Existing users, 
User Name mcgroarty_dotmac
Member Since 2005-07-14
Total number of Feedback Posts: 11
Total number of comments: 3
Last 10 Feedback Posts by mcgroarty_dotmac [ Search for All ]
Cuckoo 1.2.1 (Mac OS X)
It does exactly what you'd expect, has a nice and simple preferences interface, and it's tiny. A welcome desktop companion. [alert admin]
Monday, May 12 2008 @ 03:39 PM PDT
Saft 8.2.2 (Mac OS X)
Saft feels like a part of Safari. With every Safari upgrade, when Saft needs to be upgraded to match Safari again, it feels like Safari took ten steps backward until Saft is back in place again. Saft is essential - get us updated again soon, Hao Li! :) [alert admin]
Tuesday, January 10 2006 @ 09:06 PM PST
VersionTracker Pro 4.0.1 (Mac OS X)
Right-clicking and unexpected results
Versiontracker's still got my pet peeve bug. In any other app I've used, right-clicking an item in a list view will show a context menu for what's under the mouse, and will select the item if it isn't selected already. In Versiontracker, you can right-click on one file, select download, and find a completely different file's downloaded because VT doesn't move the selection before the click. Even months after figuring this out, it still trips me up regularly because it's so non-standard. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Sunday, December 18 2005 @ 04:34 AM PST
RadioSHARK 1.0.5 (RS73) (Mac OS X)
Version 1.0.5 is Brilliant Software! 
This is a review of Version 1.0.5, not Version 2.0 which is not being well-received. RadioSHARK is a hardware/software combo that record broadcast (AM/FM) radio. The software is exactly the software Apple would write if they had an AM/FM radio tuner. It's simple and intuitive -- from the first time I launched it to my first scheduled recording couldn't have been more than a minute. It's also unobtrusive. Radio programs record without anything visibly launching or demanding your attention. Completed programs appear in your music folder and optionally add themselves to iTunes. The software is 5 stars, easily. The hardware might be 4. It's wonderful with FM, but it needs some electrical buffering. With AM radio, you hear significant interface from things like hard drive activity and heavy processor use. When I record my AM talk radio, I have to change my EQ to the treble reducer in iTunes and on my iPod to get rid of the shrill pitch. (Anyone know if a powered hub might help isolate noise?) If I could have my way, there are a few features I'd like added, but even without them this is five star software, as I said. Among the things I'd like to see are: - Automatic time-based file splits (turn a 3 1 hour talk radio show into three files automatically - this is one of my favorite iRecordMusic features) - The ability to specify chapter markers in iTunes files (For this radio program, always put markers at 6m, 21m, 33m and 55m after the hour. Talk radio has commercials in almost exactly the same places, and this would let me skip chapters to get close to the end of commercials) - Lower recording rates and mono/stereo specification! 64kbit is as low as it records. 24kbit mono is great for voice with AAC/mp4. - Podcast support. Maintain an Atom file with the last 10 shows recorded. Then we can make a web directory our recording directory and subscribe from other Macs and PCs with iTunes. :) [alert admin]
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Wednesday, November 23 2005 @ 06:00 AM PST
iRecordMusic 1.4 (42) (Mac OS X)
Promising software with bad error handling 
A very solid and capable program when it's working, but when it fails, it really fails. Basically, you can't plan on iRecordMusic recording your radio programs if you leave the program unattended for any length of time. If either your internet connection or the site you're streaming aren't 100% reliable, you'll get an error dialog popping up. While the error dialog is up, the program refuses to launch additional recordings and you'll return to find a dozen AppleScript timeout errors waiting to be dismissed. The iCal integration likely adds some neat features, but having to use it to schedule your recordings is frustrating. It's tough to tell at a glance what station/site you're going to record. (ak47.akamai.com/radiodist.asp?zzy anyone?) And even apart from the launch problems above, events are sometimes missed without warning or explanation even though they clearly exist in iCal. The program's insistence on generating popups for everything it does is also a little frustrating. The iCal integration means iCal keeps loading and jumping to the foreground, and the app itself leaps to the foreground displaying windows full of animated banner ads and file compressoin status updates. If anyone knows of a way to make it operate solely in the background I'd love to know about it. The software for the RadioSHARK hardware offers a great example of how this should work -- completely silent background recording without so much as a bouncing dock icon. Lastly, there's no user forum for people who want to share tricks on "eating around the bugs," tips for new and interesting uses, and lists of interesting sites for recording. While the reliability problems trump most else for me, I don't want to only rag on the program. There's plenty of good to go with the problems. For example, no matter what audio format you prefer, there's an option for you. From FLAC to mp3 to AAC and many more, you can have your streams saved off however you please. Nobody's left out in the cold here. Parts of the interface are pure genius, as well. To record a site, rather than having to find the URL for the RealPlayer or Windows Media Player stream, you simply use a browser to start the stream as you normally might. iRecordMusic notes the address of the page containing the media player and uses that for future launches. Not only is this easier than hand-picking a streaming media URL, but more reliable. Many stations seem to use multiple streaming providers or even use scripts to generate URLs based on the date or your Mac's streaming capabilities, and iRM doesn't suffer by it. iRM also doesn't require the user to listen to stations being recorded. They record silently so there's no problem with listening to music while the recording happens. Further, it's possible to record multiple stations at once, even if both stations want to use RealPlayer at the same time. So far as I know, this is the only program like it on the Mac. In my view, if BitCartel can get rid of the troublesome blocking error dialogs and firm up the scheduling, they'll have a five star product. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Sunday, November 20 2005 @ 05:01 AM PST
Firefox 1.0.6 (Mac OS X)
Firefox is a great cross-platform browser. It competes with Safari for rigid standards compliance and is relatively quick and solid. It falls down a bit on the UI. One of the more frustrating problems is the continued inconsistency with middle mousebutton clicks. Some builds support clicking the middle mousebutton to open a page, and others do not. The menus also aren't fully integrated so you can't configure shortcuts for some actions, and many of the more useful configurable options are hidden in a cryptic about:config page, and while the program is otherwise fairly stable, it leaks memory and can eventually bring the system to a crawl if you don't periodically exit and reload. Where Firefox excels is in its plugin support. Like Safari, Firefox has a versatile plugin architecture, but unlike Safari there are literally hundreds of plugins to choose from. The usual candidates are there - advanced advertising filtration and newsreader enhancements - but you can also find web development plugins. GreaseMonkey is one such plugin, and it's highly configurable and takes plugin scripts itself -- it makes automating web tasks and finding problems with page layouts a breeze. There are also plugins for automatically checking HTML/XML validation of the current page, and there are even site-specific plugins adding great features to Netflix and many discussion boards. On top of all this, you can't beat the price -- Free. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 08:55 PM PDT
NetNewsWire 2.0.1 (Mac OS X)
NetNewsWire is simple and elegant. It supports all of the features you'd expect with a newsreader and supports them well -- it runs quickly with nary a crash or odd behavior. On top of the basic features, it has a built-in drawer with a wealth of suggested sites and the ability to browse subscription lists from those around you (provided they use NetNewsWire and opt to make their lists shared). NNW can also use your .Mac account (or several other server types) to keep multiple copies of NetNewsWire in sync. Got a laptop and a home system? No worries! NetNewsWire can push your list of weblogs and "read" status when shutting down and retrieve the status when starting up. It only takes a few seconds and keeps you from missing interesting news in one place or another. More fun still, NNW can automatically download podcasts and insert the contents in iTunes. This is great for hybrid blog/podcast feeds where you'd miss the non-audio content with iTunes subscriptions. And by having files added as standard audio files instead of residing in the iTunes podcast manager, you can still create smart playlists to listen to several podcasts without having to manually start each one. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 08:46 PM PDT
GarageSale 1.8b3 (Mac OS X)
I've posted several dozen auctions with Garage Sale now, and I've run into nary a hang. It works "out of the box" and integrates nicely with iPhoto and the iSight camera for posting auction images. Garage Sale even includes a Dashboard widget for tracking the status of your auctions at a glance. This is exactly the kind of seamless integration and fluid user experience that made me switch to the Mac. My only complaint would be that the end of auction tools seem to require manual updating -- they don't automatically detect when you've paid, shipped, etc. It's a minor gripe, but they would be much more useful if they were integrated with ebay's status tracking rather than running as parallel duplicates. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 2 of 2 users found this helpful
Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 08:35 PM PDT
PocketMac Pro 3.51 (Mac OS X)
PocketMac Pro is promising, but only if you have a strong tolerance for learning to "eat around the bugs." After an even dozen Finder hangs and having to repeatedly hard-power my Mac, I've decided to drop PocketMac. Some things that consistently hang PocketMac for me: - Wiggling my PocketPC in the cradle - causes PocketMac to launch repeatedly and hang - Transferring a large file (2-3 megs) - Trying to install applications - Syncing lots of iPhoto pictures - Uploading themes - Anything iTunes related - Any sync operation if the PocketPC has already been cradled 1/2 hour or so - Clicking through folders too quickly in the PocketPC browser Each time, PocketMac locks up, it locks up Finder as well because it runs in Finder's context instead of launching a new process. To escape the lockup you have to command-tab to another program to enable the Apple menu again and force quit, then open a shell and kill the PocketMac daemons before it can run again. If you don't have anything but Finder running when PocketMac hangs, you can't get to the Apple menu or use the Dock, so you have to hard power your Mac. Some additional PocketMac annoyances: - Forces iCal, iPhoto and iTunes to quit without warning when it syncs - Included Menu program makes your start menu powder blue with white text on PocketPC 2003 1st Edition - unreadable - If iCal items have non-7bit ascii, often creates appointments that crash your PocketPC if you edit them - PocketPC uninstaller fails on always-open files - When it works, it's SLOW!!! if you enable any sync but iCal and address book - Requires you to manually configure a bizarre pseudo-pop server to enable Mail sync and update it any time your Mac's IP changes - If your PocketPC is cradled when you try to Sleep your Mac, it sleeps then returns instantly. I previously wondered why Apple didn't point to PocketMac on its iSync page. Now I think I know. :( There's a lot of great technology here - the feature list is amazing. But the author really needs to stop adding features and focus on stability for a while. [alert admin]
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Friday, July 29 2005 @ 07:09 PM PDT
GarageSale 1.7 (Mac OS X)
Up until July 13, 2005 VersionTracker listed a version as 1.7 release that was actually a beta. In case you think you have 1.7 already, you may not -- the July 14 version is indeed the real 1.7. [alert admin]
Post a comment | More Info | 1 of 1 users found this helpful
Friday, July 15 2005 @ 06:53 AM PDT
Last 10 Comments by mcgroarty_dotmac [ Search for All ]
SuperDuper can't compress with Tiger
"just because he didn't update a FAQ for an issue that no longer affects you (and in fact affects very few people overall)?" It affects anyone running Tiger, which is quite a few people. And it still affects me in that I don't have the promised functionality (compressed backups) and need to consistently use a work-around instead. I'm annoyed because the developer called me on the phone to talk at length about the problem, but still hasn't…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Saturday, August 13 2005 @ 09:07 PM PDT
Also: sudo rm -r /Applications/iSync.app/Contents/PlugIn/WindowsMobile
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Sunday, July 31 2005 @ 05:51 PM PDT
Oh, as I said - even the uninstaller hangs. If you have this problem, force quit the installer if you can, then do this from the shell: sudo find -x / -iname "*pocketmac*" -exec rm -rf {} \; It will take a while, but this searches your entire startup drive for files and folders with "pocketmac" in the name and erases them. Next, you'll want to restart your Mac right away as a couple daemons are left…
Original feedback item : Read More(1 words)
Friday, July 29 2005 @ 07:16 PM PDT
