SlimBatteryMonitor is a replacement power gauge for Apple’s Mac OS X that tracks laptop batteries. Takes up to 70% less space than Apple’s gauge. Monitors laptop batteries and many UPS batteries as well. Select different views for when powered, charging or on battery. Monitor can hide itself automatically when desired.
MagiCal is a FREE menu-based clock and calendar. It features a huge range of configuration options for how the time and date are displayed, and can operate either in conjunction with, or as a replacement for the built in system menu clock. In addition to this, MagiCal features a handy drop-down calendar that can be torn off and placed anywhere on screen.
MenuMeters is a set of CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for MacOS X. Although there are numerous other programs which do the same thing, none had quite the feature set I was looking for. Most were windows that sat in a corner or on the desktop, which are inevitably obscured by document windows on a PowerBook’s small screen. Those monitors which used the menubar mostly used the NSStatusItem API, which has the annoying tendency to totally reorder my menubar on every login.
*The MenuMeters monitors are true SystemUIServer plugins (also known as Menu Extras). This means they can be reordered using command-drag and remember their positions in the menubar across logins and restarts.
**The CPU Meter can display system load both as a total percentage, or broken out as user and system time. It can also graph user and system load and display the load as a “thermometer”. The menu for the CPU Meter contains several pieces of information I like to have a single click away (uptime, load average, open Process Viewer, open Console).
**The Disk Activity Meter displays disk activity to local disks on the system (anything that is a IOKit BlockStorage driver). It is hotplug aware, and will show activity on FireWire and USB disks as they are mounted. The Disk Meter menu shows volume space details for local drives (it does not display mounted network volumes for speed reasons).
**The Memory Meter can display current memory usage as either a pie chart, thermometer, history graph, or as used/free totals. The Memory Meter menu shows a breakdown of current memory usage and VM statistics. The Memory Meter can optionally display a paging indicator light.
**The Net Meter can display network throughput as arrows, bytes per second, and/or as a graph. Both the arrows and the graph are scaled using a user-selected scaling factor and calculation. Scaling can be done on the basis of actual link speed reported by the network interface or peak traffic and can use one of several scaling calculations. The Net Meter menu shows current interfaces and their status. Interface information is gathered from the SystemConfiguraton framework and thus is MacOS X network location aware (to prevent interfaces from appearing in this menu see the FAQ).
VirtueDesktops is a virtual desktop manager for Apple’s Mac OS. It offers features, eye candy and configurable options that no other desktop manager on the mac has added yet. Sadly, VirtueDesktops is no longer under active development. It is based upon the work done by Rich Wareham on DesktopManager (specifically the CGSPrivate headers), which is an alternate open-source virtual desktop application. VirtueDesktops includes a small amount of Rich’s code from DesktopManager, which means that presently it is licensed under the GPL.
MarcoPolo brings location-aware computing to your portable Mac computer. It allows your computer to determine its location through gathering evidence from your environment (evidence sources), using fuzzy-logic and rule-based matching to make an educated guess (rules), and then performing arbitrary actions upon changing location (actions).
At first glance, Quicksilver is a launcher. When opened, it will create a catalog of applications and some frequently used folders and documents. Activate it, and you can search for and open anything in its catalog instantly. The search is adaptive, so Quicksilver will recognize which items you are searching for based on previous experience. It also supports abbreviations, so you can type entire words, or just fragments of each. When not in use, Quicksilver vanishes, waiting for the next time you summon it.
