Rating: 4.5/5

General Info: All Macs need maintenance performed. Unlike cars, they usually need software maintenance like emptying caches, repairing permissions, changing logs, and more. Cocktail does all of these things and more. Unlike Onyx, Cocktail remembers your password for doing these maintenance operations so you don’t have to type it in every launch. Cocktail can also set some useful hidden preferences not in System Preferences. While it doesn’t have the sheer number of hidden preferences that MacPilot does, it does have many of the useful ones. A feature many non-Terminal users will enjoy is that Cocktail can force empty the Trash. For the true network geeks, there are a set of advanced options for, well, your network. In most places where hidden/advanced preferences are available is the option to set them back to the defaults, just in case you mess something up.

In the ?¢‚Ǩ?ìPilot?¢‚Ǩ¬ù tab are ways to run all maintenance tasks at once and schedule them to happen automatically. Scheduling is essential functionality for apps like Cocktail. Here’s where I wanted to see more options. The Scheduler only allows you to set the day of the week or every day for maintenance tasks. The Scheduler feature needs to have a little calendar to select specific days of the month; I could then schedule tasks for the end of every month. After scheduled tasks, you can chose to Restart, Shut Down, Sleep, Logout, or do nothing (quitting Cocktail is conspicuously missing). Also nice would be the option to automatically turn off the boot chime when scheduling a Restart. Yes, my Mac rebooting can wake me up. Cocktail features interfaces to Man (sounds a bit odd), and other UNIX commands. A really neat feature Cocktail has is the ability to save very detailed reports of your Mac as a plain text or XML file. Cocktail is the fastest and easiest app I’ve used to keep my Mac in tip-top shape. For $14.95, Cocktail is a great solution.

Retail Price: $14.95

Site: http://www.maintain.se/cocktail/index.php

Rating: 4.5/5

I’m a bit surprised that more people haven’t found SOHO Notes. At least if you look at osx.iusethis.com Yojimbo is far in the lead among the personal information managers. Forgive me but, I just don’t get why more folks aren’t using SOHO Notes.

As far as features go, SOHO Notes is edging out all the others in my estimation. The only thing I can point to is Chronos’ decision to not make the database open, meaning you can’t get at the data in any easy way if something happens to SOHO Notes. They provide a robust backup system but there are people who are certainly squeamish if you don’t make the data available in a transparent way that doesn’t rely on the proprietary software. I can understand that.

OTOH, this is one rockin’ PIM, Organizer or Note app ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù whichever you prefer to label it. Calling it a note app doesn’t do it justice though. The naming comes from the relationship it had as the replacement to Chronos’ StickyNotes app but it does so much more.

The latest update includes a form for serial numbers as well as a new default folder for them. You can also design you own forms for entry of specific information into the database. This app has an amazing amount to offer for the price. Note taking, indeed you can use it for that. You can synchronize notes to your iPod too. It works beautifully as an organizer for your files ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù though none that I’ve looked at can handle Office files well, they can usually show that it is an .xls or .doc file but SOHO Notes works well with .txt or .pdf files - including viewing within the app. For .xls and .doc it links to the actual file, so you can still make use of the organizational feature. Clicking on the icon of will open the .xls or .doc in Office.

SOHO Notes is also great for archiving web pages in connection with specific notes, journal entries, etc. Very handy. You can view pages you’ve loaded into SOHO Notes when offline ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù of course the links will error out on you unless you are connected to the internet but you can view all of the content that you’ve archived within SOHO Notes.

The only things that would put it over the top for me and push it to 5/5 would be to make the database truly available via OpenBase (upon which it is actually built) and allow me to publish blog posts to other than Atom API blogs so I could make wider use of it. That would allow me to ditch at least one other app I use for blogging/journal writing!

Version Reviewed: 6.1.1

Retail Price: $39.99 / upgrade $25

Site: http://www.chronosnet.com/Products/sohonotes.html

Rating: 5/5

I happened across a nifty utility app for Intel Macs. As many folks have noted the MacBook Pro, in particular, runs a bit hot. My 17?¢‚Ǩ¬ù consistently got hot enough that I always made sure I had something to toss under it if I was planning to work with it sitting on my lap. Some folks also have some Intel Mini’s that run a bit hot as well.

No more! smcFanControl comes to our rescue. The only very minor downside I can find with it is that, because you are forcing it to run the fans at a faster RPM than the default setting Apple set, you will hear the fans more. If “absolute” quiet is your primary goal you’ll want to get external things like a CoolPad or something similar, at least for your laptop.

I have smcFanControl set low enough on my 17?¢‚Ǩ¬ù MacBook Pro that it hasn’t been too horrible. Playing music or movies at a regular volume I don’t hear the fans at all. I do hear them if I keep the volume really low (sleeping 5 year old not far away in those moments).

It’s a straightforward, easy install. Loads nicely in the menu bar with temp and fan rpm. It allows you to have it auto start after login as well as auto apply specific settings for battery, AC-power or when charging (laptops only). It doesn’t override the automatic mode that causes the fans to rev higher when CPU load increases enough to warrant even stronger cooling. I find that mine doesn’t need to rev nearly as often now though.

An earlier version had a memory leak that could ramp up the memory use if running for extended periods. The developer released an updated version that addressed that. I’ve seen no issues with it since I started using it about 2 weeks ago, so be sure you are downloading at least version 2.1

Quite a nice little app if you want to keep the heat down on your Intel Mac. Now, if I could just find something similar for a really toasty AlBook (PPC)!

Version Reviewed: 2.1

Retail Price: Free (Donationware)

Site: http://81.169.182.62/~eidac/software/smcfancontrol2/index.html

Rating: 3.5/5

General Info: ButtonDesign can save you time from, well, designing buttons for a webpage. A sidebar on the left provides button style choices. The problem with many of them is that they just don’t look good. The flag-looking one is a mess, reminding me of web-pages from the late 90’s. Some of them are pretty good though. There is a mix of buttons with around half of them being acceptable. For each button is a set of options for normal, hover, and pressed states. There are the usual text options like fonts, bold, italic, and underline as well as colors. More adjustable items include size, alignment, opening in a new window, and more. When you’re finished, you can export to CSS or HTML with either JPEG or PNG. Despite the number of ugly buttons I would recommend ButtonDesign for beginners and/or those with less graphic design skills.

Retail Price: $19.95

Site: http://www.ragesw.com/products/buttondesign.html

Rating: 4.5/5

General Info: Camino doesn’t aim to have every feature every other web browser has, it just aims to do the features it does have right. The Camino browser has one huge, virtually un-touted advantage over other Mac browsers: it’s not resource hungry. Camino has the fewest and shortest lasting of spinning beach balls on any browser on Mac. So what else does Camino get right? Session saving, the automatic saving of web pages left open during a quit or crash, is built in. Automatic RSS detection is also built in. Safari’s method is only slightly better than Camino’s. In Safari, you click the blue button to open the feed in your default RSS reader. In Camino, you have to chose between the types of feeds available. Also in Camino is automatic flash player blocking , spell checking, and ?¢‚Ǩ?ìopen new windows as tabs?¢‚Ǩ¬ù. Unfortunately, a nice feature planned for Camino didn’t make it into this release. This feature spawned at Google’s Summer of Code. Its the best way to manage tabs when they’re too many to show in the window. Little arrows would appear at the end of the tab bar to slide tabs in a certain direction until the one you wanted was visible. One feature that Camino needs, and most other browsers are coming out with, is drag-able tabs. Safari 3’s drag-able/tear-away tabs are just plain useful. Until Safari 3 comes out of beta in October, Camino looks to be one of the best Mac browsers on the market.

Retail Price: Free

Site: http://www.caminobrowser.org/

Rating: 5/5

General Info: This curiously named app fixes those images in the Finder that have no thumbnail. The transluscent black “HUD” interface of the app is very slick. With it you can add a thumbnail photo as the icon, or make a .icns file from the picture, just drag files into a box. CocoThumbX then generates a thumbnail. The time it takes to do this is virtually unnoticable, even on a slow machine. The generated thumbnail photos can also have several effects applied to them. Clicking the + button in the upper right corner flips CocoThumbX over like a widget. The effects include shadows, round image, mirror, border, and anti-aliasing. CocoThumbX can generate thumbnails for common image formats, most QuickTime movies, and (pointlessly) text files. CocoThumbX is free and only a download away.

Retail Price: Free

Site: http://www.stalkingwolf.net/software/cocothumbx/

Rating: 4/5

Rating: Money is an application for managing your money (so no nasty surprises there!) As with Jumsoft’s other software, the interface of money is well set out. Although it is probably best for those who want to see lots of transfers at once. Money is very like Cha-Ching, except with a more professional face (Money is the sort of app you would use if you just wanted to manage money, without the extra bits which you get from Cha-Ching). Money is, blazing fast (and I’m not on Intel).

Money’s best feature has to be its ability to add categories to each payment. This means you can use smart filters to filter certain bills and payments into different account, I found this a useful feature, and something that would encourage me to use Money over Cha-Ching. Money can also view web pages inside its interface, making internet banking easy, you can get a report of your money and you can even backup to .mac. You can lock places where you don’t want anyone else to get to (useful for your Macbook Savings!)

I still think, though, that Cha-Ching is better for someone who wishes for more options when managing money and a more delicious interface, but for your standard, fast money managing, you can’t really go wrong with Money. If you want interface, you can’t go wrong with Cha-Ching.

Your best bet with money applications is to try them out and see whether you can go for Cha-Ching, but if you don’t want to, Money is a solid alternative.

Price: $39

Site: http://www.jumsoft.com/money/

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Rating: 4/5

General Info: LaunchBar is more than an app launcher. Just like Quicksilver and Butler, LaunchBar can open, show, and do other quick tasks to apps and files. Out of the three, I find LaunchBar to be slightly faster. The main benefits I see from LaunchBar is the fact that the latest version will run on Panther (10.3) and LaunchBar’s ease of use. Otherwise, I personally prefer Quicksilver for it’s vast configurability. What’s great about this app is the fact that there’s little configuration to be done before LaunchBar is usable. It certainly is the easiest launcher, with any power, to setup and modify.

LaunchBar would be a popular contender, for this kind of utility market, were it free like Butler and Quicksilver. Despite this, LaunchBar has a lot of uses, power, and usability. I’d recommend LaunchBar for people who don’t feel like spending hours configuring a launcher, but want more functionality than Butler. I think some major improvements in ease of use could be made to all apps in this category, but LaunchBar needs the fewest.

Retail Price: $19.95

Site: http://obdev.at/products/launchbar/index.html

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Rating: 4/5

General Info: Relationship is a piece of software for organizing your Mac OSX address book. The difference is, you can add special documents to the person, you can send them an email with two clicks and set events you may be going to with them. There are really many different ways of organizing contacts in Relationship.

After registering (or choosing the 15 day trial) Relationship automatically imports everything from your address book, and you are then show Relationship’s well tought out interface.

Once you have selected a contact, you are ready to go. On the right are 7 small tabs with icons in them, which each represent what you can add to a specific contact. You can just view (or change) their information, you can add an event beside related to them, you can send them an email to any of their email addresses, you can add files and things you need to do for them and lastly, you can add notes.

My main criticism of this app is that when you are first presented with the screen, you may have trouble finding your way around, this is only a niggle though, and with the interface looking how it does, once you get used to it you appreciate how well everything is set out.

Site: http://www.jumsoft.com/relationship/

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Rating: 4/5

General Info: As you may have seen in our previous post, Koingo Software recently bought out an app called Swift Share, and I’m here to give you my thoughts on it! My first impression on the software are good, plenty of different tools to use, but still plenty of advice (there is a special help feature at the bottom which explains where everything is). I could easily find my way around, easily setting up one Windows Shared folder (I also set up a Mac one). Everything looked fine, it was telling me what IP address I had to use to connect, but as soon as I tried to connect from my PC, nothing happened, where previously with mac OSX’s built in tool it would have asked me for a username and password. Time to try again. I looked in the System Prefs and decided to connect using the IP address under Windows Sharing, as I had expected, up comes my Shared Folder.

So, although it tried to make me connect to the wrong server at first, I did get my sharing folder set up. The main reason for using this software would be to set up a special folder for sharing, whilst not exposing the whole of your home folder, but if you don’t mind exposing your home folder, you have al the tools built in.

Site: http://www.koingosw.com/

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