Software

Menu Bar Clutter

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Well as you asked so nicely…

Right now it looks like this…

From the left:

  • Hot Mouse Flower – a virtual keyboard thingy.
  • SoundFlower – rewires sound between your apps.
  • Found – a searcher that comes and goes – seems to hog a lot of CPU at times.
  • Vienna – RSS reader.
  • Littleipsum – comes and goes as required.
  • Dropbox – cloudy goodness.
  • Cookie – clutter clearer.
  • Growl – venerable growler.
  • Interarchy – FTP goodness.
  • ClipMenu – clipboard manager.
  • 1Password – password manager which I rarely use from the menu bar.
  • FreeMemory – shows (and reclaims) the free memory you thought you had.
  • BwanaDik – IP/Network displayer now discontinued but still going strong with Mountain Lion. Note the Zappa reference.
  • ClipTwin – quick clipboard swap with the iPad.
  • Caffeine – keeps me and the Mac awake.
  • PopClip – how did we ever manage without it?
  • And then the Mac’s regular Messages, AppleScripts, BlueTooth, Time Machine, WiFi, Clock, User switcher, Spotlight and Notifications.

Last time we looked (February 2010) it looked like this.

The return of the one star whingers.

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While one does not begrudge Apple their current mass market success one can sometimes long for the good old days when they only managed to sell computers to discerning sensible people.

Well done Johnny433! You managed to download and install Mountain Lion that’s five stars from me right there but then…

Oh dear! Was there some part of the App Store’s description of Mountain Lion that you did not understand?

To clarify: the latest Macs come with the latest Intel processor known as [wikipop]Sandy Bridge[/wikipop] which was launched in 2011 and features [wikipop search=”Intel Quick Sync Video”]Quick Sync[/wikipop] that can pump video (encoding and decoding) without troubling the main part of the CPU. So if you do not have the latest Macs with the latest processors you will not be able to use Mountain Lion’s AirPlay Mirroring (note: “AirPlay Mirroring requires a second-generation Apple TV or later, and is supported on the following Mac models: iMac (Mid 2011 or newer), Mac mini (Mid 2011 or newer), MacBook Air (Mid 2011 or newer), and MacBook Pro (Early 2011 or newer).”) you can set up some other form of mirroring (there are numerous options depending on your particular needs) that will be passed through the CPU.

Copies of this piece can be saved on to a floppy disc and mailed to you via the postal service if you feel that the march of technological progress is passing by too rapidly.

Mountain Lion Arrives

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The aged 2007 iMac just made the cut for the Mountain Lion update. The quoted 34 minute installation probably ran on to nearer 45 minutes but everything went smoothly without any prior preparation voodoo.

Mountain Lion on a 3GB 2007 iMac.

The software updates come via the App Store and were initially threatening a 23 hour download but this settled down to more reasonable time -considering that the world and its dog are downloading Mountain Lion.

My One Star Review Addiction

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I confess I am addicted. Whenever I venture into the Mac’s or iOS App Stores I have to select the Most Critical reviews option and read the bizarre one star reviews.  I have mentioned some, such as for Pixelmator, Panogaea and a MIDI controller, in the past.  It is a fascinating world where people plainly do not know how to use their computer, complain that an app lacks a specific feature although no one ever suggested that such a feature was included or are just plain stupid and are willing to publicly voice their own shortcomings and/or put the blame on the developers.

Apple’s [wikipop search=”Mac_OS_X_Lion”]OS X 10.7 (known as Lion)[/wikipop] has been around for almost a year. Every new Mac sold in that time uses it as do the countless older Macs which have been updated.  It is used every day by millions of people without any problem.  Yet we are still being treated to delights such as…

What can one say? Perhaps if the reviewer had persevered for more than an hour they may have eventually found the View menu (to clarify: this contains options on how you want to View things) and the option to Show Status Bar on the bottom of the window…

 

And what about Quick Look with the Space Bar?  What about it?  It is much improved with Lion…

Thanks for sharing.  My addiction is satiated for today.

 

After posting this this morning… a few hours later Serendipity kicks in.