FruitMenu brings a hierarchical menu to the rather empty Apple menu. You can add folders for recent applications and documents, system preferences, and your own favourite folders. In addition, FruitMenu expands the set of system commands available to you.

Given the amount of "work" an applications' menu does for you, it seems strange that the Apple menu is such an anaemic affair. FruitMenu expands on this much like the hierarchical menu of Mac OS 9, or like BeHierarchic in Mac OS 8. It gives you access to your favourite applications and utilities, which you can put in the main menu or conveniently in submenus. There are also system commands, which can also be accessed with keyboard shortcuts. This gives you great access to your applications and utilities without being forced to put them in the Dock, or having to go in to the applications or utilities folders. It also gives you "one click" access to your favourite files and folders. There is also a mechanism to access this through a contextual menu, but I don't use this function.

FruitMenu relies on Unsanity's Application Enhancer (APE), which intercepts a variety of interface actions and run "alternative extensions" or haxies. Leopard broke this mechanism well and good, so much so that haxies relying on APE were out of action for a long time. If anything, it made me realise how much I rely on FruitMenu – and how much time a shareware developer can spend supporting this. With the re-vamped Leopard compatible FruitMenu, I have experienced few if any problems. My only qualm would be that FruitMenu does increase the start-up time, and can be a slouch the first time a menu is used.

Maybe I'm set in my ways in that I like to be able to get to all my applications and utilities in a visually non-intrusive way. Well worth $12, I'd say.