OS X Software

Hands on: xScope

Mike Hudson Leave a comment

Back in October this year a StackSocial bundle offer landed in my mailbox. Since I started receiving these bundle mails they have never ceased to amaze me with some of the software they contain.. Most of the bundles include a piece of popular ‘flag ship’ software, and all of them contain smaller pieces.. Generally pieces I have never heard of before, and often on first glance I look at them and think – “I’m not sure I could make use of that” however I generally install them anyway, because … Hey – you should never judge a book by its cover!

One such item was xScope by Iconfactory .. xScope is a collection of 8 tools in one easy to use utility, primarily aimed at developers – the tool makes it unbelievably easily to achieve the perfect design and layout of pretty much anything on-screen. It’s ideal for aligning and measuring images, divs, tables, forms, controls and much much more.

The tool floats on top of all other applications and uses a simple “grab and drag” control on the ruler to make measuring as easy as possible.

xScope

But it doesn’t stop there.. You can also use xScope to check out what your design/application/site will look like on screens of various sizes with a simple click of a button!

xScope Screen Size

When I first downloaded the tool, I didn’t think I’d ever really use it.. How wrong was I, it soon became an important part of any design and development tasks! It even sports pride of place on my super clean minimalistic dock!

So to recap:

The good:

I am a big fan of anything that makes tasks around design and development easier and more streamlined, this certainly goes a long way to help with this. I think the price for such a powerful little utility is just right, even more so if you manage to bag it in a bundle.

The bad:

This is a tough one, as the tool doesn’t really have any downsides.. When I first started using it, reading the ruler correctly was a bit of a challenge – but once I got used to over stretching it slightly I quickly worked out that quirk.

The bottom line:

I am really please StackSocial decided to include this in their bundle, and I am pretty positive I will be upgrading to later versions as and when they arrive. This tool easily bags a 5 star rating from me.

Rating:

5.0 star big Hands on: xScope

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MacKeeper v2.61 Review

Mike Hudson Leave a comment

MacKeeper

MacKeeper v2.61

As a daily OS X user, I know just how important it is to keep your Mac running as good as new. There’s nothing worse than having to sit and wait for your Mac whilst it processes the most basic of commands and requests.

OS X is a complex beast, and if you don’t do regular maintenance you’ll soon find it grinding to a halt. Sure, there’s hundreds of terminal commands and finder tweaks you can do to clean things up. But with applications such as MacKeeper available to download there’s really no need to fumble around in the terminal.

Launching MacKeeper automatically starts the ‘Fast Cleanup’ scan, which even on my packed 500GB ‘spiny disk’ hard drive takes about 3 minutes to complete. Once done the fresh, easy to use GUI outlines everything MacKeeper is able to clean using it’s “one click” clean process. During the fast cleanup, MacKeeper cleans unused application binaries, empties system and user cache locations, removes unused language files from applications and clears down log file locations.

So what does this mean

By default, when you install applications they also install the required language files to service every possible language. (Which have been packaged with the app) So for example if your Mac OS X is installed with only the UK language packs, chances are you are not going to need the bulk of German, French, Spanish etc language files in each of your installed apps. As you can imagine, these can quite rapidly start taking up storage space.

Equally the cache locations can also become packed out with cache files for each of your used applications. Sure, cache’s are great for speeding up the launch of often used apps. However, no doubt your frequent app use changes every now an then. So it’s always a good idea to regenerate the cache now and again.

Also – log file rotation is often set quite low with some applications, so some log files can be kept for weeks, months or even years. Generally when investigating an issue you would only need a hand full of log files, and would rarely need to go hunting through older logs.

I generally run clean up operations (after a full system backup of course) on a monthly basis and generally clear down between 500mb to 1GB’s worth of accumulated ‘junk’. So imagine if you’ve never performed a cleanup on your two-year old mac!

But wait! There’s more..

Where MacKeeper stands out from the crowds of other system maintenance tools is with its plethora of other built-in utilities and tools. Such as; Duplicates file finder, Disk Usage mapper, Smart Uninstaller, update tracker, data encryptor, file shredder, deleted file recovery, Internet security and theft recovery to name but a few!

That’s a total of apps worth £410.00, that you get bundled with MacKeeper for only £34.95!

The Good:

MacKeeper makes it extremely easy for even the mac novice keep their mac running as good as new, and utilise as much space as possible on the stock hard drive. The utilities are easy to use, and give excellent feedback and detailed instructions of what’s going to happen when you push the buttons etc. Whats more, each tab of the application has the ability to connect you to the MacKeeper support team.

The Bad:

MacKeeper performs tasks that could be done using terminal (if you are brave enough, and have to time to research and practice the commands) although that could be dangerous if you are not a confident terminal user..

The Bottom Line:

This app get’s 5 out of 5 for its ease of use and all round collection of system utilities. With this installed there’s nothing more you will need to keep your mac in ‘tip-top’ condition.

Rating:

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Do you know who your Mac is talking to..?

Mike Hudson Leave a comment

rotecting your Mac from virus infection is as important as wearing your seatbelt when you drive. However, going as far as your everyday antivirus product may not tick all of your boxes. Then check out Private Eye!

Private Eye is a free network monitor for OS X Lion, not only does it monitor inbound and outbound traffic – but it does it in realtime! Thus giving you an instant view of exactly what is going on and where.

Private Eye breaks down the traffic by application, giving you the ability to filter by application at the click of a button.

As you can see from the screenshot below, on the left you can filter by direction of traffic or application. Then on the right hand side you can see the time of connection, the application name, the direction and the destination IP address. In this case below, the help demon is making almost constant connections to 2.19.220.224.

 

Private Eye is the perfect solution if you want to confirm non of your apps are ‘calling home’.

If you locate any applications which cause concern, then you may want to check out Radio Silence Firewall for Mac, which is developed by the same team as Private Eye

Review

Ease of use– Private Eye really couldn’t be easier to use, the simple point and click interface means even my nana could use it!
 
Features – Private Eye packs in everything you really need for a quick and simple overview of your network traffic

You can download your copy of Private Eye from the RadioSilence website, or by clicking this link.

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My 10 minute run down of OS X 10.7

Mike Hudson Leave a comment


So…OS X 10.7 – first thoughts of the developer preview are good, as with every bit of new technology I am open to change, and I actually like change.  Some say I bore too easily, others appreciate my hunger to always be on the bleeding edge!

I was quite impressed with some of the features ‘out of the box’ of 10.7, equally some actually made me wonder why…

The things I had to switch back almost immediately was the reverse scrolling…This bothered me, yes I know it’s aimed towards the iPadTouch screen generation, but sliding up on the touch padmouse to go down is just wrong on so many levels. Luckily they made it simple to reverse!

(more…)

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