for this, multiple times. And then fire them.

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Type: Comments
Date: 8 May 2007 06:16

So lets see...

$35 for some 3rd part software that claims to convert any media format for the Apple TV

Or. $30 for QuickTime Pro from Apple, which actually does the job.

Which would you choose?

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Type: Comments
Date: 6 May 2007 07:32

A 10 second delay upon first run. Numerous disabled menu items that have clearly been left in place from an xCode project template.

It's quite obvious the developer is hoping to make a lot of money by charging for numerous small utility programs without exerting much effort in the development process.

The ironic thing is that he could have exerted his energies developing one program that is much more useful than all these little money-grabs.

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Type: Comments
Date: 4 May 2007 20:53

The software certainly does its job. And in conjunction with the grayscale option in the "Universal Access" System Preference it is truly invaluable.

I just wish the developer had used Apple's developer tools to make this wonderful program. There's no reason it should be a bloated 8MB download.

Hopefully they will take the time to learn xCode and make a native program.

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Type: Review
Date: 23 Apr 2007 15:23
Features:4 Stars
Ease of Use:3 Stars
Value:2 Stars
Stability:2 Stars

The interface include several innovate features. But this is offset by numerous bugs throughout the program. And it doesn't play WMV files even though I have Flip4Mac installed and Safari plays them fine!

Additionally they don't use tooltips at all in this program. This over-sight really needs to be corrected. Proper tooltip usage can replace the need for a help system.

This is definitely a beta release, not worthy of a 2.0 final release. Go back to the drawing board with this one guys.

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Type: Comments
Date: 17 Apr 2007 00:37

Why-oh-why do first-time REALbasic user always have to tick the CustomBackgroundColor property and then choose the ugliest color they can find?

Ugly interface, huge application, I don't want to be mean. Everyone has to learn programming by doing silly/pointless projects, that's how I did. But don't expect the general public to be impressed by it.

This is not worthy of a 2.0

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Type: Comments
Date: 15 Apr 2007 04:08

The company has apparently disappeared, their website is now an adult-entertainment portal.

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Type: Review
Date: 4 Apr 2007 06:41
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:4 Stars

A 14MB download, ok.... And a 40MB app, what? It takes 30MB RAM on launch. Not a good sign.

It certainly looks slick. But a novel interface is not always a good thing. A simple bezel-style interface with a grid of items would have been perfect.

Digging into the program package I can see why it's so bloated. The developer must have gone to the Apple school of software design. All of the graphics in the app are pre-rendered, with multiple copies, even down-sampled pre-renders.

It's supposed to be a clipboard extender, less is more. Be functional and stay out of my way, and don't eat up gobs of RAM.

Dear Mr. Developer; A little optimization effort goes a long way. If you don't have enough respect for your users to optimize your app, don't expect them to respect your work.

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Type: Comments
Date: 30 Mar 2007 13:42

Basically this is just a package of pre-rendered images that you sync to your iPod. I'm suspicious as to why the installer requires my password just to dump a bunch of pictures somewhere.

A more efficient approach would of been to create a small program that generates the images on-the-fly.

The website claims "If you prefer to match your base color to a particular object, simply hold your iPod next to it. Again, a suggested color scheme will be automatically displayed in the corners."

How exactly do they propose that the iPod will know what object I'm holding next to it?

The usefulness of a digital color-wheel is undeniable for certain professions. But I question the approach the developer took to get there.

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Type: Review
Date: 30 Mar 2007 13:23
Features:4 Stars
Ease of Use:5 Stars
Value:5 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

Airport Utility is the app that will be replacing "Airport Admin Utility" and "Airport Setup Assistant" in Leopard.

Unfortunately, the installer refuses to instal Airport Utility if you don't have it already. You can easily get around this limitation by digging into the installer package (right-click > "Show Package Contents") and copying out the following file:

/Volumes/AirPortUtilityUpdate/AirPortBaseStationUp date2007001.mpkg/Contents/Packages/AirPortUtility. pkg/Contents/Archive.pax.gz

Just double-click the file and a new folder "Applications" will be created with "Airport Utility.app" inside.

So far I've had no problems configuring my AirPort Express with this release. Just wish Apple hadn't crippled the installer as this really is an improvement over the old interface.

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Type: Review
Date: 29 Mar 2007 14:00
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:1 Star

I keep hoping they'll get a clue about proper interface design on the Mac. But they never do.

Right now Opera feels like some weird 1990s experiment in feature over-kill. With an interface to match. They need to start by just ripping off Safari's interface, and then make some really smart improvements on it.

Personally, I prefer a minimalist interface. Forward/Back and address at the top, status bar at the bottom, and tabs only when they're needed.

All the other features should be designed around making my life easier while staying out of my way. See Safari for how to accomplish this.

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Type: Comments
Date: 26 Mar 2007 13:34

It has many useful features. But, for being developed in Xcode the interface is surprisingly cluttered and decidedly not Mac-like.

Native controls (popup menus, text boxes) are eschewed in favor of odd custom-made implementations.

Maybe it's just suffering from growing to far too fast. Hopefully the developer will take some time to sit back and clean up the interface. I'll keep checking it out. But in the current state, I can't stand it.

I suppose really I just want Safari + useful developer add-ons.

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Type: Comments
Date: 23 Mar 2007 12:20

If I need a generic desktop for a screenshot, I just set my desktop picture and quit the Finder. But this app has it's place.

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Type: Review
Date: 23 Mar 2007 12:17
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:2 Stars
Value:2 Stars
Stability:2 Stars

Networked two macs together via direct Firewire cable. Couldn't get a usable framerate no matter what settings I tried. And there were numerous stability problems.

iMac G5 2ghz 512MB

iBook G4 1Ghz 768MB

It's a good tech demo, can't wait until it's actually useful. Combine it with some sort of wireless transmitter/receiver and you could have a really cool product.

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Type: Review
Date: 23 Mar 2007 12:03
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:2 Stars
Value:2 Stars
Stability:4 Stars

Still no reason to use this over Dashboard.

I thought the sidebar might be cool, but it has numerous implementation flaws like the rest of the app.

I have to press fn-F7 for the global hotkey to work. Dashboard doesn't need the fn key. I can't drag widgets from the sidebar? Oh, I have to click them to load them. I set the sidebar to auto-hide, yet it still shows a sliver of it on-screen, wtf! How do I configure a widget? By right-clicking... and then messing with a clunky half-baked preferences window.

No-where nearly as elegant as Dashboard.

Still the same clunky interface, a long way to go in my book. And they're already at version 4?

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Type: Comments
Date: 14 Mar 2007 07:44

Just a normal upgrade here, nothing noticeable to report. Interesting that they note iChat USB-cam support. Wonder what cams it supports?

Words of Advice:

* Repair permissions before/after instal

* Download the combo updates from http://support.apple.com/downloads , Partial updaters (ie, Software Update) have hosed my system in the past.

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Type: Review
Date: 13 Mar 2007 22:42
Features:5 Stars
Ease of Use:3 Stars
Value:3 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

Well the program wouldn't work unless I paid and registered. I suppose I must have tried out a previous version at some point, so now it thinks my "trial period" is expired. So in order to test it I had to circumvent the registration system. Strike one.

Considering the market for these system configuration apps is pretty saturated, the only way to really stand out is to have a better interface or more features.

The interface is a bit cramped due to the wealth of features it supports, but it's generally quite clear. They definitely get points for having more features than their competitors.

However, there are several competitors to this program which are Free, and the program is a whopping 22MB! The developer would of done better to make the program in xCode or AppleScript Studio instead of REALbasic.

In summary: questionably huge file size, annoying and buggy registration system, competing apps are free and mostly on-par with features.

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Type: Review
Date: 4 Mar 2007 03:07
Features:1 Star
Playability:2 Stars
Graphics & Sound:4 Stars
Stability:4 Stars

The core gameplay is pretty decent. But overall the movement through the levels is too slow, and the gameplay gets repetitive fast.

I found myself wondering "what do I get for clicking all these fish?" The game rewards you by taking you to the AquaPark where you can... watch the the fish. Boring!

As a mini-game inside of a bigger park-management type game this would be great. But as a stand-alone game it's just not that compelling.

Hopefully they'll take this into account for a sequel. But seeing how this company seams to be taking the carpet-bomb approach to game development, I doubt they really spend much time worrying about long-term playability. They are apparently owned by RealNetworks, so that may have something to do with it.

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Type: Review
Date: 2 Mar 2007 07:05
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:2 Stars
Stability:4 Stars

Too dang complex. I suppose if I had time to sit down and read the manual thoroughly and play around with all the settings to learn this thing then I'd find it useful.

As it is, it's just too dang complex. They need to cut all these tabs and settings down to a couple sliders and a couple checkboxes.

Back to using iTunes' Sound enhancer and EQ for me. At least I don't need a giant manual to use it.

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Type: Review
Date: 28 Feb 2007 23:01
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:3 Stars
Value:4 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

I've been watching Seashore develop. I keep hoping they'll add more of Gimp's effects.

I've become addicted to live previews in other apps, I hope they'll add it to Seashore.

Overall a good little app if you don't need all the power of a Photoshop or Gimp.

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Type: Review
Date: 27 Feb 2007 00:18
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:4 Stars
Value:3 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

Personally I just put a folder full of aliases in the dock for quick launching without cluttering the dock. Right-click, start typing the name, hit return.

This app is pretty cool. The developer has put much work into making it easy to use and keyboard accessible.

But in the end, it doesn't provide enough added value for me to replace the aliases-in-a-folder technique.

A good feature would be if Overflow could quit after launching the desired program, this way it wouldn't be taking up memory when I don't need it.

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Type: Review
Date: 24 Feb 2007 01:05
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:1 Star

Like MySpace, but with an even worse interface. It uses an odd mixture of stand alone application and web interface that just doesn't work well.

Many of the forms don't have "submit" buttons, closing such a form then asks you to submit it.

It incorrectly placed my location as being in New York, though I'm in California. I've updated my location but it still thinks I'm in New York!

There's no actual web interface to the service so you have to download this custom app to access it. This significantly educes the overall usefulness.

Bottom Line: Avoid

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Type: Review
Date: 7 Feb 2007 18:01
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:3 Stars
Value:2 Stars
Stability:4 Stars

Well it certainly works. But I don't find it to be all that much more impressive than iTunes' already existent Sound Enhancer and EQ abilities.

I found the interface to be unnecessarily huge. It would be much better if they had fit it into a window the size of of the iTunes EQ window.

In summary, I'f rather put the $20 towards a better set of external speakers or headphones.

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Type: Comments
Date: 7 Feb 2007 17:46

In case anyone doesn't know:

Try clicking on a background window while holding down the command key. You'll find that you can move, resize, even use controls in the background window without even bringing it to the front.

Obviously MondoMouse does much more than this, but that basic functionality is built in to the OS.

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Type: Review
Date: 28 Jan 2007 11:15
Features:3 Stars
Ease of Use:4 Stars
Value:2 Stars
Stability:4 Stars

It's definitely a good start. Great interface.

It's very basic at the moment and the functionality is wanting in some areas. It's very promising.

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Type: Review
Date: 20 Jan 2007 17:55
Features:4 Stars
Playability:5 Stars
Graphics & Sound:4 Stars
Stability:5 Stars

Overall the game was great. The gameplay can get a bit repetitive, but it stays a challenge. Definitely a good non-violent game for kids, and adults too!

And I give the wacky plotline 5 stars as well. Great job!

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Type: Comments
Date: 20 Jan 2007 05:55

The program does its job, but it's 17.3MB!!

Do I need to say anything more? I just hope the developer learns xCode. A program like this shouldn't be more than 1MB.

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Type: Review
Date: 6 Nov 2006 21:07
Features:1 Star
Ease of Use:1 Star
Value:1 Star
Stability:5 Stars

I wasn't very impressed. Upon initial run I had to access the help system to find out how to actually log on. The accounts menu provided no "Log In" option! Finally I found out you have to press the Home button to log in...

Then I started messing around. I found no ability to change the view from a list-style to a more useful iPhoto-style gallery. Short of going directly to a user's profile in Safari I did not find any obvious way to view a selected user's pictures or videos.

Clearly, a good amount of work has been put into this program. But, except for the minimal usefulness in being able to sort through your entire friend list, I found this program to be of little extra value beyond what MySpace already provides.

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Type: Comments
Date: 4 Nov 2006 00:13

Well it does what it says. But due to the fact that it doesn't support dithering, the output from full-color images looks horrible.

I'll continue to use GifBuilder for now.

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Type: Review
Date: 18 Oct 2006 16:05
Features: