iPulse

i hate "conceptual" interfaces. i spent ten minutes trying to figure out where i was supposed to click to get the information i was looking for. even loaded each of the alternate designs included.... still couldn't do it. nor could i figure out what the menubar was supposed to be indicative of. went straight in to the trash.

My sense is that it’s a beautiful utility capable of providing a wealth of information. I’ve been using this for as long as it has been around, compared it against other similar utilities for system status, but keep coming back to it. It’s very customizable, but I’ve got a favorite I’ve modified that gives me time, date, memory usage, CPU activity and has bubble messages if I want to drill down into the details. Even then, it is capable of so much more...

No trial? No buy!

HIGHLY configurable and easy on the resources. Very cool utility.

I used to use the excellent iStat Menus but wanted something that used less menu space, and iPulse 3 is really really perfect for that. The window packs in lots of info in an immediate visualisation (probably not for everyone), and uses negligible resource. Lots of tweakability, well worth it!

iPulse has been updated to 2.1.10 and there have been system updates as well. Regardless of "who" was responsible prior, when running iPulse the lockups would occur. When not running iPulse, no lockups. It may have been a buggy call back to Mac OS X or just a poor implementation of that call in the shareware. iPulse now *appears* to be a better citizen. Is the problem gone, time and usage will tell.

A re-ranking. First and foremost the system lockup problem: If you run iPulse on a laptop and use iDisk or other servers, you will find that iPulse will habitually lock your Mac forcing you to control-command-power hard reboot to get free. iPulse will check the mounted volumes (hard drives) including remote server volumes periodically to update the usage status. When it does this and the volume is no longer available, it will not time out nor release the query call for disk usage statistics. Here is the scenario: You are at work and you have a server mounted. Maybe it is your Windows NT corp server, Mac OS X corp server, your iDisk cloud server, or your TimeCapsule volume. You close the lid to sleep the Mac and it sleeps. Pack it in your bag, jet for the door. You then later open your Mac (on the train, at home, etc.) and you have no network connection or a different network connection that does not allow you to get to one of the servers that you were connected to before. iPulse will go brute force against that server asking for statistics and not let go. That server volume appears busy and the Finder cannot let go either. You establish an Internet connection (wifi, ethernet, cell modem, etc) and now nothing seems to be able to talk to the network even though you do have a connection as verified by the Network Preferences in your System Preferences. Then you check your process list (command-option-escape) and note that iPulse is not responding. You figure, ok, just kill it but that thing is a vampire and drains your network connection dry and cannot be killed. Kill Kill Kill, nope nope nope. Then you see your Finder go non-responsive. Kill, nope. Other processes, as they access network resources start to go red including iChat, Pages (oops, update check...) and others. Some kill, some do not. You try launching network utilities that just seem to bounce indefinitely (they are trying to open network connections and the network stack is gridlocked by iPulse, sorry charlie) Ok, long story short, your Mac is Tango Uniform, time for the three key salute: command-control-power. This time you take iPulse **out** of your login items and come and write a lengthy review about one of your favorite little utilities becoming more pain that it is worth. Sad Monday, lost an old friend.

2.1.8 seems fixed problems I was having (see below). Otherwise, did not see any other resource monitoring tool on Mac, even remotely close to iPulse by UI/Usability/Information per screen real estate/Price ratio! Well deserved 5 stars in each category!

Yes, it takes a few minutes to learn the interface but once you do this app is great. It tells you everything activity monitor or x resource graph does but in less space and it is infinitely more customizable. I have been running this for 4 months and it has never crashed or caused me problems. You can also access activity monitor, terminal and network utility with just a right click. Also, instant access to processes, memory and network activity. What a great tool.