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Advanced SearchUser Name Nick Sloan
Member Since 2000-03-15
Total number of Feedback Posts: 88
Total number of comments: 5
Last 10 Feedback Posts by Nick Sloan [ Search for All ]
RagTime 6.0.1 (Mac OS X)
Powerful and solid but tricky to use. 
I really want to like RagTime. It is amazingly versatile. It gives you more fine-grained control over the appearance and function of spreadsheets than any other app I know, and although I do not use it for word-processing, I am sure that the same is true there. It can combine spreadsheets and other forms of document in unique ways. I have been using it for several years for my own accounts, and I have found it to be very solid. The catch is that even with the supposed interface improvements in v6, it is fiendishly opaque to fathom. I am an inveterate fiddler, and I can find my way around most apps if I really want to, but every time I need to do something other than working on existing documents I find myself struggling with the byzantine complexities of the interface. This is definitely one Achilles heel. The other is the price. I bought it at a discount, having used Solo happily for years for free, but I would not have considered the full price. A shame, because I really want RagTime to flourish and improve, but until someone with a realistic understanding of interface design can harness its power in a much more accessible way, I can only give it a rather lukewarm recommendation. [alert admin]
Saturday, October 04 2008 @ 09:33 AM PDT
CaliBrate 1.2 (Mac OS X)
Very flexible and effective tool for searching iCal and making batch changes to events. Quick response from the developer when I reported a problem with date formatting. Altogether a nice bit of software to have and to use. [alert admin]
Thursday, June 05 2008 @ 11:09 PM PDT
Butler 4.1.5 Transient (Mac OS X)
Butler is a miracle of configurability. It can duplicate the varied functions of at least eight other best-of-class utilities, and do so elegantly and without compromise. It had been hovering around my consciousness for more than a year when I decided to spend a little time seeing whether it was really all that it was cracked up to be. Definitely, but it is only when you start fine-tuning and putting it to your own uses that you fully understand what it is capable of. It is like a digital Meccano set: it may not arrive in the form that quite suits you, but you can take it apart and reassembe it in infinite different ways. It would be a rare Mac user who could not somehow work more efficiently or pleasantly with Butler's help. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Wednesday, February 06 2008 @ 12:00 AM PST
OfficeTime 1.2.3 (Mac OS X)
Don’t be mislead by the name...
...this is not klunky bloatware but a sleek focussed app that does job timing and cost tracking with style and economy of means. The iCal integration is particularly good. I have found nothing to compare with OfficeTime for thoughtful and efficient design. [alert admin]
Friday, December 14 2007 @ 05:19 AM PST
chartConstructor 2.1 (Mac OS X)
Yes, chartConstructor was excellent in theory, but it had too many small but annoying bugs, and there now appears to be no hope of further development. I am now an appreciative user of OmniPlan, but iTaskX is well worth a look, and users with modest needs (and means) might also like to take a look at the brand new Juggle: http://www.windvector.com/juggle/overview.html [alert admin]
Monday, December 03 2007 @ 03:18 PM PST
Media Indexer 2.4 (Mac OS X)
Media Indexer is a nicely designed tool, but if it is the sort of thing you need, you would do well to compare it with FileFinder. Media Indexer has the important avantage of being able to open multiple windows, and it costs roughly half as much, but FileFinder has very many more viewing options and scanning options, it has previews and there is far more that you can do with files and enclosing folders. It also seems to do much faster scans. It will be interesting to see how MI develops. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Friday, June 29 2007 @ 12:12 PM PDT
SBook5 5.1.010 (Mac OS X)
"SBook5 is now an abandoned project. The complete source code, including the AI engine, is now being made available to the community." I really hope someone picks this up. SBook5 is a unique alternative for those who feel constrained by Apple's Address Book. It has served me excellently for years, but is in need of maintenance: basically very solid, but some of the peripheral functions don't work quite as they should. It deserves a future, because nothing else out there does the same thing quite so well. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Friday, May 11 2007 @ 11:24 PM PDT
Shades 1.0 (Mac OS X)
Shades is a neat idea beautifully implemented, an object lesson in extending the usefulness of the Color Picker. [alert admin]
Monday, May 07 2007 @ 05:00 AM PDT
SecretService 0.3 (Mac OS X)
Since SecretService appears to be pretty much defunct, visitors to this page might like to try an excellent alternative from the developer of Journler. http://homepage.mac.com/philipdow/AES256Service.zip [alert admin]
Tuesday, April 17 2007 @ 08:08 AM PDT
TAO 1.8 (Mac OS X)
In theory it has power and flexibility like no other Mac outliner; in practice it requires intense study and patience to get the best out of it. Like other revered pieces of Mac shareware (Graphic Converter and Vuescan spring to mind) it is the complex and ingenious product of a single developer, which gives it the sort of single-minded focus that commercial software often lacks, but it also means that what may be obvious to the impressive mind of Mr Takashi can be a little baffling to the rest of us. You will be able to do things with TAO (sophisticated columns, minute control over formatting, comprehensive linking, extraordinarily flexible viewing options) that are not possible with most if any other Mac outliners, but do not expect to be able to achieve this without a considerable investment in time spent learning the intricacies of the app. TAO is not for the casual user, but can be very rewarding for those prepared to make the most of it. I have found it to be stable --in that it has never crashed on me, or caused a 3rd party crash so far as I know-- but not bug-free: some of the preferences do not seem to work as intended, and even after a minute study of the manual, some corners of the interface continue to perplex. This is not surprising for so convoluted an app, but as some previous reviewers have noted, the fact that TAO still has glitches to be ironed out after over 3 years of development and innumerable versions, makes me worry about the prospect of finite resources being dissipated on a Windows version. For $30, TAO is an absolute bargain. Please keep up the good work Mr Takashi. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 9 of 9 users found this helpful
Monday, April 09 2007 @ 10:39 PM PDT
Last 10 Comments by Nick Sloan [ Search for All ]
RagTime quitting on launch was caused for me by having disabled various fonts that it requires to run, notably Apple Goihic Regular, Hiragino Maru Gothic Pro, LiHei Pro and STHeiti. Probably others too, but these were the ones I had to re-enable.
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Friday, December 22 2006 @ 09:19 AM PST
Not arrogance Kalsta. A two-star review is pretty brutal, and potentially damaging to a developer. I just wanted to right a perceived wrong. If you had made your comments with a less negative star rating I would not have bothered. I like the principle of careful comparative reviews, complete with links, but to publish a review with an arbitrary list of objections which did not apply to the version then current and to rate it on…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Monday, November 27 2006 @ 05:19 AM PST
I hear the Xounds of CRASHES...
I have also been suffering a series of disturbances since running the Xounds and FruitMenu updaters on 10.3.8. All back to normal after an uninstall. Also the first time I have traced any problems to Haxies after 2 years solid use.
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, March 11 2005 @ 01:14 PM PST
Yes Mojolive, I have been having the same problem for a couple of weeks. I emailed the developer, and he says that it affects only some people. Try emailing him yourself on <johnred@inventive.us> and see if he can find a common link.
Original feedback item : Read More
Wednesday, December 22 2004 @ 03:34 PM PST
NetBarrier: Is there a similar program? - Without Intego's pain-in-the...
Yes: FirewalkX. Much neater than NetBarrier, and more powerful in some ways.
Original feedback item : Read More
Monday, April 05 2004 @ 01:07 PM PDT
