Sprucing up OS X: A survey of some indispensable free and cheap utilities

by Adam Gillitt, February 6, 2002

Things are starting to get fun in the Mac OS X world. As more and more people adopt Apple's spiffy new OS for their daily use, every week brings the release of more and more useful freeware and shareware utilities. There are applications to tweak the interface, enhance usability, and interact with files and the Internet to fill in gaps in the functionality of OS X. As well, there are ways to replace almost every beloved feature of Mac OS 9 that was not carried over to OS X, and far more utilities that are exclusive to the new operating system.

What follows is a collection of some of my favorite utilities for OS X that make my experience with my Mac more pleasurable and productive. Even more suggestions for useful enhancements and utilities can be found in my previous columns about the Dock.

Deserving mention first of all are the snazzy free ‘i’ applications that Apple has made freely available to all OS X users: iTunes, iMovie and now iPhoto (iDVD is only available to people who purchase the SuperDrive-equipped models, and I don't have one). All three are useful tools for cataloging media, whether MP3s, digital video or digital images. They are all logically designed and laid out, and work intuitively. Each has its limitations, but for the price, they can't be beat. With the pride Apple seems to be taking in this software, updates should make each even more robust and functional.

The newest member of the bunch, iPhoto, was introduced at this January’s Macworld Expo. Currently at Version 1.0 , it is also the most underdeveloped of the ‘i’ applications. Sites like Macfixit.com are full of bug reports and glitches which make this software's release seem a little rushed. Some of the bugs have even trashed data on users’ drives. In addition, the lack of image editing capabilities is disappointing, but it is easy enough to configure the software to use an external editor. It would be nice if image files weren't needlessly duplicated, either, and if users could have more control over the compression of the images. I am looking forward to the updates that will bring this application on par with its brethren.

A good alternative for editing your photos with far more flexibility than you can with iPhoto is the much lauded GraphicConverter. This is a powerful piece of software, providing many of the advanced editing capabilities that are in Photoshop. Until Adobe releases Photoshop for OS X, however, GraphicConverter is probably your best bet for native OS X image processing. It can handle almost any image type and provides lots of different powerful tools to clean up, modify and perfect your digital images. It is also fully AppleScriptable for more flexibility and power. The application is shareware and costs US$35 to register.

This brings up one of the most overlooked technologies in the Mac universe: AppleScript. This simple programming language is surprisingly powerful, and can control a variety of applications, processes and complex tasks. Apple’s free Script Menu allows users to launch all sorts of AppleScripts directly from a pull-down menu. Even more helpfully, Apple has a whole bunch of scripts available for download that control aspects of the Finder as well as its other applications. I find them especially useful for file and image processing. There are also several sites devoted to AppleScripts; one I have found particularly useful is MacScripter.net.

Formerly one of Apple’s marquee technologies, Sherlock is the venerable application / utility from OS 9 and included with OS X, and the interface most plebeians use for finding data on their computers and the Internet. Unfortunately, its underlying V-Twin engine is aging and wheezy. Fortunately for us, there are a couple of utilities that just about replace the need for Sherlock.

Watson is a gem of an Internet search utility that uses a crisp Aqua-compliant interface. Separate panes are dedicated to tracking eBay auctions, localized TV listings, movie times and ticket purchases, currency conversion, flight, package and stock market tracking; and searches for recipes, images, phone numbers, zip codes and all of Yahoo! The program is pretty robust now, and the developer is promising many plug-ins in the near future. Yes, all of this information is available on the Web already, but the interface makes finding any information a cinch. Registration costs $29.

A useful and fast local search tool is the freeware utility Locator. It's a graphical interface for the Locate database which is a part of Mac OS X’s Unix underpinnings. There are two main reasons users will benefit from Locator: It has no advertising, and it searches many, many, many times faster than Sherlock. The amazing search speed comes from how it searches the Locate database instead of the actual file directory when you perform a search. It’s so zippy and preferable to Sherlock that I keep the icon for it in my Finder window tool bar for easy access. It has a minor limitation, however — you have to update the database to make recently added files available. Depending on the size of the drive, these updates can be lengthy, but less so than Sherlock's interminable indexing process.

According to my friend over at Think Secret, the next major update to Mac OS X, 10.2 (code named Jaguar), will include three much-requested interface elements: spring-loaded folders, enhanced contextual menus allowing files to be opened with different applications and the ability to minimize windows other than to the Dock.

While spring-loaded folders seem to be a trick only Apple can manage itself, the other two features are available already. Zingg! is a launcher that works through contextual menus. It creates a list of all applications that can open the file the user has selected and allows selection of one to open the file with. Zingg! also allows you to customize which files show up in the menu. Although Mac OS X 10.2 will have an “Open with…” feature, it will not be nearly as customizable. Best of all, Zingg! is freeware!

Minimizing windows to their title bars (a la OS 9) is made possible by WindowShadeX, one of several “haxies” produced by Unsanity. WindowShadeX can also turn windows transparent instead of collapsing them down to the title bar. All of Unsanity's such utilities are priced at US$7. Other utilities that bring back features that are mourned from OS 9 include FruitMenu, which allows users to customize the Apple Menu, and Xounds, which gives Mac OS X audio feedback and can update SoundSets from OS 9 and before for OS X use (like the OS 9 SoundSet I made years ago of sounds by the band Stereolab). Unsanity also offer a couple of freeware utilities: one which kills bouncing icons in the Dock and one which kills the shadows cast by menus and windows.

Process Wizard is a new free utility that was just recently introduced. It resides in the menu bar with other menu additions, and allows users to set the priority of any system task, by providing a graphic front end for the Unix ‘nice’ command. Once you enter an administrator password, it works not only on user-launched applications, but also on any system-level task. Process Wizard also provides a simple way to identify and kill off background processes without using the Process Manager or the Terminal. This function is useful for guaranteeing processor-intensive tasks the cycles they need, while reducing the demands of less important tasks.

I like to use instant messenger programs — I find them more convenient than e-mail and cheaper than the phone. After trying most flavors of chat, I found myself connected mostly to people on AIM. Several jobs I have had used AIM to communicate between offices and locations as well. I don't use it for much else; I don't use the file transfers or care for the tickers and advertising. Instead of the turgid OS X AIM client, I use the freeware Adium, which accesses the AIM network, without any of the baggage — it's a chat client pure and simple. What makes it really cool is the configuration of windows; instead of separate windows for buddies and chat text, you can combine them into one window, with tabs for each person the user chats with. All it needs to be complete is buddy icons (I’m “es el Queso” if you want to find me).

There are countless other shareware and freeware utilities that I have not covered in this column. What I have listed above are just some of the ones I have found most useful and interesting. I am sure you will think there is an especially egregious omission of your favorite utility, so tell me more about it below.

—Adam Gillitt is a graphic designer and instructor living in San Francisco, weathering the implosion, destruction and exodus of the New Web Lifestyle. He likes Vietnamese Tofu spring rolls and the song stylings of Lætitia Sadier. You can contact him through his own site at http://adam.gillitt.com or via email at adam@gillitt.com.

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