Application Enhancer for Mac2.6.1

Interesting: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3258 It says version 2.0.1 or earlier, suggesting that the current version should be Lion compatible. Still, Windowshade and MenuMaster both require Rosetta, which is not supported under Lion. Wonder if/when/how Unsanity will handle this.

You wanna windowshade without APE? Go here: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/36082/deskovery It's not as full-featured as Unsanity, and it's pricier, but it works. And it's not dependent on Rosetta.

I can't Login or Access Account Info on Mac App Store, Anybody else having this issue and is there any way to fix it?

Copy/Paste AFCGBBOB er, ah, gameboybob!!! Can be dangerous to your system too!

When is this thing going to get updated to 64-bit?

This is a commentary, not a review. I'm going to tell why I won't ever use Application Enhancer again, even though I loved WindowShade and I already miss it very much. I used APE and WindowShade for years. I couldn't believe it when I discovered that OS X unceremoniously did away with the window shade feature of all System 9 windows, so I was delighted to find WindowShade. The first signs of trouble showed up when WindowShade wouldn't work with certain apps. OK, fine...I just added those apps to the exclude list. Not ideal, but nothing's perfect. The list of excluded apps grew under Tiger (10.4.11), but I still stuck with WindowShade and APE as long as I could. The real problem happened when I tried to upgrade a G5 DP 2.5 to Leopard. I installed the new system on a volume that already had APE installed. The system installed, but on the reboot after install, I got a black screen, and the system wouldn't start up. The fans on the G5 spun up to full speed and stayed there. I let it run for maybe 20 seconds, but if you've ever heard a G5's fans running full-bore...well, it's a frightening sound. I forced the machine to shut down. Alas, the G5 has never been the same since. It doesn't boot from any system--Tiger or Leopard--or even from an Apple system install disk. The only way I can get it to boot is by going through Open Firmware...and even then it only boots sometimes. It appears to be a hardware problem caused by the heat generated during the failed reboot. I never suspected APE as the cause of the problem until I finally found, after hours of searching, some older posts that reported exactly the same problems with numerous cases of system upgrades from Tiger to Leopard. Apparently, the culprit was the older version of APE I was running under Tiger. I've been seeing warnings about system haxies for years. I ignored them for the simple reason that I never had a problem I could verifiably link to APE. But the destruction of the G5 has convinced me. As much as I miss WindowShade, I'm through with APE and all system haxies. It's not worth it.

Thanx to UnSanity for this update that sorta kinda fixing it so that WindowShade sorta kinda works for iTunes. It's pretty ugly looking, but it works. Thanx guys! So what the difference between Application Enhancer SDK 2.6.1 and Application Enhancer 2.6.1?

  I have made good use of several of Unsanity's products, in a professional environment. As far as I'm concerned, flawlessly under Tiger, so no complaint here. Yet, I have to agree with most comments that those people, to put it mildly, have a talent to positively defecate on their customers & users. One thing is that they ask for ideas. I did provide some suggestions to them, but never even got the slightest acknowledgment. Fair enough, maybe what I'd sent them didn't make sense in their eyes. Maybe they're too busy, I said to myself (but how come, when I was running my own online store, we ALWAYS found the time to reply to requests, even the silliest ones?) Quite different, though, the total lack of response I experienced after they finally upgraded some of their haxies so they could run under Snow Leopard. I purchased several of them, and was even granted a voucher for the purchase of other products - within a month. I wrote to Unsanity asking for a proper invoice, as the "receipt" they issue online and my mail is not considered as valid by my tax authorities. I also asked them to put me on a mailing list for when the new version of FruitMenu would be available (Soon! - their site said). And: would they kindly extend the validity of their voucher to use it when purchasing FruitMenu, as it was the only one of their utilities I still needed? Finally, I reported that their update of WindowShade compatible with Snow Leopard was causing havoc when used on multiple screens: once your windows are minimized on a secondary screen, you can't get hold of them anymore! We're talking here of straightforward Apple monitors.   To this day, and in spite of four or five reminders, I have received no reply whatsoever from Unsanity. When the update of FruitMenu was released (no warning!), the voucher had expired two days earlier. Needless to say, its validity didn't appear to have been extended when I tried to purchase online. Moreover, after reading that the upgrade was free for registered users, I tried to use my current FruitMenu key (still working fine as of a recently reinstalled Tiger). To no avail (of course?)   I once again wrote to Unsanity, by now not with the friendliest of tones. Silly me, I should have known: response = zilch. So now I'm left with my money thrown out of the WindowShade that won't work properly (not even the latest update a few days ago), and, on the bright side, finding an alternative piece of freeware, XMenu, that does in Snow Leopard some of the things FruitMenu is supposed to do, but won't be doing "on my watch."   Curiously, passwords to Unsanity's haxies are not listed in Serial Box. Makes you wonder...   Last curiosity: a note with the recent update of WindowShade stated something like "this depression is so painful". Is this the explanation? "Depression" could be one of several things, of course...

Warning Warning Will Robinson Haxies are dangerous to your system. They are not stand alone applications. When the install they install in one place they have no business fooling with: THE SYSTEM. I did an install of APE. After having problems with my Mac I did an archival install. Once done I had to go through every major system to make sure they match what was in my previous system folder. Before doing that I did an uninstall of APE and a one or two or Haxies made by Unsanity. It seems for some reason they are about the only company that write Haxies. Anyhow as I scanned my System Folder I still found pieces of Ape and other Haxies that were made by Unsanity. Nobody who writes utilities has no business writing SW that places unauthorized material in the System. To me, the System is hands off to any third party developer unless they work for Apple or are an Apple developers. You have no Idea the damage that can be caused when unauthorized components are placed in the System. What if a System Upgrade comes up and those part are incompatible with the upgrade? It can begin to make your Mac to act strange, freezes, Kernel Panics and more. It has happened on my Mac when I was first green to Haxies. Unsanity should be boycotted for placing unauthorized components in the System. They do not belong there and I for one will never use an Unsanity product until they can get it through their brains to stop putting components in the System because somewhere down the road you will get bit. The only company that should do ANY MODIFICATION to the System is APPLE. End of line...

I'm finally able to use WindowShade and FruitMenu with Application Enhancer 2.6.1. I think that after Tiger I stopped using Unsanity products, so it's nice to have these 2 back in my system. I have used Unsanity products for years, starting with Echo which was their first product IIRC. I'm not happy about the time it took, but I'm glad to see this working once again.

Well I've had haxies on my system for several years now on several different Macs and any problems I've had were insignificant and easily fixed. Unsanity is not very good at communications with customers which in the end is their real problem. That being said use this as you would all software products including Apple's with caution and a good backup strategy. Also if you don't feel comfortable using software like this don't do it and don't complain unless you've taken the time to ponder the risks and advantages fully of said software.

First of all, I don't know what version of APE it was, but... I was freelancing for a client and their aged G5 (10.5.8) was becoming more and more unstable. When switching between applications the tab key no longer worked. A file had to be saved using the mouse, not a keyboard shortcut. And when dragging a file on the desktop, it automatically generated a copy without holding down the option key. It seemed to occur when more than two applications were open at the same time, leading me to think it was faulty RAM. The only way to get past this was a restart, about six times a day. After a load of tests I suddenly noticed Application Enhancer was installed. Once removed, the problems disappeared. As previous people have said, if your machine isn't being used for business, it's worth giving this a go. Otherwise, it's probably best left alone. I'd estimate my client has lost a good four hours of my time over the last few days because of the problems above.

they are so behind, by the time you think that they will catch up, Apple comes with something new. Too bad, usefull application, and worth the money, but way behind. It won't work on my Imac, that is a year old

they are so behind, by the time you think that they will catch up, Apple comes with something new. Too bad, usefull application, and worth the money, but way behind. It won't work on my Imac, that is a year old

Application Enhancer is STILL not 64-bit -- so when is 64-bit due in the roadmap?

A week ago I was burning off files I don't use anymore, and I came across a folder full of Haxies. Remember RogueAmoebas Detour - that was a waste of twelve bucks. What about ShapeShifter and OS themes? Silk for substituting your system wide fonts. XSounds, so you can hear every mouse or key press. FontCard and LabelsX too. Unsanity were the GUI customization kings. But Haxies were generally despised and the cause of all sorts of system wide problems... said many naysayers. Well, It's been ages since I used any of Unsanities Haxies. After checking to see if they work - some do, some don't. I reinstalled FruitMenu, WindowShade and Mighty Mouse. It was a trip down memory lane. I was surprised to see how much I really missed Windowshading from OS8/9 days and still find it the most ergonomic and practical way to handle Finder windows. Minimizing to the desktop or the dock are also very cool and useful functionality to choose between. FruitMenu is very useful too, it's contextual menu is not as versatile as FinderPop. But is still great for what it does. Especially the Apple menu customization. After editing it, I find the Apple menu suddenly being used far more than I do normally. In 2004 I made some cursors for use in Mighty Mouse. Running it again, made me smile. I remember reading on the developer's blog some time ago, that it was a mistake for them to charge a one time only price for their Shareware. Free upgrades for life. He urged fellow developers never to do the same. I paid for nearly all the Haxies in late 2004. So it has been quite a while now. You can understand their reluctance to keep pace with the OS. As Apple doesn't make it easy to customize their precious GUI, plus all those Haxie haters. They have a few Betas in testing for 10.6 users. WindowShade X, FruitMenu, Labels X and Xounds. Check their website for details.

.. there may yet be hope for a new version of FontCard and MenuMaster then.. :-)

Sadly, I have to agree with the recent posts. I think Unsanity makes a great product but their behavior speaks volumes about their contempt for their customer base. They take our money and then refuse any and all communications. A new OS is released, they say in October they're working on new versions and since then, nothing. Responses to email inquiries are ignored. This is pathetic. In the strongest possible terms I encourage people to avoid Unsanity's products. On average, you'll have to live without them for 2-3 months following the release of a new OS. These guys are obviously just doing this on the side when the mood strikes and don't have a serious business, they don't take their products seriously and they certainly don't appear to really give a flying flock about their paying customers. Pity, but time to move on.

Here's Unsanity's postal address: Unsanity LLC 4340 E. Indian School Rd Ste. 21-501 Phoenix, AZ 85018 USA Maybe someone in Phoenix could visit them and see if they're still there. If they're not it could be that they've flown the coop so to speak.

I agree with a couple of previous posters. After witnessing Unsanity take an absurd amount of time to get Leopard-compatible betas out, I'm not going to waste my time hoping for Snow Leopard updates. I got rid of all my Unsanity haxies a few weeks ago in preparation for Snow Leopard, and I'm adjusting to life without them just fine. It's been fun, Unsanity, but I think it's time to move on.

It's a shame that such a useful haxie won't be ready in time for Snow Leopard's release. It seems that Unsanity is perpetually behind the curve ball when it comes to timeliness. This shouldn't come as a surprise however, and Dana Sutton is right - all the more reason to break the haxie habit. It's a shame that the devs are so slow to update.

Sorry, Eraser, Windowshade is one Haxie you can't replace. But since APE is indeed broken again under Snow Leopard, I'm using this as a reason to kick the Haxie habit once and for all (using anything that injects its code into the OS truly is a nasty habit). In S.L., as you'll see, it's easier than ever to assign keyboard equivalents to commands, and if you need to do more than that I highly recommend Keyboard Maestro. And XMenu works about as well as Fruit Menu (if you take the time, you can make aliases of frequently-used Control Panel panes). You don't really NEED Windowshade, and pretty much all the other Haxies deal with cosmetic issues that don't make your Mac any easier to use or improve you productivity.

It just ain't so, Easer. Go to Keyboard>Keyboard Shortcuts tab, hit the + to create a new shortcut, up comes a dialogue box. First item on the box is Applications. This allows you to set shortcuts on an application-by-application basis, they don't have to be universal.

You don't really need Menu Master or any other third-party utility , you can assign/reassign/eliminagte keyboard equivalents of menu commands just by going Leopard>Sys. Prefs.>Keyboafrd/Mouse>Keyboard Shortcuts, Play with it (you can use it to create commands for individual apps as well as globally - just hit the+ at the bottom of the page, specify what you want, type in the name of the menu command, and assign it a keyboard equiv.). Note: this can be used for Services commands as well, which I find hugely useful. Go to the MacWorld site, seach for "shortcuts," you'll come across links to several articles you'll probably find very useful in giving you ideas how to use this. No, there seems to be no substitute for Window Shades, but that's on my "can live without list." If Fruit Menu breaks again with Snow Leopard, there are some alternatives, not quite as good, but nearly so. X-Menu is the one that kept me going during months haxies were unavailable. Hope this all helps :)

For several years I used various Unsanity products, and never had any trouble with them. Then along came Leopard and, through no fault of Unsanity, their haxies ceased to work. Well, okay, but it took them many many months to react and get out Leopard-friendly versions. By that time, I had discovered very good substitutes for their haxies I really needed (Fruit Menu and Menu Master) and sort of got out of the haxie habit. And now I don't think I'm being entirely paranoid if I think that we may have a repeat of this with Snow Leopard. So thanks, but on the whole, I think I'll pass on anything from Unsanity until I see what way the cat jumps.

Is this a precursor to Snow Leopard? And what does "Addressed the version number" mean?

TRIPLE YEA !!!!

After installing that new version (2.5), the APE prefpane is still 2.5b2 !

OK, so APE is out of beta and there's a bona fide version 2.5. Well, I just checked and see that Mighty Mouse, Shapeshifter, and Xounds STILL don't work with Mac OSX 10.5. These are exactly the three utilities I paid for and they don't work anymore. Regarding my previous posts abut APE, I'm still dubious about the stability of APE, but in addition to this issue, why the heck would I want this if it doesn't work with any of the aforementioned utilities? The website says APE cannot destabilize the OS, but it acknowledges that certain utilities that require APE, CAN destabilize the OS. So, isn't that just doubletalk on their part, since you can't run any of their paid utilities without APE? Now I don't mean to rain on the developer's yard sale, but all I know is that they're talking out of both sides of their mouths regarding stability issues and none of the utilities I paid for even work. This is not acceptable.

Unsanity are my heroes. Their products offer features not available in OSX. In the many years I've been using their products I've never had a crash or lost work attributed to buggy Unsanity software. Always check their site for compatibility notes and updates before upgrading your OS (which one should be doing with any software before an OS upgrade).

I have owned and used FontCard, FruitMenu, Menu Master, and WindowShade. The only time the APE was an issue was when I upgraded to Leopard. Of course, this issue was widely reported. So, it was easy to get back on track. All four products I listed above are still betas for Leopard. But, I have not experienced any instability issues with installations of Leopard on my Mac's (Mac Pro, MacBook Pro, and G5 Tower) that I could trace to the APE.

Ummm, I also think Unsanity should GO BACK to the drawing board and develop something that, this time, works well with the Mac OS, and this time with LEOPARD. Do everyone a favor and don't post this stuff for sale if it isn't stable and finished. I used APE off and on for a couple of years and found it was sometimes problematic with the Mac OS. You know this, Unsanity,so stop trying to sell us something that degrades the system or works only partially. I kept coming back to APE because it was required by Shapeshifter, which was a great idea, except that it too always seemed to be rough around the edges, especially in how it interacted with iTunes. Or was it that AE again seemed to destabilize my Mac? Make something nice and stable and users will embrace it.

soooo does this work on intel-Macs??

Ummm - why is this still being developed? AE is not compatible with the Leopard Architecture. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something actually functional.

The only haxie I have used is WindowShade. I gave the new version a whirl. It didn't work for me (running on a new iMac, 10.5.2). When clicked, windows ended up nearly out of view (just a few millimeters showed above the bottom edge of my screen) and in the wrong corner. I uninstalled it. I will wait for a later version.

Just a note, I will inform the developers as well, but I was overjoyed to see the haxies back and immediately installed the ones available (I have licenses for them all) and none of them worked for me, after logging out and logging back in. I did not restart my computer. Please let me know if they worked for you. (AE 2.5b1).

They're back! It's been just hell on a laptop without Windowshade - thank you Unsanity!!!

They are back! I missed APEs :)

On the Unsanity support page, when asked wether or not Unsanity haxies will ever be 10.5 compatible: We are hard at work getting Application Enhancer and our haxies compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. We've been so delayed because APE didn't even run until we received the shipping version of Leopard. We currently have a working internal build of APE, so it's only a matter of days until we release APE 2.5, and updated versions of our haxies shortly thereafter. Please keep an eye on our official lines of communication (website - http://www.unsanity.com, blog - http://www.unsanity.org, newsletters - http://www.unsanity.com/list, etc.) for more information on compatibility releases, calls for beta testers, and other updates, and watch our compatibility page at http://www.unsanity.com/products/compatibility. There's hope yet!

I've pretty much written these guys off...seems like they've ignored us?!

Yet another reason to avoid APE. http://neowiki.neooffice.org/index.php/Leopard_Upgrade_Issues Sorry guys, but APE does in fact cause problems. Can't deny this anymore. Don Montalvo, NYC

Hopefully the Leopard version will be out soon so that Unsanity's other apps will be able to work again. Somtimes these guys are quick and other times they are dragging their heels. The latter seems to apply at the moment.

Link that was stripped from my previous post: http://lists.apple.com/archives/carbon-dev/2007/Mar/msg00225.html (I hope)

FYI: From: George Warner : Our (Apple's) official policy is that we don't support APE'd systems. Period. The data miner that parses all the crash logs that are sent to us automatically ignores any report that has APE api's in the backtraces or dylb lists. Likewise If DTS receives a crash incident with API in the backtrace or dylb list we will not investigate it. Our "standard answer" in this case is to inform the developer that we don't support APE and that we'll only be able to help them if they can reproduce the problem without APE installed.

I've had instability issues using APE on both a G4 powerbook and a dual G5 powermac going back to version 1, but i keep it around out of necessity for app's like Audio Hijack Pro. Using the Master Exclude List has not seemed to be effective for me. As it is now, I have to quit the 'aped' process whenever I need to ensure stability which has become an annoying, repetitive task. I've had many different app's crash and I check my crash logs whenever there's a crash. 9 times out of 10, APE has been running. I'm not commenting to bash APE because I do enjoy what it allows me to do, but after 2 years of use, the instability outweighs the benefits. I do hope APE will achieve better stability. I'd use it all the time. Check out WiseWeasel's post too. The fellow knows what he's talking about.

Should be known as "Haxie to destroy other applications via plug-ins.", when installed other applications behave weirdly and crash randomly.

APE kills Rosetta!

I loved this software unti I got the new Mac Pro 2.6 and unable to open other applications. I uninstalled it and everything worked. Hope they can repair this problem cause I miss my xounds.

Unfortunately APE causes all of my Rosetta Apps to randomly crash on startup. I'll either get the "unexpectedly quit" dialog box or the application will show up in the dock, then immediately disappear. A restart resolves the issue for a while, but it always comes back. I got to the point where I was having to restart my mac multiple times a day because of This. I've tried adding all my Rosetta apps to the master exclude list with no avail. Until this bug is fixed, I can't run the haxies. I don't know how long I can live without my fruit menu so I hope a fix comes soon!

Okay...thought of a workaround. It's so simple I don't know why I didn't think of it. Here goes. Because APE only crashes PPC apps in Rosetta, just add those PPC apps to APE's Master Exclude List. None of the haxies are available in those apps, but at least they don't crash all the time. For me, anyway, my main use of the haxies comes in the Finder anyway, so it's no big deal. Hope this helps others in my type of situation.

Seems to crash PowerPC apps running in Rosetta on Intel Macs under OS X 10.4.7. Can't use any of my Unsanity stuff 'til that's fixed.

Thank you for getting rid of that ugly monkey.

Version 2.0.1 still has problems with QuicKeys. QuicKeys will lock up after choosing the "Choose Menu" button in creating a new macro. I've sent reports of this to Unsanity, but most of my emails to them go unanswered. I really wish they would fix this. At this point I need QuicKeys more than I need Unsanity's products, so off they go.

APE 2.0 works great. Mind you, I don't run APE on my older mac -- at least older versions -- as they slow the system down a bit and "can" sometimes cause instability. This may be an interaction with some of the other startup/background apps running on that machine. Regardless, 2.0 works spiffy on my speedy mac.

I don't know what T. K. has been smoking, but I use my Mac to earn money, and I have had APE installed for years, and I have a completely stable system. Furthermore, he states that APE runs as root, which is simply not true. Launch the Activity Monitor, and you'll see APE is owned by the currently logged in user. T. K. is lucky that Unsanity is run by nice guys, or he'd get sued for putting lies in print, and defaming their products.

I love it, too. It has not caused me any pain, nor has it slowed me down perceptively. If you don't have a lot of RAM, maybe it would - but that's the same for any app. I can't work without Windowshade.

I'm adding my two-bits here because I'm tired of seeing Unsanity slammed repeatedly. I have been a fan of ShapeShifter and WindowShadeX ever since they were released. I also used FruitMenu for a time. While it's true that they eat a certain amount of system resources, I have yet to see verifiable proof that they cause overall system instability. I think that's a matter of other software conflicts that are being blamed on their products. Keep in mind that all of this is on rather old machines, two Powerbooks of the Wallstreet and Pismo generations. Frankly, SIMBL plug-ins have caused me way more headaches than anything Unsanity has created. Keep your machine healthy and quit looking for a handy scapegoat.

A better name would be "Destablize your Mac". I couldn't uninstall this program fast enough. Their claim that APE can't cause a Mac to crash is a bald-faced lie. And you gotta love how they listed "Completely free of charge" as a "feature" of their program.

You all think APE and its associated plug-ins are harmless? Let me clue you in on some info about APE. APE runs constantly as root and thus grants root access to any plug-ins running under it. Only this way can it "change themes" and "switch fonts". It is directly messing around with any app's code it comes across(think vivasection of the OS itself). Anybody can write a little "invisible" plug-in that runs "rm -rf ~/" at a specified time. I am not here to "troll" but you spread the knowledge that Unsanity itself holds back from its customers. But, I will admit I have used Shapeshifter, Labels X, Windowshade X, Xounds, Silk, Mighty Mouse, Menu Master, and Fruitmenu. Many reasons forced me to go "lean" - slowdowns, inconsistent effects, troublesome set-up process on some and some others. I recommend you do some research on any app you want to try out because the nastiest surprises are the ones the developer doesn't want you to know.

Application Enhancer has always performed beautifully on every system I've installed it on. Sure it can add instability, but what doesn't? Every single piece of complex software has some untested areas, and Mac OS X itself is no exception. But as long as the developers care about what they do, problems get fixed and the software becomes more stable. In that respect, Unsanity's track record is as good as Apple's. A fine program that opens a world of possibilities for us Mac users.

If you want to add instability into your system, this will do a great job.

DOES NOT WORK WITH TIGER SYSTEM PREFERENCES SORRY

Freezes when you click on modules. Moody

Oh, where is the ShapeShifter update? I cant take the stripes! My eyes! My eyes!

Works fine here. I'll never understand why people "claim" to have so many problems with Unsanitys stuff. You may need to uninstall Norton or something...

Haxie to make OSX as crash-prone as OS9!

Latest version crashes my Office 2004. Took me some time to realize that Appl.Enh. is the cause of the headache. I love all the Unsanity appl. and use quite a few of them, but this one was a tough one. I was about to re-install all of my applications together with system as MS Office 2004 crashed even during CD startup. I am about to downgrade until Unsanity solved this one.

I read in this site a lot of times, "nice" and "ugly" comments about this sofware, but... in 2 or 3 years using this haxies i was never have a problem with my Mac or of my customer's machines (with them i use ClearDock and CWM, both GREAT free haxies!). I work in Apple Tech Support since 1994 and can talk with some reasons. I think if some users have some troubles, maybe they have some application/system "incompatibilities" and don't blame App Enhancer... and for last, they can exclude this applications and make a real TEST of their system stability. .

Ah, nothing like a little unfounded paranoia. I've been using various APE modules, both Unsanity and third-party, since Jaguar and have never experienced an application crash, much less a kernel panic, attributable to them. If you have problems with an individual application, then they do in fact allow you to exclude any application from within the individual module. It's a long, long way from Windows BS or even OS 9 extension hassles, and for me the payoff is more than worth the minor risk.

I'd have to say that next to Windows, this is the last software I'd want to run on my machine. They claim their stuff is bug free and that all the problems that arise after installing it are other developers' fault but what I've found is that uninstalling it will miraculously hide those other developers' buggy software. That's right, the only change is removing the haxie and all is well again. YMMV.

I really like the way you can customize the behaviors of your system using their haxies, i really do not know about those instability problems which i haven't experienced, maybe i'm just lucky.

Application DOWNGRADER!!! Unstable. 0/5. Good if you want to experience Windows 98 hassles.

Agree with the instability post below. Enhancer does seem to create some instability. Not a big problem though. I continue to use it for Fruit menu and Shapeshifter. The icon on Application Enhancer is disturbing. It actually makes me not want to use it. A chimpanzee being experimented on? WTF?

Just an add-on: I intended to note, in a previous review, that I have NOT seen any crash nor error alert since, at least, OS 10.3, due to APE manager misbehaviour.

I think it's a GREAT enhance for MacOS. I have 5 registered haxies: first of all, the much missed (for an old fan of Apple) apple menu: can't live w/o it! Dock detox is a fine way to tolerate the intrusive dock: a feature of OS X that took a long way to get used to; that, along with clear dock, make the dock a perfectly controlled pest. Of course, shape shifter is another great enhancer, and, finally probable the most money-worthy of all: Labels X: I am a Lawyer, so, differentiating the cluster of docs, xl sheets, etc, one from another is surely worth the few dollars sent in. BTW: I run a Powerbook with 1GB Ram: the machine doesn't go for more: it's the way to avoid, together with a couple of maintenance tools (i.e. cocktail, panther cache cleaner) those nasty crash+error signs: I have seen them since at least OS 10.3 P.S.: we do not work nor have any financial interests in Unsanity LLC.

Works fine for me. Registered Detour for it and it works fine. No problems with it yet. So if you are only running Detour I say you are fine. If I get a crash, I will let you guys know.

'm not going to go into a big rant, because I love Unsanity's haxies -- I have registered five of them, and love what they do for the functionality and "feel" of my computer. But ... In my case, it's that I find with APE installed my apps are less stable and more prone to crashing, and I'm more likely to have intermittent kernel panics. I'll be the first to admit that I don't know how to properly interpret crash logs, but in by far the majority of my crash reports (for various apps) the last line contains a reference to APE. When I uninstall it, my apps seem perfectly stable. (I'm running OS X 10.3.4, by the way.) In short, I'm not going to give this a rating, nor am I going to run it into the ground needlessly. I am going to say that on my particular Mac it appears to make things less stable, and therefore I would simply urge caution on anyone thinking of using APE. For those of you who have no hassles, what can I say? I'm as jealous as hell!

APE another way to make your applications hog more ram! as if OS X applications didnt hog enough ram as is!!!!!!! To me running this software is of no benifit... its under ths trivial section in my book. Sure yea its fun at first , or maybe if u got a GIG o RAM...... id probly use it if i saw it use much less ram per app.

Mighty Mouse works much better with this update

APE is a huge liability, and should not be used by anyone who cares about stability. I'm part of several application development projects, and when our users get crashing bugs, APE is usually to blame. It's gotten to the point where we have to tell our users that we won't support them until they uninstall APE or deactivate it for our apps (preferably the former). A big part of the problem lies in the fact that APE hacks are by default active for all applications, with no way to change that but to manually exclude each one. Users should be able to specify that they only want their APE hacks active for specific apps, even if it isn't the default behavior. The way it is currently set up is so much of a liability, that these hacks cannot be recommended to anyone, even though some are quite useful. Please change this behavior in future releases, and make it standard across all APE hacks.

The suits from Unsanity are really excellent, I could not work without them. to Mousee: it may be something is wrong in your system. I'm using FruitMenu and DiskWarrior with no problem. Did you update your OSX? It is now 10.3.3.

Working under Panther without FruitMenu would be a real pain (and it was, until it was updated). I don't use any other of their products but that one is vital. Also, about the delay to update their products: is it their fault or Apple's fault? Apple keeps cahnging their system again and again causing a lot of trouble for developers. I even believe that they are now shooting themselves in the foot. Why? I have 3 softwares on startup CDs. These CDs cannot be used on the latest Power Book I bought a month ago. Which means developers have to produce new CDs, causing more expenses. The first 2 products are System Works 3 from Symantec and DiskWarrior 3.0.1 from Alsoft. And the last one is, believe it or not, the Panther 3.0 CD I bought in the Fall of 2003. Granted I have the DVD that came with the laptop, but still! Mac is not even compatible with Mac anymmore. No surprise more and more people are thinking PCs these days.

Plenty of joy here! (-: I've been running APE with FruitMenu, Menu Master, ShapeShifter, WindowShade X, and Xounds haxies for months, and added Paranoid Android four days ago, with ZERO problems. I wouldn't give 'em up. [System info: May '03 1 GHz G4 eMac Combo; 640 MB memory; 10.3.3+all updates]

On the contrary, I have continued to appreciate many of Unsanity's products and hadn't realized how vital they were to my Mac experience until starting to use Panther without them. The delay with some updates for Panther compatibility were sadly delayed, but being a fairly small developer that has constantly been pushing the bounds of what can be done to improve (without breaking) the OS, I don't think it has been unacceptable. If it weren't for Fruit Menu, Menu Master, WindowshaderX (which does still have a few quirks), and of course ShapeShifter I don't think I could tolerate even Panther for so many hours a day. Thanks Unsanity.

Unsanity used to be one of the best developers of shareware for osx. Sadly this is no longer the case. I purchased 2 unsanity apps and no longer use either, because they do not function properly in panther. Unsanity has taken a very long time to update for Panther support, and what modules do claim to support panther are buggy and unstable. Unsanity used to offer quality shareware at fair prices. They even understood which apps should remain freeware. Prices have risen and quality has dropped The APE module system is cumbersome and is well known for causing conflicts with other applications. I would much prefer a single pref pane for each 'haxie' rather than installing them as APE modules and configuring them in the APE pref pane and/or their own pref pane. Very messy coding. I would like to see a return to separate pref panes, quality control, quick updates to fix bugs and add compatability.

Great program from a great company. Run this and add the ClearDock plugin, and you have yourself a transparent dock again in Panther! Thanks!

Now with Panther support, this is the perfect program for Mac OS X.

It's not Apple that's keeping me from giving up any hope, but Unsanity. Together with some other few developers, they're making of MacOS X something as similar as possible to what MacOS was and should always be: modern, easy to use, and productive. Instead of wasting time in the "new" Finder windows in 10.3 and the like, Apple should take a peek at what Unsanity is doing for the Mac community... and learn.

As usual Unsanity rocks-the-house with everything they make! One the best group of software developers in the MAC world. Period.

I couldn't love it any more than I do. Installing an APE is as simple as double-clicking? That is slick!

This version had a dramatic effect on application launch time. However, I installed a 512 MB stick of RAM at the same time (I had 768MB before though, so that shouldn't have mattered). Overall, it seems to be an excellent update.

I've been using this forever, and only had a problem once. And that problem was fixed by simply taking that Haxie out of the Application Enhancers folder. Sure there's some slowdown, but look at all the things you can do! You can edit the way dropshadows look, make all your cocoa apps metallic, even edit the size of individual icons within a window! All in all, the great functions they offer are worth it.

with all these reviews averaged, al is well until I read them all. I don,t know how to come to any kind of idea of the rating since they are either rated the best or worst, so average rating is not usefull here. I can only guess that its either the best or worst. So maybe I will roll the dice since there were no system distruction (or worse) stories. I will have to give overall average reviews a closer look from now on. But the reviews were on the subject. Remember, I did not rate anything yet, so don,t do so on my comments without reading this.

Another happy Unsanity user. Have had Fruitmenu and Windowshade on my system for at least a year, without incident. Hack on, Unsanity.

and i might add that i have never experienced any issues from the use of any of Unsanity's softs...

well.. if one has sufficient horsepower then the performance hit is negligible given the extra features one gains. this is true in my case.

Trundledriver, First of all, I have nothing to do with Unsanity. Second, you asked what Application Enhancer has to do with other haxies... well, if you read ANYTHING about APE, you would know that Application Enhancer does nothing on its own, it's simply the engine that runs ALL the other haxies! That being said, Application Enhancer DOES slow down your system a lot. If you don't believe me, log in as root and launch your apps to see how much faster your system is when it doesn't have APE haxies installed. The haxies are fantastic, and they all work as advertised, but it comes at the heavy price of performance!

makes my computer SLLLLOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWW

unsanity rules! i still think they really work 4 apple.

Unsanity makes good software, period. I've never had any issues with any Unsanity stuff.