On this page I have put links to the sources of several Macintosh utilities and applications that I find invaluable. Most are Shareware, but I consider the $10-$30 well spent. The programs discussed are shown in the following list - click on the name here to scroll down to the detailed entry:
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| Apple | |
| http://www.apple.com/ http://www.uk.euro.apple.com/ |
Web sites (American and British respectively) of the manufacturer of the best computers in the world. (Do I get my prize now, Mr.Jobs?) |
| BBEdit | |
| http://www.barebones.com/freeware.html | A text editor. Simpletext is OK, but it uses a proportional font, so columns of figures don't line up. If you do a search and replace, you can't undo it. BBEDit overcomes both of these. You can even set your common search-and-replace patterns so you don't have to type them in every time. There is a full version with HTML editing facilities that you pay for, but the Lite version is completely free! (Current version BBEdit Lite 6.1) |
| Commentator | |
| http://www.nomicro.com/Products/ ...Commentator/index.html |
Do you use the comments in the Finder's Get Info windows? Quite useful for keeping odd messages about a file, without actually editing the file itself, and Netscape puts the full source address of anything you download in this box. If the file is corrupted, you can quickly go back and download it again (or tell other people where to find it.) Trouble is, this info is kept in the "Desktop Database", and OS versions before 7.5.3 would lose all this data if you did a desktop rebuild. Kelvin Delbarre's utility allows you to store all comments in a text file, and after rebuilding the desktop, put them all back again. That function is now superfluous with current versions of the OS, but it is still a useful little utility if you want a catalogue of the source-addresses of the files in a folder. (It will also store a colon in the comment, which the Finder won't allow you put in! Colons can't be used in filenames because the OS uses that as a directory separator, like the backslash on a PC. For some unknown reason, the OS (prior to OS 8.6) won't allow the colon to be put into the file comment either, but Commentator writes directly to the desktop database, and so can put it in for you. |
| Desktop Resetter | |
| http://www.nouturn.com/resetter/ | One of the nice things about the Mac is the desktop - you can scatter files, folders, and aliases around as you find convenient. It can lead to a cluttered appearance, but for someone's personal computer, it can also vastly improve their performance and efficiency as the commonly used items can be right in front of them, in known locations. However, if the screen size is changed (either manually, or by an application - a game, say - then the position of all your favourite icons can, and usually does, get changed. Suddenly your nice friendly workspace is like a foreign land, and you have to spend an age sorting it all out again. To the rescue comes Nick D'Amato and his Desktop Resetter program. This can remember the position of all the desktop icons and open windows, and reset them on request. Further, it can also be set to run automatically at startup, thus correcting any evil those nasty games have done, virtually before you know about it. |
| GraphicConverter | |
| http://www.graphicconverter.net/us_gcabout.html
http://www.lemkesoft.com/us_gcabout.html http://www.lemkesoft.de/us_gcabout.html |
This program opens practically any image file format you can think of, and then some - about 145 in all! And it will save files in many of them (~45) too. It supports the special features of MacOS 8 and 9, there is also a carbon version for MacOS X, and both versions are scriptable with AppleScript. It has been enhanced to allow quite complex manipulation of the image, and there are simple drawing tools included as well. A feature allows batch processing, so a whole folder of pictures can be converted to another format, resized, and so on, and a thumbnail index picture may be created. Other applications do the creation better - Photoshop, obviously, for real pictures, and any drawing package - but this is quick and easy for viewing any image, and perfect if you want to save it in another format. Photoshop also does the interpolation better if you are resizing. You should find this on practically all the magazine cover CDs, but the author's home site has the latest version. Several mirror sites around the world are linked from the listed page. (Versions are available with the interfaces in Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Swedish!) |
| http://www.lemkesoft.com/us_cadabout.html | The author also has a CAD (Computer Aided Design) package ("Cadintosh"), but with no need for that, I haven't tried it. |
| http://www.lemkesoft.com/us_fontbookabout.html | Finally, the author has taken over development of the "FontBook" package which displays and prints samples of all the fonts installed on your computer. |
| GURU | |
| http://www.newertech.com/software/guru/index.html | "GUide to Ram Upgrades". Produced by Newer Technology in the US, this started life as a list of which of their RAM products could be used to upgrade each type of Mac. It has expanded to be a comprehensive list of all Macintoshes (Apple and clones), with details of the facilities of the machines, as well as which RAM upgrades to use. Laser printers are also included. What's more, it is completely free! (Latest version 2.9 released July 2000.) |
| .../software/spelltools/index.html | They also do SpellTools which gives you (obviously) spelling correction for most (any?) text editor that doesn't normally have it. Also a set of tools for other common requirements: removing the greater-than symbols (">") used for quoting on emails, and removing the carriage-return at the end of lines (except paragraphs) so that they can flow to any width, plus several other tools. |
| http://www.newertech.com/software/index.html | There is also a set of Guages for checking your Processor, Cache, and Bus speed; and a memory checker. |
| Joliet Volume Access | |
| http://www.tempel.org/joliet/index.html | Apple's ISO9660 System Extension only displays the DOS "8+3" equivalent name of files on a Windows 95+ "Joliet" format CD, but Thomas Tempelmann's Extension allows the whole long filename to be read. As these can be up to 255 characters in length, they are intelligently truncated to the 31 character max of the Macintosh filing system, but the full file name is shown in the "Get Info" Comment box. |
| List Files | |
| http://www.montalcini.com/docs/files.html | By the same author as Verifile, this creates a catalogue of files dropped onto it. Name (the full pathname if you choose), file size, creation/modification dates, CRC, etc. all formatted as you choose, and output as a text file. |
| NAFF | |
| Washington University WUARCHIVE
Arizona Mac Users Group |
An acronym from Not Another File Filter. This I find invaluable for changing text files to and from PC format. You may know that Macs use a single Carriage Return to mark the end of a line in a text file; Unix uses a single Line Feed; and DOS uses a Carriage-Return / Line-Feed pair. This little prog will change any one to any other. The original is left untouched (renamed by the addition of a tilde prefix), and a new file created in your desired output format. If the source file isn't of the format you select, the prog exits with a warning message to that effect. This is a very old program (1993), but still does a valuable job. The binhex file is located in the Info-Mac mirror section /cmp/. |
| puriTEXT | |
| http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~mizutori/software/... ...catalog.html#puriText |
By the same author as TouchMe (see below), this is an invaluable utility which quickly and easily removes the Resource Fork from a document file. Originally intended to remove the redundant resource fork from SimpleText files, it can be easily configured to do so from any type of file. However, the filetype is checked before performing the removal, so it is quite safe. It can be configured not to alter the time and date stamp of the files, which might be considered useful. |
| touchMe | |
| http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/~mizutori/software/... ...catalog.html#touchMe |
By the same author as puriTEXT (see above), this is another simple and useful utility, and is used to reset the time and date stamps on files. The somewhat suggestive name (to my Western mind), is apparently derived from a common Unix utility that does the same job. |
| Verifile | |
| http://www.montalcini.com/docs/files.html | By the same author as List Files, this is an invaluable utility for quickly
comparing any two files. Drag-and-drop the files on its icon, and a window opens with the
length, checksum, and CRC of both the Data and Resource fork of each file, and a message saying
if they match exactly.
The author has a lot of other utilities on his site. For example, if you use SimpleText as an editor, he does "SimpleText Colour Menu" which provides search-and-replace editing, and text colourising (which can be read by standard SimpleText). |
| Vremya | |
| http://www.lava.net/~kirill/software/vremya.html | This logs on to an Internet Time Server, and resets your system clock accurately, reporting how far out it was. (The address shown is for the Tucows archive, the author doesn't appear to have his own site.) |
| Zipit | |
| http://www.maczipit.com/ | This reads and creates archives written by / readable by the PC community with PKzip/PKunzip, and more recently Winzip. |
| | |
| Program Archives | |
| Arizona Mac Users Group
Washington University in St.Louis WUARCHIVE Macinsearch The AusMac Archive |
The famous Info-Mac archive has copies of thousands of utilities for the Macintosh.
AMUG and WUARCHIVE both provide mirror sites of this, and other archives. Macinsearch is
another searchable archive. AusMac is also a general searchable archive, but based in
Sydney, Australia, to enable quicker downloads for users in the Asia/Pacific region. |
The Mac Shack |
Has a collection of Macintosh software for Amateur Radio. |
| This page last updated 8th July 2004 |
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