Utilities List

Apple, commercial developers, and shareware and freeware authors offer thousands of utility programs to the Macintosh community. Many new programs become available every day. The software listed in this Chapter is not meant to be all-inclusive, but rather to be examples of the types of software that are available to enhance the performance of your computer, and your enjoyment of it.

The variation in computer models and configurations makes predicting accurately whether a particular shareware or free software product works on your system impossible. Authors of shareware and free software don’t typically have the facilities to test their products with every type of software combination and computer model. Instead, they fix the problems reported by people who try out the software.

Note

Some Read Me files and documentation reference the minimum systems and software configurations required and if there are any known conflicts, but others do not. If you decide to try some software, check the Read Me file or any included documentation for compatibility information. If the compatibility information doesn’t assure you that the software you want to try is compatible with your computer model and Mac OS version, you should take the precaution of making a backup of your hard drive before trying the software. (Chapter 22 discusses backups.)

The software items described in this Chapter are listed alphabetically, with a short description of each of their features. Software is updated often, and you may find that newer versions of programs have features not described here.

You’ll find that some of the features provided by the software listed below can be found in some form, somewhere in the Mac OS X operating system. The authors of these products have recognized that there are ways to make things better, give you more control, or even just wanted to provide a different way to go about your business. On the other hand, some of the software described does vastly different things than Apple ever intended.

Alfred

Mac OS 9 had a great feature called autorouting that would aid the user in installing and managing system items. Drop a Control Panel on the System Folder, for example, and the OS would know where to put it for you.

Cross Reference

See Chapter 17 for more information about Mac OS 9’s autorouting feature.

While Mac OS X did away with Extensions and Control Panels as we knew them, there are kernel extensions, screensavers, preference panes, contextual menus and the like to contend with. On top of this, as you have seen in earlier Chapters, there are at least three different places to install these types of software packages. Alfred (shown in Figure 21-1) restores the autorouting feature to Mac OS X, and aids in enabling and disabling third-party software, offering similar functionality to the Mac OS 9 Extensions Manager. Find Alfred at www.inferiis.com.

Figure 21-1: When you drop a contextual menu plug-in, kernel extension, screensaver, or preference pane onto the Alfred application (or use the contextual menu plug-in provided) Alfred provides a dialog box that allows you to install locally (for the user) or system wide and to decide whether to enable or disable the package.

Audio Hijack and Detour

Two cool applications by Rogue Amoeba software complement each other rather nicely. Audio Hijack is a sound hack that lets you record the sounds that are created by any of your running applications. In essence, hijacking the sound as it’s coming out of the application and allowing you to record it without having to use a microphone in front of your speakers. Detour gives you ultimate control over the sound output ports on your computer. You can send the music from your iTunes out to your headphone jack, while routing your system sounds to the internal speaker of your Mac. It will recognize any output that the system recognizes as a valid sound port — the more ports available, the more flexibility you have. Find demos on line at (www.rogueamoeba.com)

Back Up User Prefs

Backing up your software and documents is an easy thing, but backing up your user preferences folder isn’t all that painless. You have to worry about permissions and invisible files. Back Up User Prefs takes care of everything for you and even has an Auto-Pilot feature that will walk you through everything. Go to www.m-t-software.com.

BatchMOD

An application with a silly name, BatchMOD (see Figure 21-2) is a GUI front end for the chmod Unix command. (Though it uses a bit of chgrp as well.) While you can tweak permissions settings directly in the finder using the Get Info command, the Apply to enclosed items button doesn’t always succeed. BatchMOD, on the other hand, excels at applying permissions recursively; it also lets you change specific privileges or ownerships without messing with any others. As an added benefit, it will let you force empty the trash for those sticky situations where it refuses to make it to the dumpster. All in all, a good tool to have in your arsenal. Find it at http://macchampion.com/arbysoft.

Figure 21-2: BatchMOD is a great little application that lets you change permissions on files and folders (recursively) using a drag-and-drop GUI. It comes complete with a Matrix/Batmanesque icon for your viewing enjoyment.

BootCD

BootCD allows you to create a bootable Mac OS X CD that has a working Finder and Dock. You can add any applications you need to the build, however, space on the disc is limited after your Mac OS X install is complete, so be careful what applications you are trying to add. Another important factor to take into account is that by their very nature, CD-ROM drives are slow and booting can take a long time. Online at www.charlessoft.com.

BrickHouse

Basic network security is provided in Mac OS X’s Sharing preference pane, under the Firewall tab. For those of you who would prefer more control over your network security, BrickHouse is a much more full-featured front end to the Unix firewall built-in to Mac OS X. It offers, among other things, 3,500 labeled services for easy identification, advanced filter options, IP sharing at startup, and even a network monitoring tool. While a hardware firewall is usually a better option as it doesn’t depend on your computer to function (also sucking up some CPU cycles while it’s at it), for single users and people on a budget who require network security, BrickHouse is a good offering. Find it at http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill.

Other products to look at are FireWalk X and Symantec’s Norton Personal Firewall.

Carbon Copy Cloner

Mac OS 10.3 provides the Restore command in the Disk Utility, which allows you to make backup images of volumes, or even just make a bootable clone of a Mac OS X volume. Prior to version 10.3, this feature wasn’t available, and those of us who needed to copy Mac OS X volumes turned to Carbon Copy Cloner (see Figure 21-3). Carbon Copy Cloner does just what its name suggests, it clones a volume onto another disk, allowing you to have a bootable backup in the case of emergency. It is also terribly convenient when making disaster recovery disks, or general use build disks. In addition to all of this, Carbon Copy Cloner allows you to synchronize disks as well as schedule clones (these features require you to install a command-line utility called pSync), something that Mac OS 10.3 doesn’t provide. Carbon Copy Cloner will clone local disks only. For network disk installations, look at NetRestore, also by Bombich Software, in combination with Apple Software Restore. Find them both at www.bombich.com/software/index.html.

Figure 21-3: Carbon Copy Cloner has a very simple, easy to understand interface, just choose the source disk, then the target disk and then click the clone button. The preferences button reveals advanced features, even providing an easy means to install pSync.

Cocktail

If ever there were a Swiss Army knife tool of utility software, it would be Cocktail. Written entirely in AppleScript Studio (see Chapter 23 for more info), Cocktail is a definite must-have piece of software. Cocktail gives you a very-easy-to-use GUI look into the commands at the fingertips of Unix pros, and some tools to play with the interface of Mac OS X. You can update prebinding, mess with Finder and Dock interface elements (even make the Dock appear at the top of the screen, under the menu bar), optimize your network configuration, and clear out cache files, among many other options. Online at www.macosxcocktail.com.

CodeTek Virtual Desktop

The concept of a virtual desktop is not a new one — organize groups of running applications together to create separate workspaces. The only applications visible are those you are currently using and you can quickly switch to another set of running applications on the fly. CodeTek Virtual Desktop brings this functionality to the Macintosh with style and tons of features. A small floating window holds representations of each virtual desktop you have set up. You switch between them by clicking on each one, or by using the menu item provided. On the Web at www.codetek.com.

CronniX

CronniX is a GUI front end for the Unix command cron, a Unix system service that allows you to schedule the execution of scripts, programs, and applications from the command line. Well written and easy to use, CronniX brings scheduled operations to the normal Macintosh user. Find it online at www.koch-schmidt.de/cronnix/.

DragThing

DragThing has been tidying up Mac Desktops since 1995 and knows how to do it right. Use DragThing to create as many docks as you like, and populate each dock with your choice of applications, files, folders, disks, file servers, and Internet addresses. Click a docked application to open it or bring it to the front. You can customize the look of your docks with icons, folder tabs, or just text. DragThing provides some of the same features as Drop Drawers X and PocketDock. Be sure to look at all of them and see which works better for you. DragThing, shown in Figure 21-4, is $25 shareware from TLA Systems at www.dragthing.com.

Figure 21-4: DragThing allows you to organize shortcuts to the documents and applications you access the most frequently. Its appearance and customization is very flexible.

Drop Drawers X

Drop Drawers X provides handy places to keep snippets of text, Web addresses, and other URLs, pictures, sounds, movies, and more. The drawers can hold aliases of applications, documents, and so forth. You can also have a drawer that lists applications and processes that are currently running on your computer. The drawers pull out conveniently from the sides of your screen, so their contents are always at hand. You can configure each drawer to your liking, and you can even protect drawers with passwords. The Dock is nowhere near as versatile as Drop Drawers X. Drop Drawers X provides some of the same features as DragThing and PocketDock. Be sure to look at all of them and see which works better for you. Drop Drawers X, shown in Figure 21-5, is shareware from Sig Software at www.sigsoftware.com.

Figure 21-5: Drop Drawers provides handy places to keep a wide variety of objects at the tips of your fingers.

Felt Tip Sound Studio

So, you want to record and edit audio on your Mac, on a budget. Felt Tip Sound Studio features one- or two-channel sound editing, effects filters, and pitch shifting. It is the perfect application to use when converting all of those old LPs to CD. It supports many file formats, including AIFF, Sound Designer II, System 7 sound, WAV, CD track, as well as any formats that QuickTime supports. Check out this $50 shareware from Lucius Kwok of Felt Tip Software at www.felttip.com/products/soundstudio/. A competing (and cheaper) piece of software is Amadeus II, found at www.hairersoft.com/amadeus.html.

GeekTool

A system preference pane for the geek in all of us, GeekTool puts a transparent (if you want it to be) console log viewer on your desktop. Very useful for servers and the criminally inquisitive, it can be a convenient means of keeping tabs on the goings on of your system. Take a look at it at http://projects.tynsoe.org/en/geektool/ — it’s freeware.

GraphicConverter X

One of the most highly touted, noncommercial image editors of all time GraphicConverter X, seen in Figure 21-6, is an amazing image editing bargain. The number of graphics formats that GraphicConverter can open and save to is unheard of — virtually every format found on Mac, Windows, Unix, Amiga, and Atari computers. GraphicConverter imports over 100 file formats and exports more than 40 file formats — and these numbers keep growing. Even better, the program has tools and filters for editing pictures. Even professional photo editors buy this program for its image conversion utility. Get this $35 graphical can-opener by Thorsten Lemke at www.lemkesoft.com.

Haxies

Mac OS X as it was released, drops a number of features that hardened old Macintosh Users have quite gotten used to — windows that shuttered closed in place, or maybe an audio soundtrack. Unsanity has created a set of programs called Haxies, so-named because, Unsanity contends, they are minihacks of the Mac OS. Window Shade X is a program that restores the minimize-in-place functionality of Mac OS 9. Fruit Menu grants you control over the Apple Menu, by allowing you to place your own items there. Xounds brings the soundtrack concept back to the Macintosh, and even lets you use all your old soundtrack files from Mac OS 9. These haxies and more can be found at www.unsanity.com.

Figure 21-6: GraphicConverter can open so many formats they can’t even all be shown in one screenshot, note the up and down arrows on both ends of the pop-up.

Logorrhea

iChat is a great way to connect with friends and family, but many people have overlooked its ability to log chats to your documents folder. (Go to iChat preferences, and check the Automatically save transcripts box under the Messages tab.) You’ll find it’s quite nice to have a transcript of your conversations for later perusal. The problem with this is that it is very difficult to actually find something in a saved chat. Well, Logorrhea to the rescue. It allows you to quickly flip through old chats by user and date, and previews them in a pane below (see Figure 21-7). Even more convenient is the Search tab when you can’t even remember who said it. Check it out at http://spiny.com/software/.

Figure 21-7: Logorrhea is perfect for those cases when you just have to prove how ridiculous sounding your IM was.

MacTracker

A handy tool for the collector and Macintosh aficionado in all of us, MacTracker is a database with information on all of the Macintosh computers ever built. It is updated as new machines are released, has icon images for all of the models, and contains detailed information about original shipping configurations, maximum RAM and Hard Disk capacities, and much, much more. Find information on MacTracker at www.mactracker.ca.

NetNewsWire

NetNewsWire, shown in Figure 21-8, by Ranchero Software is a full-featured RSS newsfeed reader. If there are Web sites that you frequent and they get updated throughout the day, it can be inconvenient to have to keep going back to check. NetNewsWire will poll the Web sites you subscribe to as often as every 30 minutes, and update its database with the latest headlines. Double-clicking on a headline launches your default browser right to the headline page of the Web site. It contains presets for a ton of news sites from the most known front page news outlets (the BBC, Wired magazine), tech havens (Slashdot, the Register, and CNET), lots of Macintosh news sites (MacNN, MacSlash, and MacCentral), and a whole host of personal blogs. You can find more information on NetNewsWire at www.ranchero.com.

Figure 21-8: Ranchero Software’s NetNewsWire is a great application for keeping up to date with the Web sites you visit regularly. It comes with preconfigured feeds you can subscribe to, as well as those you input on your own.

Process Wizard

Mac OS 9 was based on cooperative multitasking, the front-most running process decided how much of the CPU power it wanted to give up. In preemptive multitasking, the OS has a hand, though the task scheduler, in the divvying up of the clock cycles, and can preempt another process, if it decides it is more needy of the CPU. Generally, the OS does a good job of making sure every process has what it needs. Process Wizard places a menu item that provides you with access to all the processes currently running and gives you the ability to modify their priority, using the Unix command renice. This is especially useful when you are rendering something that is CPU intensive in the background, and want to give it priority over checking your mail. You can also use the Process Wizard menu to force quit a process by Control-clicking on it. Information on Process Wizard can be found at www.theinteractivething.com.

Pseudo

Pseudo is an application that allows you to launch other applications as root.

Cross Reference

See Chapters 24 through 26 for more on the root user.

This can be useful for mucking about where you’re not supposed to, as you’ll have access to all of the files and folders on the computer. On the flipside, care is of the essence when using this application, as it is terribly easy to modify something that shouldn’t have been, and completely confound the operating system. Pseudo was written by the same author as BrickHouse, Brian Hill, and you can find out more about this application at http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/.

QuickImageCM

QuickImageCM (see Figure 21-9) is perhaps one of the coolest little timesavers this side of minute rice. As its name suggests, QuickImage is a really quick way to preview images. Because it is a contextual menu, all you have to do is either Control-click or right-click on an image and it will open in its own window. Because no application is launched, the preview is almost instantaneous, on snappy Macs at least. There are some nice menu options in the little toolbar along the top of the window. While it breaks with Apple’s interface guidelines, that’s forgivable based on how dang convenient the program is. Download and find more information about QuickImage at www.pixture.com/macosx.php.

Figure 21-9: It’s a lot easier to see the image when it’s not a tiny preview in the paned view of the finder. Using QuickImageCM from the finder is easy and fast.

QuicKeys X2

A venerable program, QuicKeys has been around for ages, helping people bring macros into their daily lives. QuicKeys has evolved over the years into a very full-featured macro building, scripting package. You can time-delay, schedule, script, and assign just about any OS action to a button. In essence, it is a very powerful tool (much like AppleScript) that brings the world of automation to the consumer level. Using the intuitive interface, you can compress multistep tasks into shortcuts that comprise one keystroke. If you don’t know anything about creating macros, QuickKeys X2 can record your actions and play them back. The Clips Shortcuts is useful for storing frequently used media for use later at the touch of a key. Use Typing Shortcuts to automate the entry of commonly used text. Menu Action Shortcuts let you select menu items via the keyboard that do not normally have key equivalents. See QuicKeys X2 in action in Figure 21-10, and discover what QuicKeys has to offer at www.cesoft.com.

Figure 21-10: QuicKeys X2 helps you enter commonly used text at the touch of a button.

Salling Clicker

Salling Clicker is one of the coolest little preference panes in terms of sheer show off factor. Clicker interfaces with a Bluetooth phone or Palm Pilot (currently only Sony Ericsson phones are supported) and allows you to control your Macintosh wirelessly. If you’ve got a keynote presentation to give, fire up Salling Clicker, and while you’re walking around the room, you’ll be able to control the slideshow without any other tools but your phone. It’s extensible, as you can set it to engage custom AppleScripts at the push of a button. Even more impressive is the ability to set iChat’s status depending on whether your phone is in range. (If you walk away with the phone, iChat will change your status to away.) Find out more about Salling Clicker at www.salling.com.

A competing freeware product is Romeo by Arboreal (http://irowan.com/arboreal).

SharePoints

One of the limitations of Mac OS X as compared to both Mac OS 9 and Mac OS X Server, is that you don’t have complete control over the share points you want to make available to the rest of your network. The only folder you can share is the /Users/Public folder. SharePoints is a free Preference pane that restores your ability to have complete control over what folders are shared across the network. Any folder on your hard drive can be shared via Apple Filing Protocol, for Macs, or SMB, for PCs. You are even able to create users and groups again. (See Chapter 15 for more information on setting up file sharing.) SharePoints is created by HornWare, and can be found at www.hornware.com.

SnapzPro

While you can use the built-in screenshot functionality of the Mac OS (Command-Shift-3 for the whole screen, or Command-Shift-4 to select an area of the screen), SnapzPro adds considerably to your ability to take a snapshot of your screen. SnapzPro allows you to save your screenshots in many formats (rather than just the PDF of the Mac OS). It also allows you to take QuickTime Movie snapshots of a process. The new Fatbits feature allows you to zoom in on images as you create them. There is also a delayed execution feature, so you can have the screenshot taken in the middle of an event that you normally wouldn’t be able to capture. See more at www.ambrosiasoftware.com.

StuffIt (Standard/Deluxe)

StuffIt Expander ships with Mac OS X, but to actually create StuffIt archives you need either StuffIt Standard or StuffIt Deluxe. StuffIt Standard is a full package that takes over where expander leaves off, it provides droplet programs, which allow you to create Zip, Tar, and StuffIt archives by dropping anything you want onto them. Aladdin has created an even more powerful interface in StuffIt Deluxe. Among its most impressive features, StuffIt Deluxe integrates directly into the Finder, allowing you to append a .sit to the end of a document or folder name, and have that folder archived. This function works for all supported archive formats, and also in reverse. StuffIt Standard and Deluxe retail for $49.95, and $79.99 respectively. Find them online at www.aladdinsys.com.

SubEthaEdit

SubEthaEdit is one of the many applications that have sprung up around Apple’s zero-config networking technology, Rendezvous (see Chapter 18). SubEthaEdit is a full featured (but not bloated), text editor that lets users on a network collaborate on documents with almost no configuration of the software. You share a document, and then other people on your network who have SubEthaEdit installed can see your documents with zero configurations using Rendezvous.

Cross Reference

See Chapter 15 for more information on Rendezvous and its use as a zero configuration IP protocol.

You can even share documents over the Internet to other people using SubEthaEdit across the country. SubEthaEdit uses Safari’s Web core engine to display HTML, and is a great collaborative tool for programmers. Go to www.codingmonkeys.de/.

Timbuktu/Apple Remote Desktop/VNC

Netopia’s Timbuktu is the remote control application for the Macintosh. It has been around for years and it definitely shows its refinement. One of its greatest features is that it is cross-platform, so that you can control a Windows PC from a Mac and vice versa. It has a nice built-in user database where you can set up a number of different users with different privileges, and a very fast file transfer tool. Check it out at www.netopia.com.

Apple has its own remote control application called, of all things, Apple Remote Desktop (ARD). The ARD server is built in to Mac OS 10.3, and is great for managing a computer lab or classroom, as it has more administration features than Timbuktu. You know where to go: www.apple.com.

If you’re interested in remote control on the cheap, look at AT&T’s Virtual Network Computing or VNC for short. VNC is bare-bones, but is completely free and has been ported to a number of different operating systems. Find it at www.realvnc.com. Because VNC is open source software, you will also find several implementations if you search on www.versiontracker.com for VNC — "Chicken of the VNC" scores points for stupid name of the century.

TinkerTool

With TinkerTool, you can activate hidden options of Mac OS X. You can control font smoothing, select default fonts used in Cocoa applications, activate transparent Terminal windows, display the Trash on the Desktop, and more. None of these options requires typing Unix commands. Instead you use familiar Aqua controls such as checkboxes and pop-up menus, as you can see in Figure 21-11. TinkerTool is free software from Marcel Bresink Software-Systeme and can be downloaded from www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html.

Figure 21-11: TinkerTool provides settings for a host of hidden Mac OS X options.

Toast Titanium 6

Mac OS X’s Disk Burner and Disk Utility are great for the beginner in terms of ease of use, but for those who really desire control over their CD/DVD burning, Roxio Toast is the way to go. With support for HFS+, Hybrid, ISO9660, VCD, and multisession discs, Toast lets you create discs easily and often supports more CDRW features than the Mac OS. One of the new features of version 6 lets you burn a CD-R or DVD-R directly from a FireWire-enabled video camera. If you take a few extra minutes, Toast even provides you with the tools to throw some titles in right before you burn it. The coolest new feature has to be ToastAnywhere, which lets you burn to a CD-RW drive attached to a different computer on your network that is also running Toast (uses Rendezvous). To find out how well it integrates with iMovie, go to www.roxio.com/toast.

Transmit

Transmit by Panic software, is a full-featured, clean FTP program. The first thing you’ll notice about Transmit is that it has a familiar looking interface, with some well executed iconography. Transmit supports both the standard FTP protocol, and the more secure sFTP. You can find Transmit at www.panic.com.

The venerable Fetch is showing its age in Mac OS X, but is still a good, easy-to-use FTP client. Go to www.fetchsoftworks.com.

USB Overdrive X

Have you ever seen a mouse, trackball, joystick, or gamepad you just had to have, but there were no drivers for the Mac for it? Enter USB Overdrive, a truly universal, Universal Serial Bus (USB) driver for Mac OS X. USB Overdrive can handle all sorts of wheels, switches, extra buttons, and will even allow you to customize the function of each on an application-by-application basis. It supports scrolling (even if you don’t have a wheelmouse!), keyboard commands, and other more complicated functions with mere mouse clicks. It can be found at www.usboverdrive.com.

VideoLanClient

VideoLanClient (VLC) is a cross-platform, free media player that can handle most video formats, including QuickTime, MPEG (1, 2, and 4), DivX, and Windows Media files. The VideoLAN project as a whole is a multimedia package designed to support the streaming and playing of video along a network across multiple platforms. VLC is released under the GPL, and is free software. More information about the project can be found at www.videolan.org.

Webmin

A Web-based tool for configuration of Unix-based services, Webmin has been ported to many operating systems. Using the Web server built into Mac OS X, Webmin provides a graphical interface that helps you administer the Unix underpinnings of Mac OS X, giving you access to file sharing, DNS, user accounts, and more. Rather than your standard Mac OS X application, you access Webmin’s interface by using a standard Web browser, and pointing it back towards your own machine. Webmin is freeware, and is released under the open source BSD license. More information and downloads can be found at www.webmin.com.

Xicons

While Xicons is not strictly utility software, having customized icons can certainly enhance your user experience. At the Xicons Web site, you can find countless icons expressly made for Mac OS X. The site has all kinds of replacement icons for applications, folders, disks, games, and hardware, in many different categories. There are some great cult status symbols to be found here, and all of the Icons are free to use. The Web site is located at www.xicons.com/.