Existing users, 
User Name ThomasHarte
Member Since 2006-01-13
Total number of Feedback Posts: 11
Total number of comments: 2
Last 10 Feedback Posts by ThomasHarte [ Search for All ]
AC3D 3D Design Software 6.5.28 (Mac OS X)
The interface is clunky and extremely ugly; I first used this software 10 years ago on Windows and it looks much the same now as it did then, give or take a few new button icons. However, it's a mostly well-written piece of software that is really good for what it aims to be: a points and polys modeller. There are some real oddities to it — no search in the Help menu as per every other application under 10.5, and Boolean operations that seem just not to work a lot of the time — but you won't notice most of the time. My tip: go to /Applications/ac3dmac/tcl, open ac3d.tcl in TextEdit, search for the text "proc bypass_system_dialogs" then add a hash character to the start of every line, down to the one with a '}' just after the text "puts "system file dialogs bypassed"" (some of them already have hashes, add or don't add at your discretion). Following that, the editor will run with proper native file selectors for save/load, less ugly pop-up boxes and the normal OS X colour wheel. It seems there was some bug way back in 10.4.8 that precludes this being the default program configuration. [alert admin]
Friday, June 05 2009 @ 09:58 AM PDT
Cheetah3D 4.6.4 (Mac OS X)
The user interface is highly modal, which is a bad thing, but show me a 3d package that isn't initially confusing. Once you're over the extremely small hurdle of the modality, everything else is extremely easy, intuitive and well laid out. From the end of the market I can afford, I've tried this, Carrara and AC3d — this blows the other two away and I highly recommend it. It's probably worth three or four times the price. [alert admin]
Friday, June 05 2009 @ 05:36 AM PDT
Jing 2.1 (Mac OS X)
Horrid user interface, bad approach to privacy 
Imagine, if you will, the absolute worst piece of 'multimedia' software — probably for Windows — that you have received bundled with a printer or a scanner or a digital camera, full of meaningless circles filled with low contrast gradients, transitioning between one another in a poorly animated way and dependent on you reading the instructions first to learn by rote what each icon is meant to do. If you're not willing to or can't imagine such a piece of software then download Jing and try it first hand. Further sins: (1) you can't record anything without handing over your email address; (2) although it is justifiable for free users to be limited to SWF output, the baked-in player interface is ugly to the extreme. Couple its deficiencies with the usual downsides of playing video through a browser (ie, video can't be resized, things like the scroll wheel to frame step don't work, no full screen option) and the videos you produce with this aren't particularly useful. I've rated it 3/5 because I guess some people will find it very useful, but they'll do so despite these various limitations and probably through gritted teeth while dealing with the user interface. [alert admin]
Friday, June 05 2009 @ 05:28 AM PDT
Inkscape 0.46 (Mac OS X)
A poorly thought out editor with a poor interface that isn't at all adapted to OS X. Install this if you want horrid typography, non-standard keyboard shortcuts (it's control+c/etc here), failure to confirm most actions (eg, press command+c as per every other Mac program and there'll be no indication that you've made an error, press control+c and there'll be no indication that you've done the correct thing — unlike real Mac software which flashes the relevant part of the menubar) and little extras like open/save dialogues that don't know where any of the usual system paths like 'Documents' are located. Furthermore, the interface is clearly inspired by CorelDraw but lacks any of its finesse, instead being oversized, clumsy and extremely poorly laid out. Wonder why every object you place seems to have "O: 10" according to the status bar? It's because the object has Opacity of 100%, but thankfully the developers have saved us all time by abbreviating all opacities to just the first two digits, and little idiotic mistakes like that characterise the entire program. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 5 users found this helpful
Thursday, May 07 2009 @ 03:18 AM PDT
StuffIt Expander 12.0.2 (Mac OS X)
Horrid, bloated software. Keep it away from your computer. [alert admin]
Read Comments (2) | More Info
Tuesday, August 26 2008 @ 03:37 PM PDT
iConquer 2.4.5 (Mac OS X)
This plays a very close approximation of the board game Risk and isn't very expensive. [alert admin]
Sunday, August 24 2008 @ 12:08 PM PDT
Firefox 3.0 (Mac OS X)
Still bloated, still duplicating OS functionality
Firefox implements useful features like spell checking and password storage. OS X users will be used to both since they're provided by the OS for use in all applications through a centralised dictionary and through the keychain. Firefox cleverly uses neither of these OS features, instead implementing its own solutions. So it uses its own dictionary, and its passwords don't show up in the Keychain Access application like those from all real OS X applications. To add insult to injury, the default download doesn't actually come with a dictionary — you need to download that separately. So Firefox stands alone in being the only OS X browser that doesn't spellcheck without additional downloads. Previous versions of Firefox looked really horrible. The developers' solution seems to have been not to just use the native OS X widgets, but to try to emulate them. They've cleverly decided to try to duplicate the widget set circa maybe OS X v10.2, when probably 60% of current Mac owners didn't use a Mac, and even then the colours are noticeably off. Probably they're doing something stupid like ignoring the monitor's colour profile while they ignore all the native widgets. Doing their own pixel painting also means that their browser seemingly doesn't work with any assistive technology, such as screen readers or the like. Try this: switch on the OS's built-in VoiceOver (it's in the Universal Access section of the System Preferences). Click on a text box in Safari or Safari's preferences and it'll read it out to you. Do the same in Firefox and it won't. That's because the Firefox developers are doing their own pixel pushing and ignoring the OS's way of doing things. You might say that a lot of these complaints are unavoidable for cross-platform software. Well that's besides the point — they make for a very poorly implemented OS X application. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 4 of 4 users found this helpful
Tuesday, June 24 2008 @ 04:07 PM PDT
EvolutionTV 2.7 (Mac OS X)
This software is no longer recommended by Miglia
Miglia now provide a completely different app, MigliaTV, for the EvolutionTV device — see http://www.miglia.com/Support/evolutiontv.html for a download. I've just grabbed it, but so far it seems to be a big improvement. It's a proper universal binary too, which helps. The old software included two or three PowerPC only frameworks, which no doubt were to blame for many of the problems faced by ailgimboo. [alert admin]
Saturday, June 02 2007 @ 10:47 AM PDT
Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (Mac OS X)
If Windows apps ran in OS X, they'd act and look like this...
Firefox is a slow browser that looks ugly and ignores quite a bit of built-in OS functionality (e.g. the keychain, the normal spell checker) to provide its own duplicate functionality underneath a quite ugly facade. This is one of those applications that is "skinnable" at the expense of not using any of the normal widgets, and it looks absolutely horrid. If Safari is giving you problems, then I strongly recommend you try Opera before this. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 3 of 3 users found this helpful
Thursday, November 30 2006 @ 11:56 AM PST
Aqua Scribus 1.3.3.2 (Mac OS X)
The Mac port trails the main distribution by 2 releases and is incompatible with Intel Macs. As much as it does run, it seems to have a very X Windows style interface despite being Aqua native. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 0 of 1 users found this helpful
Wednesday, October 25 2006 @ 12:55 PM PDT
Last 10 Comments by ThomasHarte [ Search for All ]
Use The Unarchiver, which is free, very lightweight and also handles rar, 7zip and a bunch of other esoteric package formats.
Original feedback item : Read More
Friday, June 05 2009 @ 10:00 AM PDT
DVD-Drive opens and closes rapidly
Parallels is grabbing your DVD and piping it to the virtualised machine. Go to Devices->CD/DVD ROM 1->Disconnect to return the DVD to your OS X desktop. You can connect the DVD to your virtual machine again later using the same menu. If you don't like the default behaviour of grabbing DVDs as they are inserted, use Parallels to open your virtual machine but don't start it. Then go to Edit->Virtual Machine..., click on CD/DVD-ROM 1, and…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Saturday, November 17 2007 @ 05:23 PM PST
