TEKSESTRO  I intended to use of EagleFiler as an email archival program. As such, I expected that the program would enable me to effectively archive old messages, while enabling me to search through and access them as needed, in the future. Unfortunately, the program seems to be impossibly slow when dealing with reasonably large amounts of email data, which renders it useless to email archival purposes.

My email database has over 50,000 messages, which I've accumulated only in the last 3 years. Exporting these messages from Mail is in itself a chore, as the Mail functions choke on mailboxes that contain over 3,000 messages. Because of that, when exporting truly large mailboxes - such as my 'Sent' or 'Inbox' boxes - I have to 'break down' the export into several .mbox files, each containing less than the 3,000 maximum number of messages. As a result, for large mailboxes, I end up with a series of files - "sent_1.mbox", "sent_2.mbox", etc. - which then will have to be re-compiled together by the importing program. In total, I exported about 20 mbox files, which I then proceeded to import into EagleFiler.

Importing and re-assembling the mailboxes in EagleFiler took over 16 hours in total. Although EagleFiler seems to import an mbox file quite quickly, it has no function to allow you to merge mailboxes. Therefore, the only solution is to create a new folder, and move all of the email messages from the individual mailboxes into that folder. Should be a simple operation, but when selecting and dragging 3,000 messages, EagleFiler would make me wait up to 4 minutes on my MacBook with a spinning beachball before giving me any visual feedback that it had not crashed. Actually transferring each message from the imported mailbox into the new folder takes a lot longer.

Trying to save time, I would try to perform 2 transfers simultaneously. Both transfers would start, and continue for a while, but without fail, eventually one of them would 'get stuck' while transferring a message, and then the whole program would freeze with a spinning beachball. After about 15 minutes waiting for the program to try and recover itself, I would have to force-quit it, re-open it, and start the transfers again.

Once all 50,000 messages were transferred, I found that actually using the program was nearly impossible, due to endless waits and lags that appear everywhere:

* opening the program takes over 2 minutes, with no visual feedback given that anything is happening

* every time the program opens, it checks the entire database to see if it needs re-indexing - this leaves the program unresponsive and sluggish for anything up to 6 minutes

* trying to view *any* single email brings up the spinning beachball, and a delay of about 10-15 seconds

In summary: EagleFiles seems to be absolutely useless when dealing with large amounts of data. It seems that a lot more optimisation needs to happen on the code, before the program can be of any use for longer-term archival of email or other large quantities of data.

It seems to me that this application was designed to 'collect' together a SMALL amount of information, such as documents, pictures, emails, and random bits of information that might belong to a project. At those tasks, it may do an acceptable job, although other, older and more feature-full apps exist that already fill that market - such as DevonThink. As an email or large archival/data storage utility, it fails miserably.  
(Version 1.4.5)

TEKSESTRO  Cons: Interface of admin tools seems unpolished and unintuitive. Using the command-line still necessary for several admin and management operations. No easy Preference Panel for starting/stopping server or setting generic server settings. Too little instruction given during installation. Uninstaller leaves files behind in system, which need to be removed manually.

Pro: currently, the most complete and stable version of PostgreSQL for MacOS X. 3 versions (all FREE) available - 'higher' versions include pre-configured optional extensions and plug-ins to PostgreSQL, suitable for grid computing or spatial data storage - with paid professional support options, if needed.  
(Version 8.3)

TEKSESTRO  Developer, please note:

1) uninstaller is missing

2) query tool installed by default (during the server install) is BAD - it seems to have been compiled as a PPC only, and not as a universal binary, so it won't run on my Intel machine.

3) documentation provided needs urgent updating, including: instructions for manual uninstall (in case the uninstaller goes missing again, or user is unable to run it), instructions for drag-install of client tools, and a basic troubleshooting guide (telling users what to do if the server does not seem to launch)

Your efforts to bring PostgreSQL to the Mac are certainly appreciated. Please, keep up the good work.  
(Version 8.3.5)

TEKSESTRO  The Runtime Revolution folks seem to have been hard at work - and it shows. Not only is version 3 a major and worthwhile upgrade, but also:

1) the developers have been sistematically squashing bugs and increasing the feature set of the application.

2) the Revolution community has been nurtured by the makers, and the happiness shows - at least for a newbie like me. It seems incredibly active, welcoming and helpful, and the developers participate actively in it.

3) the developers have listened to customers complaints about cost, and have brough the price down.

I admit, that I had given up on Revolution - 'round about version 2 - but this new version 3 made me want to use it again. I think now I don't really have an reasonable excuse not to renew my old license...  
(Version 3.0)

TEKSESTRO  I would *love* to be able to use the iPhone to interview people for podcasts, or to record phone conversations, for the same purpose. Unfortunately, the current iPhone development toolkit released by Apple does not allow developers to add recordings to the music playlist, or to sync in any way with iTunes, or with the Mac. So, the developers have been forced to make the user use *email* in order to have access to their recordings in their computer. A very awkward solution.

Until Apple provides a way for the developers to do syncing, these types of apps are going to have rather limited usage.   
(Version 2.0)

TEKSESTRO  THIS IS NOT A MACINTOSH PROGRAM.

This is a web-app, developed as a server-side script on PHP. Allowing the developers to list it here give the Macintosh community that this is a package that is either developed specifically for the Mac, or that it is cross-platform, but widely known and adopted by the Mac community. Neither of which is true.

There are many other opensource wiki packages out there, which in my personal opinion, run just as well on any PHP-enabled server, and are more Mac-like and widely adopted than this. Do yourself a favour, and check out the competition at a site that is specifically setup to review these open source projects - not MacUpdate. Start by visiting:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/  
(Version 2.2b66)

TEKSESTRO  It's great to see that development of Smile continues!   
(Version 3.3.1)

TEKSESTRO  It seems that development of FaceSpan has stopped. That's a pity...  
(Version 4.3)

TEKSESTRO  This is a fantastic little app, and a real gem among the outliners/listers available on the Mac.

My gripes with the program seem to be the same that other reviewers have:

* too long between updates - ok, this is not their flagship app, but they should not wait so long as to make their current userbase feel neglected. I remember when OmniGraffle and this were is more-or-less equivalent version numbers, and now there is already a huge discrepancy between them. OmniGraffle has increased in its complexity and list of functions, and even has some of OmniOutliner's capabilities built into it now...

* there are several *little* nagging problems, which have been pointed out by users (including me) over the years to the developers, and which remain without solution. Example: OmniOutliner has a "Duriation"-type column, but this 'duration' means only hours, days and months. I need to keep duration in MINUTES, and have it automatically total the minutes into hours. Not only does it refuse to do that, it insists on interpreting "33m" or "33 mins" or "33' " as 33 months. If I simply type '33', it interprets this as 'hours'. While this is not a *major* flaw, it is just one of several *pesky* little limitations, which should have been addressed a long time ago, and stop the program from going from 'good' to 'fantastic'.

OmniGroup, please, do give OmniOutliner some attention, and keep up the good work. It *is* appreciated.  
(Version 3.6.5)

TEKSESTRO  Transmission just gets better and better with every new release. I have been using it now for several versions, and it has been a trustworthy little addition to my download arsenal.

It is easy to use - even total newbies to torrents can set it up and get going within a minute - and I have used it from inside a wide variety of networks (wireless, through multiple routers, etc.) without any problems - ever.

The interface is helpful, succinct, and nicely thought out. If you are a torrent user, you should certainly check it out.  
(Version 1.21)

TEKSESTRO  This program should not be listed in MacUpdate.

This is not a Macintosh product. It is a CMS written in PHP, with a very clear focus on the Windows market. Content editor does not even support Safari - even though a *Windows* version of Safari already exists.

It is clear that this is a PC developer, who is just using Macupdate to try to push their product onto a new market - which they obviously know very little about.

For Mac users - or serious web developers and system administrators who want to provide clients with a product that *is* truly Mac-compatible - I suggest having a look at one of the MANY, *truly* FREE and OPEN SOURCE CMS solutions that can be browsed and tried out at:

http://www.opensourcecms.com/  
(Version 4.4)

TEKSESTRO  Vi/Vim is, of course, an extremely powerful text editor, which is infamously difficult to learn. In my experience, it is THE hardest text editor to learn, often requiring several months before the new user feels that they are starting to feel comfortable with the new tool.

Even as recently as a couple of years ago, this kind of time investment was worthwhile, if you were a programmer, who had to spend a lot of your day in front of the computer, juggling different graphical text editors who provide only half of the features set you need for any language. There was nothing this powerful available.

Unfortunately for vi/vim, now there certainly is. Editors like TextMate now have a much gentler learning curve, while still providing the user with a fantastically wide feature set, and an amazing level of customisation. Other editing environments, like Panic's CODA, have concentrated on a different approach, helping you save time not by filling up the editor with thousands of specific text-production features, but by combining the functionality of several pieces of software into one, which saves up even MORE juggling time.

This port of vim is certainly well done. It is stable, and more Mac-like than anything out there. It is still very powerful, but becoming less so, as other editors catch up, and start providing features which vim does not have. For instance: easy project management features (ie., having a folder view) would be a welcoming addition, which would not be too difficult to implement.

Vim does provide some wonderful text-production features, but that is ALL it provides. If these were coupled with some of the easy and time-saving workflow features now present in the majority of other text editors out there, then vim's steep learning curve would be more attractive. As it stands, the vast majority of users will prefer to use tools that are easier to grasp, and which - in the long run - will save them just as much time as vim would.  
(Version 24)

TEKSESTRO  Fantastic program - easier to use than MYOB or Quicken. Technical support is responsive, friendly and helpful. Program is stable and feature-full. Only criticism I can muster is that it lacks a 'Wages/Salary' calculation section, like MYOB has (wages and their complicated sliding-scale taxes have to be calculated and entered manually).

Still better value than any other accounting package I've come across.  
(Version 5.1.1)

TEKSESTRO  The support for MYOB is infamous - and has been so for a *very* long time.

Even though it is supposed to help you "mind your own business", not many small (or even medium-sized) business owners who have been able to setup their books in MYOB out of the box, without having to call the help of an accountant. The program's interface is unfriendly and unhelpful, even for an accounting package.

MYOB made their name in the day when there were not many viable alternatives for small-business accounting, and (a bit like Microsoft) have become arrogant over their success in the industry.

It was not until I switched to another package (MoneyWorks), which follows sound accounting principles, and *IS* easy to setup and use, that I started to feel just how *bad* things had been with MYOB.

Conclusion: shop around. There are less expensive and more helpful alternatives.  
(Version 2008)

TEKSESTRO  This app is a little GEM! Outstanding!

I've been using it for development of Ruby on Rails apps, and it has certainly added to the fun. Having the built-in terminal, preview and editor panes certainly helps minimise the screen clutter.

But where it really gets you is in the 'eye-candy'. The DOM inspector, the graphical CSS editor, code snippets, visual RegEx builder... and to top it off, code hints and online reference for php, javascript and html built right in. Fantastic!  
(Version 1.1)

TEKSESTRO  I have accompanied the development of RealBasic since version 2. As the latest versions of RealBasic have now been developed with RealBasic itself (or so we're told), the developers seem to have become aware of the many bugs that have plagued the application for years - and have been systematically correcting them.

Unfortunately, RealBasic is still releasing what basically amounts to bug-fixes, and charging their users for it. The list of 'new features' for 2007 R5, as far as I can see, doesn't actually have any new features, except for bug and stability fixes.

I have found that the type of programs you develop with RealBasic are quite limited, on all platforms. They certainly do not look Mac-like, and I have been plagued with problems in Windows and Unix. The 'code once, deploy anywhere' slogan is a fallacy, as there are quite a lot of tweaks that have to be done for specific platforms.

In summation: if you are a hobbyist programmer, or you really want to try and develop for all 3 platforms at once, you'd be better served by something like "Runtime Revolution" (the successor to HyperCard). If you want to get slightly more serious about programming, then I suggest looking at one of the (many) languages supported by XCode, Eclipse, and other free programming tools.   
(Version R5)

TEKSESTRO  as of Leopard, it seems that screen-sharing (and remote desktop controlling) are built right into the system. Is there still a need for this app?  
(Version 0.4.2)

TEKSESTRO  I never understand why Valentina is not more widely adopted and used. It is a solid, reliable, and *extremely* fast database engine, which plugs into just about every development and deployment environment. It supports a *huge* range of programming languages and environments, ranging from RealBasic and Revolution, through PHP and Ruby, to Cocoa and C++. The developer is friendly, responsive, honest, and extremely knowledgeable.

The only suggestion I could possible make, is that if pricing were slightly lower, perhaps it would be easier for hobbyists and web-developers (who usually rely heavily on open source and freeware) to confidently adopt Valentina.  
(Version 3.2)

TEKSESTRO  Still being a user of Group Organiser, it is discouraging to see, that SOHO Organiser, touted as the 'official successor', still lacks in features, stability, and usability, compared to its old predecessor.

In Group Organiser, I am able to build complex searches for my calendar - such as "all apointments that contain 'x' or 'y' in the title, and that occur on or after today" - as well as PRINT the results, in a form custom-designed by me. I still cannot do that with SOHO.

Despite being better than its previous, earlier incarnations, SOHO Organiser is still *very* buggy - far too buggy for my business records anyway. It crashes on open sometimes, and halfway through certain operations (all already reported to the developers). Uninstalling the software, as reported by others, is a cumbersome and unfriendly process.

The developers - are there more than 1? - are still, as has been widely reported for years, unable to answer all user enquiries, or sort all of their problems, with any consistency.

SOHO needs to remove this package from its list, work on it, so that its feature list at least matches that of Group Organiser, and then REBRAND IT, and re-release it. Too many users have been burned by bad experiences with this package, which has now unfortunately become infamous in the Mac community.  
(Version 6.2)

TEKSESTRO  Unfortunately, many developers seem to believe that MySQL is a 'free' product, when it isn't. Its licensing scheme is quite restrictive for professional production.

Although newer versions are more stable, have more of the *basic, required* features that make a database engine a 'true' database system (such as foreign key support, and transaction rollback), the truth is that there are other systems out there - such as the excellent and much under-used PostreSQL - which, in my experience, have a less restrictive license, are more advanced, supporting more standard features, and still just as cross-platform.  
(Version 5.0.41)

TEKSESTRO  It seems at this time that this product, unfortunately, may no longer be being developed.  
(Version 2.0.1b)

TEKSESTRO  CODA is not just 'usable', it is fantastic. It not only saves on screen clutter, but it does make editing several different types of files (html, php, sql, css, etc.) much easier than with a multitude of different specialised programs.

Although the other, specialised programs may have more/more fine-tuned controls for their specific use, I have found that even on *very* complex projects I have not needed to 'switch back' to my previous apps.

Considering that CODA is still in version 1, its interface is *very* polished, and the only challenge the developers will face is trying to keep it simple, as they will undoubtedly add a myriad of extra features in versions to come.  
(Version 1.0.3)

TEKSESTRO  Although OpenOffice.org has announced an 'official' Mac port of their software, there is still a long way to go before we can see the fruits of their labour - and then, we will have to see how that fruit compares to the already existing efforts of the excellent NeoOffice.

NeoOffice has applied several Mac-specific optimisations to the BASE OpenOffice.org code, as can be read in their update logs. Despite being a Java app, the interface is very, very Mac-like, and the package has features not found even in M$Office - such as a Database which can interface with MySQL tables.

Anyone wishing to try OpenOffice.org on the Mac, wait no longer: this is it.  
(Version 2.1 Patch 6)

TEKSESTRO  I have evaluated every minor revision of Daylite that comes out, since version 3.0. I keep coming back, and trying it again, because from a design perspective, this software has some much potential! Unfortunately, every time I try it, I must give up on it, as there are always 1 or 2 features that are deal-breakers, and whose implementation falls short.

The user-management is fantastic. Features such as 'opportunities', and projects with pipelines show a great deal of thought for business processes, and could quickly become indispensable. And the fantastically flexible and customisable reporting capabilites are amazing - and getting better with every revision.

Where the package falls apart for me is in the CALENDARING, which in my business, is the MAIN component, and where I spend most of my day. Daylite's calendar interface is, in my opinion, archaic, and buggy. Simple operations, like being able to option-drag an appointment to make a copy of it at a different time (a feature of just about every other calendaring application) does not work. Making an appointment by dragging a contact into the calendar, ignores appointment preferences (I need all my appointments to be 15 minutes long, but dragging a contact into the calendar ALWAYS creates an appointment that is 1-hour long, regardless of how I've set my preferences). Changing the status of an appointment (to, let's say, 'completed') gives you NO visual indication in the calendar - neither is there an indication for when an appointment has alarms, or is being repeated (another standard in just about every other calendaring program).

I need to make tens of appointments everyday, which often extend beyond a year, and I need to keep track of which appointments have been kept, which have been missed, and print appointment reports. So, calendaring is a pretty intensive part of my business, and although I'd truly LOVE to adopt Daylite - it would perfectly fit into all my other business processes - the calendar module still keeps letting me down.

I hope that the Daylite programmer(s) will eventually put some time aside, and update the calendaring module, to make it as feature-full and up-to-date as the rest of the program.  
(Version 3.2.3)

TEKSESTRO  My rating here is going to be biased by a little pet-hate I have: developers who develop DEMO applications, and market them as 'free'. This is just misleading, and does not help you make any friends in the user community.

This application is a DEMO. The pictures you produce with it are unusable. It is intended to let you experiment with the product's features, and then, if you like it, you have to BUY the 'real'. Nothing wrong with this marketing approach. Just do not go around calling your 'demo' a 'free' version, because you disappoint prospective users who think they really are getting something for free.  
(Version 1.006)