Miscellaneous Ramblings

InforMac: A Free and Better Replacement for Apple's System Profiler

Charles Moore - 2006.08.07 - Tip Jar

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InforMac is a utility that works like Apple's System Profiler. It displays information about your computer, such as hardware, software, and settings.

"I already have Apple's System Profiler, so why should I bother with a third-party application that essentially does the same thing?" you might ask.

Well, because InforMac does it so much cooler - and it's free, so why not?

InforMac has a much slicker interface than Apple's profiler. It's been around in the same beta version for some time, but I've found no obvious bugs (even though the developer suggests there may be some), and it works just fine on my computers. It's PowerPC only (so far).

With InforMac you can also save information as a file, protect the personal data it contains, and read this file on any other computer. InforMac can securly encrypt this data thanks to a built-in encryption engine that will make your personal information unreadable to any user without the proper password.

When you start the program, you are presented with a window similar to the System Preferences main window showing rows of icons that, when clicked upon, open information panes pertaining to various OS aspects and hardware specifications. You can also use a handy pull-down menu to navigate among the categories.

InforMac also displays a picture of your particular Mac in the Quick Profile window, which tells me some interesting things, like my Apple Certified Refurbished PowerBook , which I purchased in February 2006, got its remanufactured serial number in July 2005. If you have a non-refurbished Mac, the date and place of original manufacture should be displayed.

The Memory panel describes your machine's memory configuration and the type of memory recommended.

The Processor panel contains information about your CPU, system bus and caches.

The Volumes panel provides information about mounted volumes, including the make, type, and size of your hard drive(s), and some statistics since your last reboot. It confirmed that my PowerBook has a Toshiba hard drive, and that the nominal "80 GB" is really 74.53 GB.

The System panel tells you what OS version you're using, ROM specs, and uptime. It notes that there have been no kernel panics recorded with this machine.

The ATA Devices panel shows info about ATA drives, including Optical drives.

USB and FireWire panels show names and connection schematics of peripheral devices.

The Displays panel tells you about your display(s), including a thumbnail of your current Desktop Picture.

The Panels window lists all of the System Preferences panels or just the third-party ones,

The Applications window does likewise, and you can also specify whether you want ony apps.in the Applications Folder displayed, all on the startup disk, or all applications anywhere on mounted volumes.

There are also Users, Network, Frameworks, Battery, and PCI and AGP panels, the latter displaying video card information.

Besides the status panels, InforMac can also create an "identity card" for your particular system, and also a profile report.

InforMac works great, is very quick (except for loading the Applications pane, which takes a while), and is a lot more fun to use than System Profiler. There are no online Help files, but the program is quite intuitive and easy to use, looking and working very much like the OS X System Preferences panes.

In this version (0.1b1):

  • Tiger compatible
  • Added print function (that's right, you can print the app list)
  • Some of the panels can be exported to html/xml
  • Library now supports FTP
  • Some new info available
  • Fixes memory leaks
  • German and Japanese have been temporarily removed

System requirements: Mac OS X 10.2 or later

InforMac is freeware. LEM

Link: InforMac

Charles Moore has been a freelance journalist since 1987 and writing for Mac websites since May 1998. His The Road Warrior column is a regular feature on MacOpinion, and he is a news editor and columnist at Applelinks.com.

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