ISHAN  Socks is good for what it does, but compare it to TinkerTool System. There is a marked difference in every aspect, including the GUI, the capabilities of the utility, explanations of what every option does and so forth...and the price is about USD 5 more. Not to mention that it's also compatible with 10.6.

I know how hard it is to write software; I do it daily (it's one of my jobs). I am not criticizing the reviews or the developer. My point was, most software of this kind does not have lengthy glowing reviews from almost all reviewers, and that struck me as odd. I hope Socks gets better and better with time and the developer makes a lot of money from it. In its present form, there are better alternatives for Macintosh maintenance and troubleshooting than Socks. I hope that changes. Competition is good.  
(Version 1.2.3)

ISHAN  There is something very suspicious with this plethora of glowing, verbose reviews. Socks may be a great application, but statistically, this collection of comments all being overwhelmingly positive (except for one) is not probable. Just wondering...  
(Version 1.2.1)

ISHAN  I couldn't agree more. AGAControls is nicely done, but Secrets is more comprehensive. Perhaps a combined effort-which could lead to a shareware product-might be a good alternative.

Ishan Bhattacharya  
(Version 1.07)

ISHAN  Incompatibility is the price you pay for being paid to test developer builds of software. That's what developers do. They don't use their primary drive or Macintosh to do this, unless they happen to be testing a prerelease hardware version at the same time.

Enough of this anyway. Would be happy to test this app against 10.5.3 when the app is in further development. BTW, unlike what a previous poster said, Apple is not going to delay release of this update for up to"6 months". WWDC is in June 2008. Maybe I'll see you there :)  
(Version 1.0)

ISHAN  Agreed. And doesn't crash with developer seeds of 10.5.3. I wonder why :)  
(Version 1.0)

ISHAN  I wasn't being critical of your efforts. It's just that I wanted to try your software out, and an ADC student account is free and you can have access to these beta seeds. That way, you don't have to play catch-up with Apple's software tweaks to the Dock, etc. I'll try it again when you update it after 10.5.3 is formally released.  
(Version 1.0)

ISHAN  I like the idea. Unfortunately, it doesn't work with latest developer version of 10.5.3.  
(Version 1.0)

ISHAN  I don't know about the original poster, but I a)did make a donation to CCC and b) did buy and use SuperDuper daily. For whatever reason, SuperDuper makes copies of my 700 GB of data much faster (whether for the first time or as incremental backups) much faster than ccc 3.0.1. I have used SuperDuper backups for weeks while the original drive was waiting warranty replacement, without any hiccups whatsoever. I respect Mr. Bombich enormously, and he has no obligation to support his donationware. I am a bit disheartened by the snide comments made by some of his helpers on the bombich forums site for CCC. Why is that necessary? We're trying to increase the Mac user base, not the opposite...

Anyway, my $0.02...  
(Version 3.0.1)

ISHAN  This is a rather attractive alternative to Process Viewer, but...the constant "PAY" in 192 point type which completely obscures the window is simply put, obnoxious. And to make matters worse, their web page feedback mechanism is broken. Would it be that much to ask to have an unrestricted 14-day trial period before the application has to be purchased to be used? Why alienate potential customers with nag messages which destroy the entire flow of a well-crafted interface? $20 is not a lot of money, but I'm not spending it on an app which I can't even use for a minute or two without being interrupted by a nag screen which obscures the data that I need to use while working on software.

Ishan Bhattacharya, MD  
(Version 2.6.2)

ISHAN  I wouldn't call Onyx reliable. I've had it do serious damage (i.e., an unbootable system) after what would should have been a simple font/user cache cleaning. MacPilot is feature rich, and I like the many options. The most sophisticated IMHO is TinkerTool System, but you get what you pay for, in terms of GUI. The simplest, and one which I always have installed is AppleJack, which works only in single user mode and avoids a lot of the problems that all of the other system maintenance utilities can cause in an actively running system.  
(Version 2.2.5)

ISHAN  Unfortunately, I see nothing with the word "Afloat" in my Crashreporter log listings. I looked in the SystemUIServer crashlog and other likely logs (on the system running 10.4.8)I'll give it another try, but it was a bit unnerving when I had the problem the first time around. Thanks for your response.

Ishan Bhattacharya  
(Version 1.0b4)

ISHAN  After installing and immediately upon clicking the checkbox in the prefpane, all open apps (including the Finder) crashed. The Finder kept restarting itself every few seconds. I was able to open the System Prefs long enough to uncheck the checkbox in the prefpane. The crashing stopped. I restarted and everything appears OK. I haven't looked at the CrashReporter logs to see what the conflict is on the two systems I tried (both MacPros with 5 GB RAM, one running 10.4.8, the other running a beta of 10.5).

It may be helpful to have all running apps quit before install and that a Finder restart will (should) be done by Afloat after install.

Ishan Bhattacharya  
(Version 1.0b4)

ISHAN  Just a brief note that those using betas of 10.4.8 should definitely not try the Front Row Enabler 1.3.  
(Version 1.3)

ISHAN BHATTACHARYA  This screensaver is, in a word, disgusting. What's the point of showing a crippled man limping across the screen. Is that somehow funny?  
(Version 1.0)