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Advanced SearchUser Name MA Bob
Member Since 2002-06-23
Total number of Feedback Posts: 14
Total number of comments: 1
Last 10 Feedback Posts by MA Bob [ Search for All ]
Keystrokes Pronouncer 1.7 (Mac OS X)
The VoiceOver feature of Tiger already does this, and works quite well. Adjust settings with the VO app (/Applications/Utilities/VoiceOver Utility.app), turn it on in the Universal Access pane of System Preferences, and type away. Thus, this is only of use to pre-Tiger users. If you're on Tiger, save your money. [alert admin]
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Tuesday, December 06 2005 @ 11:36 PM PST
APC Powerchute 1.3.3 (Mac OS X)
There is one advantage to using this....
One advantage this has over the Energy Saver utility, aside from forced shutdowns (which I've never actually had to test, thankfully) is that is keeps a log of UPS activity, i.e., when power has come and gone. This is great when you come home, see the power was out, and want to know exactly when it was out and for how long. As far as I can see, the otherwise reasonably capable Energy Saver does not include this very basic functionality. I've never had any problems with this in over a year of use running 24/7 and with quite a few power outages (a bad utility transformer in the alley), but with Energy Saver's features, I am conflicted whether I should reinstall this after my recent Tiger update just to get a log. After all, it is a low-level utility, and although I've not had any problems, it appears the potential is definitely there given the experience of others. [alert admin]
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Sunday, November 06 2005 @ 10:01 AM PST
Web Confidential 3.7 (Mac OS X)
It seems that 3.7 removes the card view... it's just been pulled from the program. This change isn't listed in the release notes, and in fact, the docs still show the card view. What's up? Is this a mistake? I strongly prefer the card view over the list view. I have multiple, big monitors, but I still find that the list view takes up far too much space to display far less information about a given item (especially when there are notes). With the card view, I could see everything about a single item without having to switch to WC and scroll the window around. The card view definitely was a little buggy since the OS X transition, but I'd preferred to have seen it cleaned up and even enhanced rather than simply dropped. Previously, I would have rated this five stars pretty much across the board. Now that my primary, longtime view has been inexplicably yanked, however, I feel compelled to lower the rating. [alert admin]
Thursday, April 29 2004 @ 05:10 PM PDT
VersionTracker 6.5b (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
Programs that get too much exposure
Some software developers take advantage of sites like VT by putting out releases **way** too frequently, sometimes once a week or even more frequently. Not only does this hurt the efforts of other developers vying for attention, but it means we users have to wade past those programs over and over and over and over and.... I think VT needs to have a policy where they won't post updates to the same program more than, say, every other week, unless it's an emergency maintenance release (like say, the previous version has a bug that erases users' hard drives). But to get those exemptions, the developers should actually have to explain themselves to the VT editors. [alert admin]
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Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 01:35 AM PDT
VersionTracker 6.5b (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
One thing I've noticed with VT over the years that's rather annoying, that I've experienced once or twice myself and heard other developers complain about, is that they often post software releases with the previous day's listings, even though they were only released on the current day. Developers tell VT, "We're releasing on this day", announce it early in the day to catch the morning news readers, and VT posts it on the previous day. Thus, the software really only gets a single day's exposure, rather than the two day's exposure that it would otherwise get. So it becomes a no-win situation: you either announce later in the day (and risk missing folks who read the site when they first get to work), or you get just one day of exposure. Which is worse? [alert admin]
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Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 01:30 AM PDT
VersionTracker 6.5b (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
Having VT pages auto-refresh is *extremely* annoying. I'm not sure if it's done because they are trying to "help" people by ensuring that they're always looking at a current listing, or if they're just trying to maximize the number of ad displays they get, but whatever the reason, it drives me nuts. VT is one of several sites that I open simultaneously into tabs via a bookmark in Safari. It's the fourth or fifth tab that I get to, after the more editorial-type news sites (like MacInTouch). Inevitably, while I'm scrolled part-way down the page reading an item's description, the page refreshes, forcing me to wait for a complete reload, and then forcing me to find my spot again on the page. Grr! One of the primary commandments of good web design is to <i>leave control in the user's hands</i>, and by forcing refreshes on a continual basis, VT is taking control from the user. Put another way, if we want to refresh the page, we will do it - we don't need you doing it. We understand that if it's been a while, that new listings may have been added, but let us deal with that when we're ready. Another site that does this and so similarly drives me nuts, is MacCental. However, I'm <i>sure</i> that they do it only to increase ad displays, since they also auto-refresh the actual article pages and not just the main listing page. Another problem with auto-refreshing pages is when people who don't have always-on connections want to load the page for later viewing. If they have their computer set to connect automatically when an application requests a network resource, their computer will constantly be connecting! And if the computer doesn't happen to be able to connect (perhaps it's a PB that's no longer on the network), then the user will likely even lose the already-loaded contents, which means that they don't get to see anything at all. Now, if we could only get Apple to add a feature to Safari to block auto-refreshing pages, just like they block pop-ups.... [alert admin]
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Saturday, October 04 2003 @ 01:23 AM PDT
Web Validator 1.4.2 (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X)
If you care about web standards (and if you're a web developer, you should), this program will make your life much easier. Yes, you can accomplish the same thing by passing each of your pages to the W3C validator one at a time, but who wants to spend time sending off hundreds or thousands of pages like that? Just let this program crawl your site and take care of the work for you.
The program does have a few UI flaws, but those should get worked out over time. For now, it's good enough, and I've sent in my registration fee.
[alert admin]Thursday, July 10 2003 @ 12:27 PM PDT
NotePad Deluxe 2.3.3 (Mac OS X)
Overall, I'd agree with others who've given this program high ratings. I, too, downloaded a slew of apps from VT to organize my many snippets of all sorts of text, and found this program to have the best combination of formatting capability, organization capability, and UI design. WRT the Carbon/Cocoa thing, it doesn't really matter for performance - both APIs lie atop the same engine. However, I generally prefer Carbon apps for anything I edit text in, since Cocoa breaks so many longtime Mac conventions in this area. Thus, I'm personally happy that this is a Carbon app and not a Cocoa one.
The one downside to the program is definitely its support. The developers don't always get back to you, and when they do, they can be painfully slow in doing so. Back when the program suffered from The Bug, it took the developers months to fix it, and they only replied to my support plea after a week or two (although, much to their credit, when they did replay, they sent me a beta that fixed the problem).
Some things I'd like to see are aliased notes (so that I can have an original note in one place, and a virtual link to it in another, thus avoiding duplication - and I want this to happen as a real feature this time!), auto backup, support for a service to create new notes (yes, this *can* be done in Carbon!), improved searching features like support for Perl-style regular expressions (Ibrium: check out the PCRE lib!), support for WebCore for (optionally) rendering HTML pages, better contextual menu support, integrated support for AppleScripts (think BBEdit), a simple glossary function (again, think BBEdit, but simpler), and finally, a slight modernization to the UI (but avoiding using things like drawers just because they're there).
All-in-all, a great program. If you handle lots and lots of snippets, give it a try. If you only handle a few, or want a fancier UI, go elsewhere.
[alert admin]Friday, June 13 2003 @ 01:09 AM PDT
Eudora X 5.2.1b2 (Mac OS X)
auto-compact mailboxes, and when it does so is configurable. [alert admin]
Wednesday, January 15 2003 @ 11:20 PM PST
Eudora X 5.2.1b2 (Mac OS X)
handling gargantuan quantities of e-mail, there's simply no competition out there - I have Eudora running 24x7 dealing with a volume of e-mail--in the millions--that would make any other program croak, and is indeed simply beyond the specs of most others. It's also by far the most configurable client there is, especially since the addition of the x-settings, and handles numerous e-mail accounts better than others. Bottom line: if your professional life depends on e-mail, and a lot of it, you *want* to use Eudora. --- LC68040, as for you seeing many times a mailbox get corrupted when it has 100,000 messages in it, I'm sorry, but that doesn't make sense. I can tell you from first-hand experience that Eudora's hard-coded limit for the number of messages in a single mailbox is 32,767. I can also tell you, from having a couple dozen mailboxes filled to that limit, that Eudora handles them without skipping a beat. --- The UI can definitely use a major updating (but keep the separate windows and the menu-accessible mailboxes!!), development progress is glacial, and the subscription scheme sucks, but until there's at least competition in the same league as Eudora, there's not a whole lot of room to complain. [alert admin]
Wednesday, January 15 2003 @ 11:19 PM PST
Last 10 Comments by MA Bob [ Search for All ]
There is one advantage to using this.... 
The log is maintained, but not accessible in the interface. It's stored at /var/log/comapcpowerchute.log. You can show the last few lines by typing the following in Terminal:
tail /var/log/comapcpowerchute.logYou can also open the file with a text editor like BBEdit or TextEdit. (If you want to select the file from the Finder, just use it's Go->Go to Folder command to go to /var/log).
Original feedback item : Read More
Sunday, March 05 2006 @ 12:13 AM PST
