Just came across Fantasktick, a new taskbar for Mac OS X Leopard. It adds a new task style bar below the Menu Bar (or in the Dock) listing all the applications and windows open. You can easily switch between apps or windows by clicking on them and with open windows you can preview the app screen.
I find this particular useful as I tend to have many windows open across two screens. With the hover-over preview you can see what is currently being displayed in the window, be it open or minimized. The preview is just large enough that I can hover over Lotus Notes to view my calendar without having to restore the window and take focus away from another application.
One enchancement I would like to see if the ability to preview multiple tabs within a browser. Currently it only shows the forefront tab, but I tend to have 5 or more open at any time.
At any rate, the taskswitching view is quicker than jumping into Exposé to find a window or scrolling through an Alt-Tab list.
Check it out at Dockland Software. Currently on offer for $9.99 through end of Sept’08 before returning to full retail price of $14.99. There’s a 15-day free trial.
I’ve been a huge fan of .Mac - Apple’s suite of online services for syncing and accessing your address, calendar, email, files and many other types of data - for many years now.
Back in 2006 I first started using .Mac to backup key personal data and OS X settings. It also proved a great tool enabling the auto-configuration of most of your settings and reinstalling data when doing a clean install of Mac OS X. From Panther to Tiger to Leopard, all seamless clean installs.
But today is .Mac’s last day. Tonight Apple will take the service offline and lay it to rest forever. So, .Mac, I thank you and bid you farewell.
Tomorrow is all about Me, no not me, Me, as in Apple’s major revision of .Mac known as MobileMe. It will offer pretty much all the same capabilities as .Mac (minus bookmarking and iCards) but will now also enable real-time seamless syncing of data between devices via ‘the cloud’ without any need to wait for or manually run the sync services.
.Mac MobileMe is essential for keeping my work Mac and personal Mac insync as well as the few instances when I need access to the same data carried on my iPod touch. These days Apple’s online services offer so much more than just data syncing and backup. With services such as Back to my Mac and Gallery (both of which I use extensively), not to mention the new web-based access to iCal, Address Book and iDisk, Apple is offering a suite of tools that are essential to how I run my life and enable me to work and store/accesss data remotely.
And I get a cool @me.com email address, though, I never did use my @mac.com address. Oh well.
Hallelujah !! Apple today finally released 7.1.3 firmware upgrade for the Airport Extreme Base Station updating the base station with support for wireless Time Machine backup.
Since Leopards initial release last October there has been uncertainty as to why Apple pulled AEBS wireless Time Machine support from the release at the last minute. To add fuel to the speculation, Time Capsule’s announcement at MacWorld led many to consider the fact that Apple was going to pull a fast one over the faithful and force us to purchase a new device.
Now we know this is no longer the case. As of right now I’m wirelessly backing up my hard drive over to the 500GB USB drive attached to my AEBS. Hallelujah !!
Last week I was able to finally upgrade my work MacBook Pro to 10.5 Leopard, bringing an end to months of hitting the spacebar on filenames and wondering why nothing happened. Now with both notebooks on 10.5 I’m able to try out Back To My Mac.
Out of the gate it didn’t work, that I was expecting. So, after a little googling around the web I found various references to what ports I needed to open up on the home router. At home I’m on Verizon FiOS (loving it!) with a VZ provided wireless router / modem. From that, I have a bridged Airport Extreme Base Station for 802.11n wireless networking. Since the AEBS is bridged it requires no changes.
On the VZ router I needed to open ports UDP 500 and 4500, as well as ESP and AH. That was it.
From work today I’m able to effortlessly connect back to my home MacBook Pro, connect to file shares and share the screen. In adaptive mode the screen sharing is perfectly acceptable and I’m able to comfortably work as if I was infront the the notebook.
Other than needing to open the ports, the whole process was just a simple as I’ve come to expect from Apple. Unfortunately I can’t BTMM into my office MacBook Pro as I would expect from a PCI compliant company, but no biggy there.
Net, net. Back To My Mac rocks!
Since purchasing an iPod touch last month - which I’m absolutely loving - I’ve been enjoying listening to internet radio via FlyTunes wherever I can jump on Wi Fi.
FlyTunes fills the gap, where there is no support (currently) for standard streaming radio, by streaming the stations as MP3 files.
Jump on over to MacApper to read my review of FlyTunes.
To compliment this weeks post on MacApper describing my first impressions of the AppleTV T2 update, I’ve added a further post today about VisualHub.
VisualHub is a super video conversion tool with excellent integration with the latest range of Apple’s non-Mac devices.
Jump on over the MacApper to read the review - VisualHub: Keeping Up With Apple.
