For several years, MacUser magazine has worked with several Macintosh developers to present one unique Mac utility every month. Originally available only on CompuServe, these utilities are now also available on the Internet.
MacUser's utilities aren't shareware: they're free for you to use for as long as you want, and you can give them to friends, but you can't upload them to bulletin boards, Internet FTP sites, or commercial online services ╤ only MacUser can make these utilities available. The only exception is contest winners, such as this Kaleidoscope Color Scheme Contest, in which the individual authors are allowed to ask for a shareware fee and MacUser just retains exclusive distribution rights.
Here's where you can find MacUser utilities:
CompuServe: GO ZMC:MACUSER
Internet: At MacUser's Mac Download, <http://www.zdnet.com/mac/download.html>
(Click on the "Exclusives" button)
Among our utilities are:
MacUser's CacheCow: MacUser's CacheCow helps you maintain a lean, mean hard drive by trimming out any unnecessary files from your browser's cache folder. It can delete files over a certain age or size, and even those that are smaller than your file allocation block. This plus balloon help and security make CacheCow the smartest way to streamline your cache folder.
Kaleidoscope Color Scheme Contest Winners: This Exclusive Utility features the winners of the MacUser Kaleidoscope Color Scheme Contest. They are: Stephen's Circus, by Stephane Sinotte; Lounge Lizard, by Patricia Lillie; PEP!, by Anthony Kwiatowski; Scrollites Wing, by Layne Karkruff; and Project Blue Note, by Mark Dymowski. In addition, Tomoko Shimizu designed a MacUser Kaleidoscope Color Scheme that features mice, mice, mice!
MacUser's Browser Font (TT): MacUser's Browser Font is the font designed with your browser in mind. Since we created it to be crisp and highly legible on screen, Browser's greatest benefit to you is as a Web browser font or System font. Select it in your browser's Preferences dialog and in the Views control panel (or in Kaleidoscope, et al).
MacUser's MonKeyChain 1.0.2: MacUser's MonKeyChain is a revival of PowerTalk's KeyChain, but with even more features. It stores launchable items as icons on a floating palette and automatically sends your username and password when trying to mount a volume on a network, or when connecting to a password-protected FTP site (and even some URLs).
The Cheaper Image OpenDoc 2.0.1: MacUser's The Cheaper Image OpenDoc is an update to The Cheaper Image -- an image processor that provides a number of graphic tools to manipulate images, as well as the ability to run Photoshop-compatible filters. As the new title implies this update is now an OpenDoc part or Live Object.
Custom Icon Pack IV: Icon making is a fine art and no one does it better than iconmongers extraordinaire, Mark Simmons and Michael Irwin. This cool collection of Mac CPU icons ranges from the Macintosh 128K to the many new Mac-compatibles. Just double-click on any icon for instructions on how to copy custom icons, and for a list of the models each icon can represent.
MacUser's Reading Mouse: Following in the footsteps of Talking Mouse, MacUser now releases Reading Mouse, an animated face that will read any text file to you in any PlainTalk voice you like. Included are faces for Bitsy and Patricia, but faces and voices are expandable. Volume and reading speed are user-defined, and document navigation is a snap.
MacUser's Install Tracker: MacUser's Install Tracker is a two-in-one utility. It lists each file created during any installation, and its location. It also ensures that when you're through with a program, you delete it thoroughly. Just drop any application (or one of its files) onto this utility, and it will give you the option to delete every related file of that application.
You Don't Know Mac: Inspired by Berkeley Systems' and Jellyvision's Eddy Award-winning You Don't Know Jack trivia CD-ROM, this game will test just how much you know about the computer for the rest of us. When you hear of a DA, do you think of Suitcase or Marcia Clark? Which Mac was the original Fat Mac? Why was Carl Sagan mocked by Apple insiders? If you have no clue, get online and download the first game MacUser has ever produced. Get stumped by over 1,000 questions. Try it out, and see just how DIMM you really are. You Don't Know Mac used with permission from Jellyvision, designer of the You Don't Know Jack trivia game.
MacUser's Talking Mouse: Veteran Mac users will remember the Talking Moose, an animated Bullwinkle clone that gave random sardonic commentary about what was on your Mac's mind. We've revived the animated know-it-all as a mouse, rather than a moose. Talking Mouse is AppleScript-ready, so you can make the Mouse say anything you want.
Scrapboard: These days the Clipboard and the Scrapbook seem dated. Now there's MacUser's ScrapBoard. Created by Mike Throckmorton, this Drag and Drop-aware application combines the ease of the Clipboard with the utility of the Scrapbook. No longer will you lose a clipping when you add something to the Clipboard: ScrapBoard gives you as many clipboards as you need, collecting clippings on a floating palette. Capture 2-D and 3-D graphics, text, sound, and URLs, and drop them into your open documents with one click. Save your ScrapBoards, open multiple sets, and even command-click on URLs to open them in your Web browser or FTP client!
Web Ninja (formerly Site Seer): MacUser's Web Ninja keeps an eye on your browser as you surf the web and provides more complete history information, sets up drag-and-drop windows for easy bookmarking, and has a handy "download later" feature for multiple URLs or FTP addresses. Works with Netscape, Internet Explorer, and Spyglass Mosaic.
Custom Icon Pack: Icon making is a fine art and no one does it better than ZD Net/Mac's own in-house iconmonger extraordinaire, Mark Simmons. This cool collection of Mac CPU icons (from the Macintosh 128K to the Power Mac 8500) can dress up your desktop and bring some pizzazz to your folders, documents, and hard drive desktop icons. Each icon, rendered in 3-D and in color, is provided as a copy and paste-ready custom icon.
RAM Handler: RAM Handler is like the fuel gauge in an automobile, only its job is to tell you all about the free or in-use memory situation in your Macintosh. You can configure RAM Handler to tell you about the frontmost application, the System Heap, or the memory available to launch more applications. Also lets you switch applications and has limited RAM compacting capabilities.
Lazy Susan: The chaos that results when several people use the same machine is over. Lazy Susan, the March MacUser Utility of the Month, can switch between predesignated sets of Preferences Files, Desktop Items, Finder Windows, or Icon Positions. It's a simple extension that adds a configuration menu to your menu bar, so even though I use someone else's machine to play Marathon, I'm only a keystroke or two away from configuring the machine as if it were my own. Many features require the Finder Scripting Extension.
T-Minus Ten: "ZMac's T-Minus Ten", November's MacUser Utility of the Month, will launch your computer into new realms of automation. Configure hot keys and hot spots to drive applications, scripts and documents with ease. Its most powerful resource is a convenient timer function which provides an off-hours auto-pilot for your Macintosh, sets handy reminders, runs back-up scripts, or creates customizable sets of file launches. Combine it with any AppleScript and you put the "Mac" into macro. With this powerful scripting and automation, you can use ZMac's T-Minus Ten to control every detail of your computing day, launching anything double-clickable and fine tuning that golf game while your Macintosh flies its own missions -- and for Power Macs this fat binary application will hit warp speed with its native PowerPC code.
TabMania: The Mac OS version 8, codenamed Copland, is on the way, but in this age of instant gratification who wants to wait? Get online today and download a piece of what's in store for the Mac OS future. The September 1995 MacUser/ZMac utility, ZMac's TabMania, allows you to shrink your open Finder windows to handy tabs with a single click. The tabs obediently line up along the edge of your screen, keeping windows out of the way, but stay in the foreground for easy access. Each window's title appears on its respective tab making digging through the desktop a snap.
PIXs: Everyone loves screenshots -- just press a couple of keys, and the contents of your screen are immortalized in handy PICT format. But the Mac's traditional screen capture feature is a minimalist affair, hardly the thing for the high-tech '90s. If you're after an up-to-date, fully-featured screenshot grabber, check out this month's utility, ZMac's PIXs. This snazzy control panel makes it a snap to grab just the portion of the screen you want, and store it however you like. Thanks to PIXs' bevy of options, you can save screenshots to disk, place them on the clipboard or in the scrapbook, or print them out; hide the cursor; take pictures with a time delay; grab only the front most window; or manually select the area of interest, using either a selection rectangle or a lasso. Best of all, you can adjust all these settings on the fly. PIXs' options dialog will pop up at the press of a hot-key, no matter when or where.
Mad ppatter!: Tired of pastel-blue kitties? ZMac's Mad ppatter! will keep your desktop alive with randomly generated desktop textures. Just drop this control panel onto your System folder and set it to create a new pattern at timed intervals or on start-up. Mad ppatter! generates these textures from scratch and, like snowflakes, will never repeat itself. But don't worry -- if you see a ppat you like (a ppat is a desktop texture file type) the control panel will place it on the clipboard or save it for you in ResEdit format (which many desktop pattern installers read).
SoundSmith: Ever wanted to grab a song off a compact disk - say, a public-domain music sampler - clip out the catchy chorus and turn it into a System beep? Or how about converting a sound captured with your Mac's microphone into any audio file format under the sun, and cutting out the introductory "um" while you're at it? March 1995's ZMac Utility, ZMac's SoundSmith, makes it easy to adjust the sampling rate of recorded sounds (and thus reduce the file size) and trim the sound down to just the portion you want. A simple dialog provides controls for changing the sampling rate, cropping the beginning and end of your sounds, and converting them to other file formats. This drag-and-drop utility can open and save files in almost any format you're likely to encounter, including Mac System sounds, Windows WAV, SoundDesigner II and AIFF files. It even reads audio CD tracks, so if you have a CD-ROM player you can use it to open tracks on a music CD and save portions of them to your hard disk (for personal use only, of course!). SoundSmith makes it easy to turn the sounds you find online or on disk into usable System beeps and sound samples, or exchange them with your unfortunate Windows-using friends.
The Cheaper Image: ZMac's The Cheaper Image is a lightweight image-processing application that runs in native mode on Power Macs. Designed for speedy image manipulation, this "fat binary" application is fully compatible with 680x0-based Macs while still taking advantage of PowerPC speed. The Cheaper Image lets you work on images in standard PICT format, in color depths ranging from black-and-white to glorious millions of colors. You can change color depths, resize images and convert color images to grayscale. Select a portion of a picture and you can scale it, rotate it, flip it and otherwise manipulate it. A special Paste Controls palette lets you adjust transparency and choose from a variety of specialized paste modes, allowing for some interesting effects. For more sophisticated manipulation, The Cheaper Image also supports Photoshop-compatible plug-ins; this allows you to use third-party plug-ins like Kai's Power Tools and Aldus Gallery Effects and apply wacky filters to your images. Built-in filters include a custom Unsharp Mask-like filter, Sharpen and Blur.
Macintosh Catalog Database: If you need to know the full scoop on every Mac model, you won't want to be without this important reference tool. The Macintosh Catalog Database provides a gallery of Macintosh models past and present in a FileMaker Pro 2.0 database, with an exhaustive list of features and specs. It covers all the latest Performas, Power Macs, PowerBooks and Macintosh-compatible computers.
Clean Sweep: Clean Sweep is an application that scans your hard disk for duplicate applications and documents, empty folders, leftover preferences files and other garbage. Presenting you with a list of all the junk it rounds up, Clean Sweep then lets you delete, move or examine each item.
3D Morphing Power Cube: Back by popular demand this month is 3D morphing Power Cube 2.0, the insanely popular virtual plastic photo cube which spins and dances on your screen. This application displays pictures on the sides of a rotating cube that bounces back and forth across your screen, spinning in three exquisitely rendered dimensions all the while. It's a holiday-season diversion and a screen saver, all in one. Select images of your loved ones and watch them come to life while your computer sits idle. With the latest release you can place images not only on cubes, but on spheres too. Your computer will become the center of attention as your loved ones spin, bounce and morph into one another. Your friends will gasp as the new fractal generator produces mindblowing animated fractals. Adding to the excitement, 3D Morphing Power Cube supports QuickTime movies and comes to you in brilliant 16bit technicolor. If you're absent minded, post reminders on the sides of the cube as it bounces across your view.
Redo-it: When it's not worth a macro, but you could use a bit of help automating your life, throw MacUser's Redo-it in your Control Panels folder and your Mac will be set to play back everything you do. Did you just hit copy-paste-return? Smack Redo-it's Hot Key and you've done it again. There's no need to learn any scripting or memorize incomprehensible macro commands. Install Redo-it and you're ready to repeat key strokes or menu commands.
