Making Updating Easier

For many years I used the software from VersionTracker.com to check my applications. This was a great time saver, since it would do all the checking for me. (MacUpdate.com has a similar app.) Although the software helped, it was far from perfect. It was very buggy and slow — rather off-putting, for something that actually costs money! Still, I stuck with it for lack of other options.

But then … along came AppFresh. Although it is not perfect either, it is far faster, funner, and better than the other similar update checkers I’ve used.

What does AppFresh do? It checks all your software and reports which programs can be updated. It will also tell you what has changed (if that information has been provided to the site). Besides apps, it also checks plugins, widgets, preference panes, and system updates.

And — for now, at least — the program is free!

IUseThis.com

AppFresh has built-in support for IUseThis.com. This website has several uses: It lets you brag to all the other site users about what great software you have. It also lets you find similar software, and see which apps in each category are the most popular. You can also read comments left by other users about each app. And, in conjunction with AppFresh, it lets you see how your software setup varies between machines (for example, reminding you that you don’t have an app on this computer, that you have on another computer).

If you’re curious, here is my IUseThis.com profile: http://osx.iusethis.com/user/distantthunder

(The list is a little out of date. And, yes, I admit: I’m a bit of a software junkie!)

End Notes

In the old days, I tried hard to keep all my software up to date, but my library of software has grown so large, I can no longer maintain it all. Now I limit myself to only updating the programs I actually use regularly, and rely mostly on the built-in update checking for the less-used apps. However, even this can be quite tedious. In the past I would check for updates as often as once a week; now I limit myself to checking once a month. (I’ll toss the Linux crowd a cookie, because Linux makes the process quite easy — even hard to avoid.)

Windows users: VersionTracker’s software is available for Windows, but I prefer the free update checker from FileHippo.com.

Of course, using Apple’s Boot Camp, it is possible to install Windows on a Mac, and run the EGW software that way. But this involves tedious rebooting each time you want to switch to Windows. Or it is possible to run the EGW software under a virtual environment such as VMware Fusion or Parallels. And that is what I had been doing; it works, but it’s slow (open VMware, wait for Windows to awake, start the EGW software, which then runs a bit slow in the virtual environment).

Recently, a friend, Nathan Tyler, tipped me off to the fact that the EGW software works great under Wine, a software environment for running Windows apps under UNIX-based operating systems (such as Linux or OS X). There is a special build of Wine for OS X, called Darwine. He claimed that the search software ran faster under Wine than it does on his Windows machine. (Edit: I guess he just claimed it was fast!) And guess what? I found that to be true for me as well.

It is not trivial to set up the EGW software to work this way, at least not yet. First I downloaded Darwine, and configured it. (The main thing to configure was mapping the folder where I would put my Windows apps to a drive letter.) Then I copied all the EGW software files from my Dell over to my Mac. Then came a tedious process of finding all the related Windows registry entries on my Dell, exporting them to files, copying those files to the Mac, editing them so the paths to the files are correct, and importing them into the Windows registry running in Darwine. (This is necessary because those registry entries contain the license information needed to run the software. The installer writes the license information to the registry, but I have not learned a way to run the installer from the CD-ROM under Darwine. Thus I had to do it myself.) Then I had to copy a file, “egwhite.lcf,” from the main EGW software folder to the subfolder “Books,” because for some reason I got an error saying the file had to be there instead. After that I could run the EGW software, but it was a bit tedious to launch. So then I created a shell script to open the EGW software using Wine, and then used the freeware application Platypus to create an OS X application that can be opened from Finder. And for a finishing touch, I copied the EGW icon to that OS X application.

Now I have a cool little OS X application that I can open with a simple click, and the EGW software is blazing fast. Faster at opening than on my Dell, and much faster than going through VMware Fusion.

Some of these are applications you would not use every day, but are nonetheless good to have around for special situations or needs.

Internet

• Adium: Chat program that supports the basic features of more than 15 chat clients, include AOL, Jabber, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger (you may also want to get the official clients for Microsoft Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, as they support more advanced features)
• AdiumBook: Finds potential Adium contacts in your Address Book.
• AddressBookSync (for Facebook): Finds updated pictures from Facebook for your contacts in Address Book.
• Firefox
• iStumbler: Great for laptop users! Find open wireless access points wherever you are.
• Plaxo: Helps keep your Address Book data up to date (for contacts who have free Plaxo accounts), and syncs contact data between computers. Great if you have both Mac and Windows computers, and you want to keep their contact information in sync.
• Skype
• Transmission: BitTorrent client.

Word Processing and Text

• Bean: Simple, easy word processor.
• NeoOffice: This is a port of OpenOffice, designed specifically for OS X.
• TextWrangler: Saves plain (unformatted) text.

Audio and Video

• Flip4Mac: Adds proprietary Microsoft video formats to QuickTime, reducing headaches when you want to view videos online.
• HandBrake: Rips DVDs.
• Max: Converts between various audio formats.
• Perian: Adds additional multimedia formats to QuickTime, greatly enhancing your Mac’s ability to watch video online without installing all kinds of junk.
• VLC: Audio and video player that supports many formats.

Miscellaneous

• AppFresh: Searches your applications for newer versions you can download.
• BatChmod: Sometime you will need to change permissions on a file or folder; this program makes it easy.
• Locker: Batch locks or unlocks groups of files.
• Think: Hides everything but the application you are using, to help you concentrate.
• The Unarchiver: Supports many different compression/archival formats.
• WeatherDock: Great weather application.

What this means is that you can subscribe to weather reports for any city, and have the forecast appear within iCal. The 7-day forecast will display as a series of all-day events in the calendar. (All-day events appear as headers at the top of each day.) Weather details older than one day are automatically deleted, which is nice; it doesn’t fill up your calendar.

Here in an example page from Weather Underground, and the steps to get the forecast into iCal:
http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/findweather/getForecast?query=stl&wuSelect=WEATHER

This happens to be the page for St. Louis, Missouri. You can change the city to whichever one you want. In the upper-right, you will see the ICAL and RSS links. Clicking the ICAL link will download a file; that is not really what you want. If you right-click (or control-click) on the ICAL link, and choose the option to copy it, you can then switch to iCal, choose “Subscribe…” from the Calendar menu, and paste the address you copied. In iCal, right-click (or control-click) on the new calendar, and choose “Get Info.” Make sure the option to Auto-Refresh is set to “Every day.” Then you will get a handy 7-day forecast, unlike WeatherCal’s 5-day forecast.

In case you missed it, the MacHeist 3 bundle has been released. It’s really great this year; I’ve already purchased mine.

There are 12 apps in the bundle (three of them have not been unlocked, since the number of bundles sold has not reached the required number; but based on past years, it is all but certain that all apps will be unlocked). Even without the unlocked apps, it’s a great deal.

For a mere $39, you get:

• iSale ($40 retail), for creating eBay ad pages
• Picturesque ($35 retail) for quick photo effects
• SousChef ($30 retail) for managing recipes
• PhoneView ($20 retail) for manipulating/accessing your iPhone/iPod Touch data
• LittleSnapper ($40 retail) for managing screen captures
• Acorn ($50 retail) for simple photo editing
• Kinemac ($299 retail!) for 3D design and animation
• WireTap Studio ($69 detail) for advanced audio recording/capture
• World of Goo ($20 retail) for fun

If/when all the apps are unlocked, you will also get (at no extra charge):

• BoinxTV ($199 retail) for easy “TV studio” production
• The Hit List ($50 retail) for to-do list management
• Espresso ($80 retail) for web design

There are videos and descriptions for all these apps on the MacHeist website.

The most interesting apps in the list, in my view, are Picturesque, PhoneView, Kinemac, WireTap Studio, and BoinxTV. These five apps alone have a combined retail value of about $622. All for $39!

You also get a free app called EventBox just for visiting the page. It’s an interesting little app that pulls updates from various social networking sites.

I already have apps equivalent to iSale (GarageSale), Acorn (Photoshop/Pixelmator), The Hit List (OmniFocus), and Espresso (Coda). I’m not sure what I will do with those licenses. But even considering that I may not use all the apps, the bundle is a steal.

Unfortunately, Time Machine does not include any settings to control the frequency of backup. Fortunately, changing how often backups occur is not hard to do. There are basically three routes you can take; they all do precisely the same thing (change a particular configuration file):

• Use a freeware application called Time Machine Editor
• Use a freeware application called Lingon to edit the necessary file (this is the way I did it; however, Lingon is a powerful program that, used improperly, can totally trash your system, so beware; this is similar to using regedit in Windows)
• Navigate to /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.backupd-auto.plist and edit the file manually according to instructions here