RUBAIYAT  Boy do I hate that pestering pop-up!!!

I do NOT want to spend anymore time testing this.

Is this a German thing? Papyrus also has an aggravating trial mode.

Just a suggestion, when you are demoing your wares the customer is hardly going to think nice thoughts if you are constantly poking them with a stick and saying well?!  
(Version 5.0)

RUBAIYAT  On further playing around with this I discovered the format bar, and some of the missing things I was looking for.

But not all by far. I don't find the tiny icons legible or obvious at all. Same with the pop up menu off the gear icon bottom left of the window.Also I think this is a somewhat unorthodox UI, better to leave it clear what is where and what is going on.

The rescale view slider appears to be buggy, or I don't get when and how it works. You can slide it up to max enlargement but it won't slide back.

It feels very much an exploration of all the Cocoa GUI elements without restrained sensibility of what should go with what. A bit like DTP where every single formatting option is used, just because you can!  
(Version 5.0)

RUBAIYAT  Fully agree about the peeving reminder. Just give us 30 dyas to make our mind up.

On first tests it seems fast responsive and clean.

The Inspector panel is the wrong style however for a text editor. The dev. has taken the graphics palettes of iPhoto instead of the text palettes of iWork. Paler grey text on a dark grey background is not good legibility.

The snippets is a great idea however.

There doesn't seem to be a way to have named styles or line spacing or lists that I could discover.

Nor headers, footers, footnotes, line numbering, highlighting, backgrounds, hyperlinks etc etc.

I think this is a work in progress, still I look forward to future versions.  
(Version 5.0)

RUBAIYAT  Love iText Pro and glad it is getting an update, especially that it finally has an English manual.

Things I'd like to see in the next release:

1. A Cocoa style Inspector like Pages and Bean. The present layout whilst it works is a bit of a rough shambles and it can be hard finding settings.

2. A proper update installer, currently you drag the later version into the Applications and then have to manually get rid of the old one.

3. Floating resizable images. If iText had this it would be near perfect. I am already using it for a mini DTP app.

4. Retain hyperlinks when making into pdfs. Heaven :) !  
(Version 3.2)

RUBAIYAT  Spot colors are missing from OSX output, full stop! …and also PDF/X-3 is also a screww up.

You will need to go to a Pro DTP app like InDesign or Quark XPress to get past this. They don't use Apple's booby trapped print engine.

Thank you Apple for screwing up the computer that invented DTP!  
(Version 1.16)

RUBAIYAT  Try iText Express [free] or iText Pro [US$15].

They are so seriously good! How did they not make your list?  
(Version 2.6.1)

RUBAIYAT  I got this because Apple screwed up the save location of Preview in Leopard.

Whilst I use it and it is definitely my best current solution, I wish it was not so much of a screen hog and had both better methods and a well written manual.

My ideal would be an app. that simply *defaults* back to the last opened location. Anything *else* should take my intervention. Also it should hold a location in list view, and surface at the correct location when going up the nested directory, just as SuperBoomerang used to do in the Classic Mac OS.

The large black skirt around the save dialog box is obstructive, covering up large areas of Finder that I want to click on and gets dislocated from the save dialog box if you move it.

The manual has me itching to blue pencil everything. I am in the process of rewriting it (if I can make sense of it) just to work out what to do.  
(Version 4.2)

RUBAIYAT  I think the developer hasn't paid his ISP bill.

The DL fails with a "no permissions to read file" error. Something similar happens in French when you go directly to his site.  
(Version 1.2)

RUBAIYAT  Thank you very much Tobias for filling in this gaping hole in OSX and many of Apple's Cocoa apps. :)

One comment I got from another user I recommended this to is that it saves on the time interval whether anything has changed or not. Any chance of letting it skip the save instead?

R.  
(Version 1.0.2)

RUBAIYAT  There must be something else going on in your set-up.

It has never, ever crashed for me, in fact it is so solid that it never occurred to me to be an issue. There were a few other issues, but never stability.  
(Version 2.3.1)

RUBAIYAT  What is it with this XMind ID?

I own a copy of XMind and just want to get an update and can't get past the log-in.

Frustrated occupant of the real world trying to get into this "Members Only Enclave".

Is XMind "Restricted"?  
(Version 3.0.3)

RUBAIYAT  In a vain cry for common sense, could we keep DL names the same as their contents?

Ho5? Is this the Pick a Prostitute game, I've been hearing so much about?

The game itself is quite addictive but the graphics got a tacky and unnecessary makeover from the Classic original.

I can't say how many wonderful hours I have spent battling species only differentiated from myself by temperature an gravity.

I have the older version, not sure it is worth $30 to get PCish graphics and a few more spaceships I can find no use for.

Now a few wormholes and 5th dimension portals, might convince me.  
(Version 5.0.5)

RUBAIYAT  Pages is an amazing amalgam of tantalising features and poor implementation.

If all you want to do is open up one of the very attractive templates and substitute your own material you will be reasonably happy. Try to make it do anything serious or make major alterations or try to create your own material and you will be confounded at almost every turn.

Despite being a clean sheet in design, it has been patched and patched again to try and make it fill some of the demands of its users. The patches add features in odd and inconsistent ways, some of which work - sort of. What doesn't get patched is what is wrong with this program.

The first thing that got patched was what has become 2 modes, Word Processing and Layout. As it was a bit of a dog's breakfast trying to be a Word Processor and a DTP program at the same time, Apple split the 2. You diverge at the point of selecting a starting template, then can't go back.

Some features work in one mode and some in the other. Apple makes hardly any effort to let the user know which does which. Crazily enough the only master pages are in the WP mode. The Layout mode just makes predesigned sheets which aren't retrospective they are like photo copies of the layout. Despite showing options for facing pages, the pages ignore them except for headers and footers. You actually have to create Layout versions for each side and manually put them in the right order. If you have headers and footers they will twist from one side to the other irregardless of whatever else is on the page.

There is no layers, no direct selection tool (for Pete's sake, what millenium is this?) the master pages are primitive in the extreme and only exist for WP mode, there are no named colors that you can systematically use in styles and retrospectively change, no spot colors, no crop marks, no real support for commercially ready pdf files (there may appear to be but they fail), reflections, shadows and text over bitmaps are rendered at a ridiculous 72dpi. I could go on for ever, but there just isn't room.

Apple frankly lies about the MsOffice compatibility. It saves and opens Word format files but has so many problems it is better avoided.

This is classic Apple post Steve Jobs' 2nd coming, all style and very little substance.

It is hard to believe that this is the child of the company that virtually started the DTP revolution and wrote the book on User Interfaces.  
(Version 4.0.1)

RUBAIYAT  What is the point of DivX Pro 7?

By enclosing the h264 content in a Matroska container all they have done is made yet another @#$% format. In this case they are even incompatible with the previous DivX/XviD players.

Is there some way of simply moving the h264 out of the DivX files into a .mov file instead?  
(Version 7.0)

RUBAIYAT  I am wondering if it is worth upgrading from Toast version to the full version.

Whilst the RE version that comes with Toast works reasonably well, there are quirks. Because the search and find is cumbersome for catalogs of for instance my RIPed DVDs, I make up an indexed list by copying from the DiskCatalogMakerRE list, hopefully as large a range as I can, usually from each archive disk.

Unfortunately it is extremely difficult to select the text. I have tried everything: holding down modifier keys, double or multiple clicking, sliding into each part, clicking on a higher hierarchy then a lower. When I finally succeed I have no idea why. Sometimes it just stubbornly won't let me select the text at all.

I have exported the data as text hoping to clean it up and use that but it doesn't produce a clean tab delimited text file. Volume names run into file and folder names. The only tabs are used to separate the file size data and creator dates.

The developers are uncontactable, the website offers no feedback, forums nor contact emails. This certainly bodes ill for me should I upgrade to the full version and still encounter these problems.

More than a shame really, why would you want to hide from your users and their potentially useful suggestions and bug reports?  
(Version 6.0.2b2)

RUBAIYAT  I have Ripped a DVD. Handbrake can not see or open the RipIt package containing the VIDEO_TS folder, so I have dragged the VIDEO_TS folder out of the package and Handbrake still can not see it let alone open it.

When you go to RipIt's Help menu it just takes you to a feedback link.

An odd way to assure potential customers that your software works!

Why would you put the extracted RIP in a package in the first place?

I think a modicum of instructions would be a good idea for an app that has such a minimalist UI.  
(Version 1.2.5)

RUBAIYAT  No DivX files on the web?

You have to be kidding surely! It is almost the de rigour standard for the Net.

You rarely see a H264, just like AAC, more's the pity.  
(Version 7.0)

RUBAIYAT  Digital fast food?

If I install this, will my Mac start smelling of that strangely plastic looking American cheese, and beef tallow?

Looks cute, the developers will no doubt cash in on a supplemental diet game. :)  
(Version 1.0.1)

RUBAIYAT  The fact that the Quartz PDF/X-3 filters do not support spot colors should not stop you.

I wouldn't wait for Apple to fix a problem they don't own up to having.  
(Version 1.16)

RUBAIYAT  There are no recent file conversions that I can see.

Not even anything for the iWork apps which are some of them already up to v4.

Unfortunately this is really only for those still using the Classic Mac OS.  
(Version 16.0010)

RUBAIYAT  Well its official now.

It has been abandoned. No more. Deceased. Joined the choir investibule. Gone with the Norwegian Blue to a better place…  
(Version 1.0.3)

RUBAIYAT  I really can not see the point of these programs. Except for the ability to fill in pdf forms just about everything else can be done in Preview in OSX 10.5.

What Mac users really need is a method for distilling postscript files or checking for adequate resolution and to convert rgb intrusions in cmyk .pdfs going to commercial printers.

Neat and fast ways of splitting up multi-page pdfs for importing into Cocoa apps would be good as well.

I agree with all the other posters that this is the laziest port of software I have seen in a long time and I would not dream of paying what they are asking.

Maybe the message will hit home and they will do some work on this after realising that the Mac market is not as desperate as the PC market.  
(Version 5.51)

RUBAIYAT  Avoid Clips like the plague, which it strongly resembles. Odd things happened in Finder after I installed it.

I tried it and, after deciding I didn't want it, was unable to get rid of it. It is like a leech except one you can not find and burn off. The only presence is the app icon in Finder which seems to auto launch and thereafter not show up as a running app. You can't trash the app while it is running, it has no uninstall, nor any information on how to do it. You can not Force quit it in Finder because it doesn't show in Force Quit Applications.

I went twice to their site to ask how to unstall it and my postings were simply removed without reply.

Eventually I thought to try Activity Monitor, which found it and quit it so I can trash it. I hope that is the last I see of it. EVER!!! There is another nasty ClipsHelper which I can't find to trash.

Where is that sharpened wooden stake and silver bullet, just in case it comes back?  
(Version 1.3)

RUBAIYAT  This is one program that has outstayed its welcome and I can't get rid of.

How do you uninstall it?  
(Version 1.3)

RUBAIYAT  Gorgeous, functional and the best PIM/Stickies I have ever used.

A couple of questions I had were quickly answered by the developer.

This should be on everybody's desktop. I look forward to integration with iCal and other embellishments.

The developer should be absolutely proud of this productivity aid.  
(Version 1.21)

RUBAIYAT  Wow I remember weaning an Advertising studio from RSG to Quark in 1988.

A quick look at this and it seems time has stood still, even down to the System 7 look.

Some modern word processors now have more advanced features.

I was curious since this is ex Dubai, whether it supported R to L text but it gave no mention on the site. Instead it sought to impress me with the fact that you can drag text and images around the screen and link text boxes!

Sorry my first child's first words were amazing, but now that he is nearing 18 I am more impressed if he can articulate himself convincingly. RSG seems to approaching senility without having left the creche in 2 decades.  
(Version 7.7.7)

RUBAIYAT  I am always keen to see a new challenger in the DTP stakes, particularly one using Cocoa and I give full marks to the developer for having given this a go.

However I can not see it as being anything other than a beta. It is usable as it is and will take considerably more work.

From common things such as drag and drop doesn't work, to oddities in graphics where images are oddly cropped within objects. Selecting from the type list is slow and odd. The drawing tools don't behave like any I've ever used before and I have used a lot.

Cosmetics issues hit you in the eye, such as the tool icons being clumsily large, shapes that don't distort intelligently, and are just so-so built in clipart. Why implement stars as separate objects according to how many points they have? Why are we required to nominate an image type before importing? Why are there no preferences? Why use a slider in the Inspector palette just because it is laid out poorly and nothing fits?

I AM impressed by so much functionality included at this point of its development, just not how it has been included, nor to claiming it is final release. I repeat this is a beta in all but name.

I would be much more enthusiastic if it was a fully Cocoa app with all its standard UI, icons and simplified conventions. Beat Pages at its own game, which is not hard as there is a lot missing and not right still in Pages.

I am sitting back and seeing if this becomes another Pixelmator, which has had a great deal more aesthetic thought put into it. As it stands it is a diamond in the rough.  
(Version 1.0.4)

RUBAIYAT  You have to wonder about a developer whose .dmg installer opens as text in a browser.

I must write that book "The Idiots Guide to Software Distribution".

It would include dumb names or acronyms that don't match the application name, oddball archives, instant decompression that leaves you with NO archive, no instructions, no explanation of the software ("I know, so you must"), peculiar and awkward registration, pugly interface and icons, manuals in Amharic, no manuals, dead links, etc, etc.  
(Version 1.0.3)

RUBAIYAT  Terrific navigation tool. I miss MenuStrip and this does most of what that did.

Having scattered features everywhere (or "somewhere") may be the "OSX Way" but it is frankly stupid and inefficient. But then that fits some people.  
(Version 2008r3)

RUBAIYAT  The link is broken. The developer's site is completely under construction.  
(Version 2.0.1)

RUBAIYAT  I have noted how many complaints there are about the bugginess of iBank.

Unfortunately I have paid for it. What is the consensus for the last usable version? And how do you get older versions?   
(Version 3.2.1)

RUBAIYAT  All the links are dead on iSnip.  
(Version 1.4)

RUBAIYAT  I have been using iText Express, by the same author, for years now and have shifted up to iText Pro '08 for 2 reasons. First that it is so fast with even more features and second I figure I owe him, BIG TIME :)

Honestly do yourself a favor , DL this and only use it for a short while to see how fast, responsive and featured this TextEditor/Word Processor/DTP/Multi-Media app is.

I use it to manage my work, correspondence, websnippets, DLs, Tutorials, pdf creation… you name it and I am finding new uses for it everyday. It is the one program I have perpetually open and am using virtually 90% of the day.

I can not understand for the life of me why Mac users moan about MsWord or Pages when there is such a wonderful alternative. I'm a hardened and cynical long time Mac user and I can not help but gush at just how good this program is.

If you want to be cheap get iText Express, otherwise go up a notch and support great Mac software and buy the very cheap iText Pro '08!  
(Version 3.1)

RUBAIYAT  Well they certainly are responsive!

Now that it includes MP3, Ogg Vorbis and FLAC this is a no brainer. They also adjusted the price, so I got the bundle with Resizer and Renamer4Mac.

Well worth it, if only all developers were this good.

I look forward to more to come.  
(Version 1.3)

RUBAIYAT  Quite a nice simple DTP program with some surprising features (and some omissions).

I turned to Swift because of frustrations with Pages' inability to produce spot colors and bought the clipart as well.

The ClipArt is pretty cheesy and looks just like the wmf stuff you get with PCs. I don't think I would have bothered if I'd known. The templates are fairly ordinary as well, but some like that.

It is built around Cocoa so appears familiar to most modern Mac users, but it is not as refined in design and polish as iWorks.

Still the price is about right for what it does.  
(Version 2.3)

RUBAIYAT  This looks like just what I need. It is extremely frustrating that Apple doesn't support its own "Core" graphics format in iPhoto.

I have been converting most of my Postscript vector artwork and documents into pdfs and this may just let me organise and get a handle on them.

I ma just starting to use it so I hope that it will let me toss duplicates, quickly tag files and create smart folders.

It doesn't seem to have iPhoto's stack feature which is a shame, nor does it seem to let me access my Yep library through palettes in Pages or other cocoa apps that let you get at your photos in iPhoto. If it could do these 2 tricks I'd happily give it 10 stars, 5 a piece! s:-)  
(Version 1.7.9)

RUBAIYAT  Oddly enough the people at Handbrake virtually insist that you should:

1. RIP with DVD2oneX

2. Use Handbrake in the command line interface

If you don't, you end up wiping a lot of geek spit off your face if you have the effrontery to go to their forums with questions.

Personally I never got DVDoneX to work for me and have stuck with my tried and true MacTheRipper/Handbrake workflow.  
(Version 2.2.1)

RUBAIYAT  If you use the Safari method, make sure you start loading the page then cmd-period stop it before DLing the video through the Activity menu.

If you don't, you will end up DLing it twice. TubeSock is for DLing it just once.  
(Version 2.0.3)

RUBAIYAT  Well it was quick and easy… but it seems to be using the same routines as the built in OSX conversion functions.

I have a hyge requirement for converting .ps and .eps files to .pdf and this seemed a Godsend, given the way Preview works now in Leopard it makes it slow and clumsy to convert & save to where you want your files.

A quick check showed that it is still not a match for Preview though. The converted files are from 2 to 2.5 times the size of the ones saved from Preview. The same result I got from using Automator scripts and AppleScript to batch convert.

I also agree that at this stage of its development, where it does not cover all bases, it is somewhat expensive for a utility.

btw I cannot see what's the problem with converting AAC and MP3's. Just batch convert them in iTunes. Ogg Vorbis, FLAC etc aren't supported but you can do those in Toast.

If the developer did however include them in Dragoman it could dramatically simplify the process, but I saw no provision to control bitrate or quality.  
(Version 1.1)

RUBAIYAT  Solace won't launch in Leopard on my machines.

Says "Unable to read the dictionary of the application or extension because it is not scriptable".

Then opens Script Editor.  
(Version 1.045)

RUBAIYAT  How does it compare to A Better FIle Renamer?  
(Version 2.0)

RUBAIYAT  Same here, seems his webhost is closing down.  
(Version 1.1)

RUBAIYAT  Lux is way better than iConquer both in appearance, versatility and the enormous number of game variations.

Best fun is creating your own games although the drawing tools look like stuff I was using back in the early 80's. The help could be better written as well, but the forums are very active to make up for that.  
(Version 5.7)

RUBAIYAT  I too had problems with broken registration but Ovis quickly fixed it for me. When I move to my new iMac I'll have to get them to assist me again.

It is not very smooth in operation. You have to drag each pdf into the window and click a confirmation, but despite that it does the job.

Nice would be batch processing and to nominate how it renames unlocked files. because it puts a tilde in front of the name, you have to hunt for the copy somewhere else up the top of the folder.  
(Version 4.0.2)

RUBAIYAT  You can join files in Fission but unfortunately the method is clumsy and unpredictable.

You drag the additional files into the visualiser window. The only trouble is telling where it drops. It takes repeated attempts to get it to even drop at the end of a file and careful as you might be it still occassionally drop elsewhere, screwing up your file.

Definitely unusable for joining.

The excessive use of GUI also makes it sluggish and jerky.

It also doesn't let you edit common data in multiple divisions and doesn't have the sense to default to last entry or auto fill from the original file name.

Oddly the equaliser doesn't work on anything but the entire file, so you can't pick out a particularly flat bit, but requires you to select the entire file before it will work.

It also took me a while to work out what it was going to do when exporting. It seems to suggest that only one file will be exported and that using the original file name, which is a bit worrying if you think it is going to replace your original.

It feels still very rough around the edges.  
(Version 1.5.2)

RUBAIYAT  I've used this wonderful app since almost it first hit the Mac's desktop.

It is the best utility for cropping MP3s and joining multiple MP3s into one file. Despite its quirks it is still the fastest and most straight forward method of doing this.

Fission has some good features because it is more visual and handles other audio formats, but MP3 Trimmer seems less sluggish and certainly less confusing. You can never be sure where a drag and drop ends up in Fission and once it is in there is no clue as to the original file.

A few draw backs. The Joiner scrambles the file order when dragged from List view, you need to drag from column view. Reordering within join is clumsy. The joiner also hides the file name whilst joining and needs to be closed and reopened for every join. There is really no way to batch process. files.  
(Version 2.8)

RUBAIYAT  Be aware that this is really only functional for USA users.

If you are outside the USA, chances are the barcode sources it looks up have no idea what your barcodes mean.

I tested books, CDs and DVDs. I got a book that was published in The USA, all the rest failed.  
(Version 1.6.6)

RUBAIYAT  I bought DVDremaster based on the recommendations here. Previously I used Handbrake & MacTheRipper.

I was trying to play out-of-region DVDs and have been totally unsuccessful. FairMount chews at the DVD forever. I cancelled after 12 hrs and only 1.1 Gb all of which reported as bad sectors.

I then tried it on a regular DVD to test if that worked. Again no success.

The UI isn't even a match for Handbrake, which itself wouldn't win any awards.

I emailed the developer but got an automated response that he is unavailable till some time in March.

I am totally puzzled as to what I have got for my money.  
(Version 4.2)

RUBAIYAT  I searched for a long time to replace my ideal Disk cataloguer Disk Recall when it failed to update to OSX.

When I got this with Toast I was more than happy. It is reliable, reasonably intuitive and fast, does batch scanning and auto-scan & eject of CDs, allows correction of disk names and separate libraries for different categories.

The search function is a little odd, depending where you do it, I am never quite sure it is searching one or all libraries. I'd also love to search across multiple parameters.

It also tends to dump scanned volumes into the default library even though I would rather it go into the foremost library, then I have to drag the scanned volumes across to where I really want them.

All in all it does most of what you want, has a clear pleasant legible interface and works well with Toast, cataloguing each disk as you burn it.  
(Version 4.3b1)

RUBAIYAT  Nice game with nice graphics.

Only one map which is quickly exhausted. The rolling of the dice during attacks and game thinking can be quite slow and, after a while, exasperating.

Especially annoying is when a defeated opponent has no more territory but has a few ships loitering about, it still takes ages to resolve a turn which essentially does nothing.

Mostly stable but I can almost predictably crash the game when I minimise the game and then resize it.

I get bored with it, don't play it for ages, then give it another go on an occassional slack day.

If only you could have alternate maps or vary the action in other ways. Space ships? Asteroids? Underground caverns?  
(Version 1.045)

RUBAIYAT  I spend more time in this app than almost any other.

I use it for text/word processing and simple DTP/Multi-Media presentations. It is simple, fast and completely reliable.

It is just a shame that it is not getting updated or given universal support. The interface could use a tidy up as well.

I will continue using it on my G5 iMac until a better alternative comes along. Bean is looking good, and just needs to adopt some of iText Express's features to be my ideal word processor.  
(Version 2.1)

RUBAIYAT  I love the clean simple interface and it seems to do a much better job of importing Word files with all formatting in place (but I note that some users report issues with tables).

I use iText Express for nearly all my word processing/lite DTP/lite Multi-Media needs.

Whilst it is very good and has features like multiple columns, footnotes, headers, footers line counts, bookmarking, etc it is not being updated and doesn't have universal binary.

When Bean gets what iText Express has it will be a no-brainer to switch.

It is really nice to use. Like he says if opening up MsWord leaves you depressed... switch to Bean.  
(Version 0.9.11)