Archive for Mac-freeware tag
Heat, fan, power and battery monitoring on the Mac
coconutBattery
coconutBattery lets you see how much of a charge your battery currently has, how much it can still hold and how this compares to when it was manufactured. It’ll also show you how many times you battery has been charged.
SlimBatteryMonitor
SlimBatteryMonitor is a replacement for the Apple battery indicator in the menu bar with something more compact.
CoreDuoTemp
CoreDuoTemp shows the temperature of your CPU along with it’s current operating frequency. Available in both Widget and Desktop application formats.
Fan Control
Not content with just reporting information Fan Control hands over the base RPM speed and the upper and lower temperature thresholds so you can tweak it to your working conditions.
smcFanControl
smcFanControl is alternative fan control program that provides user-defined cooling speeds and an in-menu temperature readout.
MiniBatteryStatus Widget
MiniBatteryStatus shows you battery status in a compact form on your Dashboard.
iStat nano
The iStat nano widget has added a battery section to it’s list of information.
Temperature Monitor
Temperature Monitor provides comprehensive temperature monitoring including drives and support for non-portable systems, graphs and remote monitoring.
[)amien
Mac software picks – Parallels, GMail+Growl, Uno & TheftSensor
Another round-up of the best Mac OS X software I can find.
Parallels Workstation
Piping Microsoft and VMWare to the post relative unknowns Parallels are on beta 6 of their Parallels Workstation for Mac OS X/Intel.
As well as being able to guest OS/2, DOS, BSD, Solid, Linux and all flavours of Windows their product also features support for Intel’s VT virtualisation technology built into the Intel Core chips giving it an edge in performance.
Parallels also offer Windows and Linux versions of their software as well as a virtual disk compressor that works with VMware and VirtualPC as well as their own Workstations products.
They are currently offering the OS X version for $10 off so you can grab a copy for $39.99.
Gmail+Growl
Growl allows other applications to pop-up messages in a very customizable way and is used by the likes of Adium messenger and Colloquy IRC.
This universal app however uses Growl to offer you a sneak preview of your latest Gmail’s as they hit your inbox. Yummy.
Uno
I’ve blogged in the past at just how annoying and inconsistent the Mac UI has become with Aqua, BrushedMetal, Platinum, ProTools, Dashboard and GarageBand UI’s all being totally different. There are even variations between those…
Uno lets you choose between Platinum or it’s darker iTunes variant for Aqua and/or BrushedMetal apps and be done with it. It’s free, fast and easy.
TheftSensor
One of the cool things about OS X is the way Apple build cool features into the OS for application developers to use. Some examples include dictionary/spell-checking, voice recognition, iSight and AppleRemote access, system-level address-books and calendaring…
The result is you find very innovative applications using these features in new and interesting ways. One such example is DeliciousLibrary, another is TheftSensor…
TheftSensor allows you to use your AppleRemote to “lock” you machine just like you would a car with a remote locking fob. Should somebody attempt to move your laptop then an alarm will continually sound until you deactivate it with the remote. This is made possible because of the movement sensor inside Mac laptops put there to protect hard disks in the event of being dropped :)
Remember to pair your remote with your Mac so that other people can’t unlock your laptop with theirs.
TheftSensor is free but the the company behind has another more advanced non-free application called Undercover. Install this and should your Mac be stolen notify them and the next time your Mac hits in the Internet it’ll realise it’s stolen and start sending iSight cam pics of the perpetrator using your PC as well as IP tracking information.
If that doesn’t do the trick it starts to simulate hardware failures and then should it find itself on an Apple certified service center IP allocation it’ll let the service tech know it’s been stolen.
[)amien
More iPod fillers and Mac apps
Audiobooks
Check out podiobooks who have put up a number of free audio-books from various authors. Neil Gaiman has managed to get the first chapter of his new Anansi Boys book read by Lenny Henry up too.
Mac applications
Fluid is a screen saver that gives you, well fluid visual effects. It has a whole bunch of preset effects and a mixing desk to mix up your own. Works okay on my PowerBook but ideally needs something more powerful! Mac Mini owners need not apply.
WebDevAdditions gives Safari users a bunch of web developer tools much akin to the WebDev extension for Firefox.
CoverFlow gives you an alternative interface to your music by presenting you with a gorgeously rendered user interface of album art.
USB Overdrive lets you enable and assign all those extra buttons on your mouse without having to purchase Apple’s rather overpriced Mighty Mouse. You can get the superior laser-tracking Logitech MX-1000 for the same price if you shop around.
[)amien
Favourite applications for the Mac
LemurGirl has got her hands on a shiny new iBook courtesy of her brother so I thought I’d give her a heads up to my Mac favourite apps blog post only to realise I never finished it… Okay, so here goes.
Internet
Browsing
While Safari might serve most needs it’s not perfect and occasionally you’ll want a second opinion. Camino is a fast, native Mac application that utilises the core of Firefox. Hardcore browsers may want to check out OmniWeb or pick-up a development build of Safari!
Chat
iChat AV may look pretty and do video conferencing but it only supports AIM and Jabber. If you use Messenger you could grab the new 5.0 Mac release and give it a whirl. If you use more than one network then check out Fire or Adium X both unifying MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber, IRC and AIM in one user interface (Adium also supports Lotus and Novell chat protocols), much like Trillian does for Windows. IRC users however would be better off looking at Colloquy.
News feeds
Keep an eye on what’s going on RSS-side with NetNewsWire and it’s free little brother NetNewsWire Lite.
Media
Organise
Delicious Library will manage your media collection like no other. It can draw lovely virtual shelves of your media by grabbing images from Amazon, syncs the lists to your iPod, managed loans by integrating with Address Book and iCal. It also lets you scan your collection in via the iSight camera or Bluetooth scanner, search via Spotlight or voice, get details for your titles out of Amazon and let you add your own notes and ratings for each.
Play
Apple’s DVD Player came on in leaps and bounds in Tiger but even with that and QuickTime you’ll want to install Windows Media Player for Mac for those WMV files and VLC for everything else unaccounted for.
Album art
It’s all very well iTunes and colour iPods displaying the album art for tunes you’ve purchased but what about the ones you ripped from your own CD’s? Well Album Art for iTunes does just that, trying (with varied success) to grab the correct album art from Amazon. While you’re at it why not throw album art all over your desktop and use it to choose what next with Clutter.
Tweaking
User interface
If you don’t quite like the default look of your Mac, change it. ShapeShifter is my personal favourite tool for this job and you can choose from a whole host of themes. Some favourites include mes (based on Apple’s Architect) and Gerswhix (based on Mac OS 9).
Options
There are a host of hidden options in OS X and TinkerTool will reveal them for your tweaking pleasure.
Integration
Mobile phone
While Tiger has all sorts of goodies for syncing address books and calendars with your Bluetooth mobile BluePhoneElite takes this one stage further giving your Mac caller ID, turning down your iTunes when a call comes in, sending SMS from the desktop and much more.
Power users
Unix tools
While OS X comes with a bunch of tools normally found on Unix variants some are a little out of date, others are not included at all. Try Fink or DarwinPorts for your favourite tools (Windows guys can try Cygwin or UWin if you can understand the installation procedure).
Net control
Want to keep your network under control? LittleSnitch will rat out what your applications are doing on the network, where to and what for. You decide what they can connect to and what for.
Battery monitoring
If you’re using a PowerBook or iBook then before too long you’ll be cursing Apple and their seemingly quick-to-degrade batteries (and if you’re an iPod owner too). Use coconutBattery to see how much of a charge your battery can produce compared to when it was new, how many charge cycles the little blighter has been through and how long you’ve had him.
There are plenty of other apps out there, check out Apple’s Downloads, MacUpdate, VersionTracker and SourceForge for more.
Let me know if you find anything good I’ve missed ;-)
[)amien