In association with heise online

Preference Panes

Since its first release, all Mac OS X systems include support for a special dynamically loaded plug-in called a preference pane, sometimes abbreviated as prefpane due to their file extension (.prefpane). Preference Panes are located in Mac OS X's System Preferences under Other and allow users to add features and set preferences either for a specific application, or for the system itself, via a graphical user interface (GUI). According to Apple, the most common situation for using preference panes is an application that lacks its own user interface, yet still needs to be configurable. Growl is one such application.

Growl is a notification system that allows various Mac applications which support Growl to unintrusively notify a user when new things happen on their system, such as when a new email is received, updates are available, a download is completed, or when a new instant message is received. Several popular Mac OS X applications support Growl, including Firefox, Thunderbird, Adium, VLC and many others. The Growl notifications can be fully customised with new styles and users are given complete control over which notifications are shown. (Download - License: BSD)

The Perian prefpane adds support for several video formats which are not natively supported by QuickTime, allowing it to play back or convert files which would not normally be possible by default. The developers call Perian "The swiss-army knife for QuickTime" as it supports a large number of file formats, including AVI, DIVX and MKV, and even subtitles. Perian is a great option for users that prefer to stick with QuickTime as their primary media player, but want support for more formats. It's largely based on the FFmpeg project and supports Mac OS X 10.4.7 or later. (Download - License: LGPLv2.1)

MacFUSE is a version of the File system in Userspace (FUSE) program for Mac OS X that allows users to "plug-in" file systems to their system. With the MacFUSE plug-in, users can add the ability to view and modify classic disk file systems such as Ext3 and NTFS to a Mac OS X system. Additionally, it allows developers to make other sources of data visible as a directory hierarchy. MacFUSE is sponsored by Google and supports Mac OS X 10.4 or later. (Download - License: BSD)

Desktop Power Tools

Transmission is a powerful, yet lightweight, BitTorrent peer-to-peer file sharing client that balances simplicity with advanced features. Users can select the initial (default) preferences so that things "Just Work" or set-up more advanced preferences, such as directories to watch for new torrent files, a web interface and bad peer blocking. As Transmission has very few dependencies, it uses less memory and resources than most other BitTorrent clients, such as Vuze (formerly Azureus), while still offering advanced options. It also supports features like encryption, UPnP and NAT-PMP port forwarding, web seeding, and timed speed limit scheduling. (Download - License: GPLv2, MIT)

Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 users can use Apple's built-in Spotlight application to search for files and folders, launch applications and more, but it's often not quick or convenient enough for power users, nor does it feature heavy integration with applications, such as Mail and iTunes. Enter Quicksilver, which adopts the alchemical symbol of the element Mercury (also known as quicksilver) as its logo. QuickSilver is a utility application, essentially a graphical shell for the OS X operating system, that uses the keyboard to quickly perform various tasks, such as launching applications, running scripts or even sending e-mails. The application is intended to run as a persistent background task and, while complex, uses a simple three panel interface, called the "command window", to perform different tasks using configurable key-combinations. QuickSilver can use plug-ins to add support for various scripts, applications, such as the Address Book, iTunes and Mail, and to add new features. QuickSilver source code is available from the Google Blacktree alchemy web page. (Download - License Apache 2.0)

Burn is a simple to use, yet advanced burning application that can be used to create data, audio and video disks and copies. It's a great alternative to using the Finder or the Disk Utility to create CDs or DVDs, but doesn't include as many features as a commercial application like Roxio's Toast 10. Burn can copy DVDs and CDs or use disk images to recreate discs. It can be used to burn audio discs, including standard audio CDs, MP3 CDs and DVDs, and features built-in audio and video conversion tools. Additionally, audio discs can be personalised with custom options such as CD-Text and MP3 tag editing. (Download - License: GPL)

VirtualBox is a desktop virtualisation application for x86 hardware from Sun Microsystems that, like Parallels or VMware Fusion, lets Mac users with Intel-based systems run an additional guest operating system (OS) on top of Mac OS X. With VirtualBox, users can run a variety of guest operating systems like Windows, Solaris or Linux, at the same time as Mac OS X, each in its own virtual environment. VirtualBox is a great choice for Mac users that want, or still need, to run the occasional Windows-only application, or may just want to try out a new operating system. (Download - License: GPLv2)

For personal and business users that want to secure their private data by encrypting it, but may not want to use the built-in FileVault tool, TrueCrypt may very well be the best choice. TrueCrypt is a popular software disk encryption tool that can be used to encrypt entire partitions or devices, such as a USB flash drive or hard drive, or simply create an encrypted virtual disk within a file that can be mounted as a real disk. It supports AES-256, Serpent and Twofish encryption algorithms and, should you worry that you'll be forced to reveal your password, can even create hidden volumes, keeping your private data secret. (Download - License: TrueCrypt License Version 2.7)

Stars for Stars

Celestia is a 3-D astronomy program that displays interactive objects, from artificial satellites to entire galaxies, in three dimensions using OpenGL. Celestia has been used by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the European Space Agency (ESA) and is based on the Hipparcos Catalogue (HIP), which includes approximately 120,000 stars. Add-ons are supported by the 3-D space simulator and are available from The Celestia Motherlode, a repository of approximately 10 GB of extensions. These allow users to add high-resolution textures and models of planets, spacecraft, deep space objects and even various fictional models from Star Trek to Star Wars. The latest 1.6.0 release features the inclusion of 'planetshine' (light from secondary sources), new symbols for locations, improved celestial coordinate grids and new reference marks, such as the Planetographic grid and VisibleRegion. (Download - License: GPLv2)

Stellarium is a planetarium application that's in actual use on some planetarium projectors. It features a realistic 3D sky, and provides images that are similar to the view through a pair of binoculars or a telescope. Unlike Celestia, Stellarium is typically centred on the Earth. It uses OpenGL to render the sky in real time, providing a detailed 3D map of the stars. The application includes over 600,000 stars from the Hipparcos Catalogue and extra catalogues can add more than 210 million more. It includes constellations from ten different cultures, letting users toggle various built-in asterisms (asterisms are patterns of stars that are not an official constellation) and illustrations. The full Messier catalogue is also included, providing images of nebulae and a realistic depiction of the Milky Way. Stellarium is fully customisable and deep sky objects, landscapes and constellation images can be added by users. A User Guide is also provided for new users. (Download - License: GPL)

Next: Conclusion

Print Version | Permalink: http://h-online.com/-746609
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • submit to slashdot
  • StumbleUpon
  • submit to reddit
 


  • July's Community Calendar





The H Open

The H Security

The H Developer

The H Internet Toolkit