No, not "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens." But these are
a few of my favourite things, at least to spruce up OS X.
Apple is claiming that there are over 2,500 OS X applications.
A quick peak at their list shows that lots are shareware or freeware
products available for downloading. Here are some that I've found to be
keepers:
TinkerTool
installs itself as a System Preference and adds a nice set of
enhancements if you like to tinker with your user interface. Everything
it does could be done from the Terminal command line - if only
you knew how - but this makes it so much easier. Among many options,
you can position the dock, enable a dock shadow effect, and set the
minimize effect. As with recent versions of the classic Mac OS, you can
set your scroll bar arrow placement and set the system fonts You can
turn multimedia CD autoplay on or off. A cute effect is to set
transparent Terminal windows. And showing hidden and system files shows
all those Unix-geeky files accessible within Terminal but normally
hidden by the Finder. Free.
Another System Preference is WindowShade X. It's a
nice add-on for fans of the classic OS window shade effect, where
double-clicking on a window's title bar collapses the window to just
the title bar. This lets you restore that effect under OS X - and
also set the action for the minimize button, and optionally use Control
+ double-clicking in the title bar to make a window transparent. $7
shareware.
Another little utility from unsanity.com, and this one's free:
Shadowkiller is
especially handy for users running OS X on underpowered G3s: as
the name suggests, it simply lets you turn OS X's window shadows
on or off. Turning off the shadows frees a surprising amount of
processor power and makes a perkier (if less 3-D) system all around.
Free.
Quitling is
another System Preference that restores a classic feature that many
miss in OS X, in this case, the Application Menu in the right-hand
corner of the Menu Bar. Quitling takes the classic Application Menu to
the max, letting the user set its appearance and the actions that will
take place when icons are clicked in a variety of ways. It can be also
be used to AutoKill and AutoStart background processes. $10
shareware.
One of the behind-the-scenes tricks of the classic Mac OS is window
buffering. That's why Mac arrow cursors don't flicker the way that the
arrow in Windows may seem to. Apple left this feature out of
OS X's classic emulation. As a result, classic windows are painted
white and slowly update. Classihack
is a little utility that turns classic window buffering back on,
improving speed and appearance. The program points out "Apple likely
left this feature disabled for a reason," but they and I haven't found
any problems is turning it back on - but use at your own risk Free.
is a Vancouver
(BC, Canada) computer-using elementary school teacher and technology
journalist. He publishes two regular columns in Business in Vancouver,
a local newsweekly. These and his other writing are available on his
website, www.zisman.ca. He also
writes Mac2Windows for Low End Mac.
