MenuCalendarClock: Ugly Name, Great App

Until yesterday, it’s been a few times I resisted trying MenuCalendarClock.  Its name is ugly and its web site isn’t much better at selling it.  But it’s almost exactly what I was longing for.  I was tired of bringing up the whole iCal interface, or firing up the Dashboard, just to see my daily appointments.  I wanted something more streamlined into my workflow, more accessible but still capable, yet not distracting.  Thanks to MacUpdate’s Parallels Bundle and Chris Pirillo, I found the answer to my need in MenuCalendarClock.

It’s as slick as it looks in this screenshot and it’s even better.  The search box works wonders to bring up anything that’s been on your calendar but you don’t remember when, and it’s just where it’s needed.  Double-clicking on something either brings up iCal or a window to edit a task’s details.  In short, it rocks.

Of course, it could be even better.  I’d like to be able to specify the date format of the events view.  Repeating the year and month for each one of the three days shown looks silly to me.  I’d much rather see the name of the day completely spelled out, like “vendredi le 18“, “samedi le 19“, and “lundi le 21“.  (Yes, French is my native language.)

MenuCalendarClock comes at the price of 20$, for either iCal or Entourage.  If you’re quick enough, you could also get it like me in the great deal that is the Parallels Bundle.  Finally, if you just want the slick calendar view without the events and tasks view, the basic version of the application will come free to you.

Why I Bought the MacUpdate Parallels Bundle

Here’s my story.
If you don’t like its start, don’t miss its end.

I already knew of most of the applications in the Parallels Bundle.

I already own Hazel.
I already own a competitor app to Parallels (Fusion).

I already use freeware or shareware equivalents to:
MenuCalendarClock (stock apple widget, not great),
StoryMill (trying Scrivener),
Typinator (trying TextExpander).

I knew I would someday want to buy Leap and MenuCalendarClock.
I knew I might someday need Art Text and StoryMill.

I think I learned the existence of this bundle on TUAW.
I checked it on MacUpdate, including the screencast.
I read again about it on another blog.
And another time on another blog I’m subscribed to.

And still, with all the knowledge I have of these apps, I wasn’t sure I’d purchase the bundle.  I even closed its tab in my browser - bad sign.

But then, Chris Pirillo published this post that hooked me.
I read it and bought the bundle; hence this post to share it with you.

Evernote for Mac Reviewed (beta version)

Last week, I was able to snag myself a TechCrunch invitation to try the upcoming Mac version of Evernote.  When I first discovered it in 2004 (for Windows), I soon became an advocate of Evernote for its organizational capabilities.  Evernote wasn’t perfect, but it was already a leader in the market and since then, it’s kept progressing at a steady pace.  Now that it’s starting to breathe on OS X, it’s time for a new testing round.

Today, I took a few hours to run Evernote against my web information collection test benchmark.  I’m now ready to share with you how Evernote, in its actual pre-release form, competes with the pack.

As this is pre-release software, please understand that Evernote will probably fare even better than now when it’ll reach Release Day.  Until then, here’s what I found.

Also, I feel the need to remind you two things:

1. My tests strictly evaluate what I believe is important for web information collection purposes.  If you’re into organizing your PDFs, you’ll definitely have to forget Evernote for now, unless I overlooked something.
2. My tests aren’t tailored to your own needs, nor to mine. Read my comparative review if you want to understand why and how.  Basically, a higher score might mean an application has more potential of supporting your needs, but it really depends on the exact nature of your needs so you’d better look specifically for what’s important to you.

Now, to the results:

EagleFiler 1.3 Reviewed

Update (2008-03): I’ve added the updated detailed benchmark results at the end of this post.
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Reading this new version’s change list, which includes some great new features, I thought it’d be interesting to update my recent comparative review to see how EagleFiler now fares with its competitors.  But I’m not going to update the comparative review now, so I decided to simply post the score-changing differences here, along with their impact on EagleFiler’s evaluation.

• EagleFiler’s global score for Collection brings it to become the greatest of all the apps I’ve tested, for collection purposes.  From 50, it raised to 64:
  • It’s now possible to import a selection of a web page as a web archive!  (You need to use Safari, or probably any other webkit-based browser.)  Until now, only Together supported this functionality.  This brings the score for Collection - Support from 26 to 31.
  • The addition of the optional window dialog to file what you collect (tags, comment, etc.) ups the score for Collection - Interaction from 18 to 24 and brings the score for Collection - Consistency from 6 to 9.
  • EagleFiler’s monitoring of To Import folders got better and is anyway something I overlooked in my previous review.  Now that I know of it, it adds 1 to the score for Collection - Interaction.  (To avoid mentioning two different scores for this category, I already included this +1 in the final 24 I wrote in the preceding paragraph.)
• Various small improvements to EagleFiler’s tagging support bring its Organization - Tags integration score from 9 to 10, and its global Organization score from 30 to 31.

These changes bring EagleFiler’s global score from 124 to 140, with an average of 2.1 that now becomes 2.4.  That’s quite an improvement, since EagleFiler is now part of the leading applications of my comparative review!

Now, there’s two more things I’d like to mention:

Uninstallers: AppZapper vs Hazel

Update (2008-04): Someone else compared many uninstallers, reaching similar conclusions.  Hinted at cleanapp possibly being the perfect solution.  Reviews on MacUpdate are fairly positive.  Cleanapp’s rating would be almost perfect if it wasn’t of some performance bugs that might get fixed when version 3 is released.

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In the past few months, Hazel, an application that’s useful to automate your organization of files and folders, started lending a hand when you want to uninstall software from your Mac.

This move from the author is a really wise one, as it widens Hazel’s target market into the uninstaller utilities category of applications.  And indeed, that’s what convinced me to buy it, because first, I needed a good uninstaller, and second, I might someday want to build myself an automated workflow for my files and folders organization.

Now, the main question is:

How good is Hazel at uninstalling applications,
compared to the leader of this category, namely AppZapper?

I started my tests a month ago with the hypothesis that neither one would be really sufficient as a uninstaller, because unless I’m wrong, they both solely rely on Spotlight to find which files should be trashed when you uninstall something.

To verify this hypothesis and find an answer to the main question, each time I needed to uninstall an application, I would both use AppZapper and Hazel to see which one fares better.  It’s easy to do.  First, drag your doomed application to AppZapper.  Then, drag it to the trash.  You will end up with both AppZapper’s and Hazel’s suggestions as to what should be deleted along the application package.

The Short Answer

Neither one is that much better.  Neither one is sufficient.  Use both.

The Long Answer

A Review of the Mighty Mouse

Switching from a regular PC to a Mac also means, in most cases, switching keyboards and mice.  When I started using my brand-new iMac, I wasn’t sure if I’d like the Mighty Mouse, but I wanted to give it a chance, so I decided I would use it exclusively for at least two weeks.

My first impression was that I’d miss my back and forward buttons.  And let me tell you I do.  Next, I found it’s hard to use the side buttons, and up to this day, this hasn’t changed.  I was also really surprised to learn that the side buttons are in fact together only one button.

After a few days, I was hooked at its scroll wheel.  Er, sorry, I meant scroll ball.  It’s addictive.  It’s wonderful.  It’s even ergonomic.  Scroll wheels hurt.  Scroll balls don’t.  Scroll wheels wouldn’t if they were designed as small as this ball.  And I say that with some experience with carpal tunnel problems.

What’s funny is that after two weeks, I still hadn’t understood how to succeed at right-clicking every time I tried it.  Most of the time, the mouse would register a left click instead.  It would drive me nuts.  And it’s even funnier that my wife picked it up fine starting on day one.  But we weren’t able to find what it was I wasn’t doing well.

Seeing something was (ironically) wrong with me, I decided I wouldn’t revert to my Logitech mouse until I had solved this problem for myself and tried the mouse in this new glorified way for at least one more week.  And then, a few days later, I found out you have to make sure no finger remains on the left side of the mouse when you push on its right side.  That’s so counter-intuitive.  I mean, why should I need to lift my left finger before right-clicking?  My wife, on the other side of the fence, always did this with any mouse.  How (un)lucky she is!

The most annoying problem of the Mighty Mouse is that its cursor sometimes jumps from one place in the screen to another one when we’re moving the mouse, instead of following our movement.  At first, I thought I was facing some kind of bug in OS X.  Now, I believe it’s because this mouse’s optical system has some problems recognizing the surface of my desk.  When I try my Logitech mouse, I never face this problem.  Let me tell you it’s a really annoying bug, and no, I don’t want to use any kind of mouse pad.  That would ruin the careful looks of my workplace, wouldn’t it?

So, after 4 months using the Mighty Mouse, how do I feel?  Well, I think it’s time to buy a new desk.

Seriously, I hope Apple will make a better device soon.  I would gladly encourage them to continue producing half-crap devices by buying their next mouse instead of switching back to my previous mouse.  Until then, I’m going to rock (argh…) and roll (yay!) with my Mighty Mouse because I’m hooked at the Mighty Scroll Ball.

20 Observations from a Switcher

Like most computer users who started with a Windows system, I once believed Macs are mostly crap or hype.

Background

That said, I would never have considered switching if Apple hadn’t introduced Mac OS X.  Mac OS 9 wasn’t my cup of tea (I used it for some school projects).

Through the last 7 years, my progressive discovery of the open source community in general drove me more and more to feel and experience how Windows sucks for a non-ms developer.  I needed some kind of unix/linux flavor, and even in 2007, my opinion was that linux distributions aren’t mature enough for me.  But linux is worth another rant.

When I started to understand in 2005 that Mac OS X had redefined the game and was indeed a great system, my interest raised enough for me to start reading a bit about it when bloggers would mention it.

In 2006, I saw the birth of MacTels and much more people starting to switch.  At that point, I was really enthralled by Leopard’s promises.  But I wasn’t ready to switch.  I needed to realize a three more things:

• Mac OS X is so much based on a unix system that it’s in fact the best unix/linux-compatible distribution out there for the mass market, while at the same time being great for developers.
• I can replace all the Windows applications I use with strong Mac alternatives.
• Buying a Mac is a no-risk decision, since I could always switch back to Windows with the same Mac by using BootCamp.

When I understood all these facts, I knew I needed to give OS X its chance.  That’s when I started waiting for Leopard’s release.  This waiting wasn’t the happiest of all, especially after MacWorld 2007 came without the next cat.  I was of those wanting Steve Jobs to tell us to go buy our Macs now and he’d ship us Leopard later for free, but now I’m happy I waited.  I got a 24” aluminum iMac instead of a 20” plastic iMac.  I bought it one week before Leopard’s release and I ordered the 10$ upgrade disc to get Leopard one week after its release.  I received it three weeks after its release, probably because I’m Canadian.  I was angry at first, and then I felt deceived and sad about that.  When I finally received Leopard, I forgot all about that and continued using my shining, brand new iMac.

Observations

1. I’m lost! I’ve used DOS and Windows for about 14 years and now I must find how to do almost anything.  …After a few days, most of that feeling was gone.
2. PhotoBooth is a great deal of fun. My wife would like us to take one picture of us each and every day.
3. System Preferences are much easier to browse and use in general than those of Windows XP.  And it’s really great that they all take effect without having to click on an OK button.

8 Web Information Collectors Reviewed

Update 2 (2008-03): Evernote is the new wolf that’s coming in the pack, and it already redefines most of what’s best.  Read this review to know how.  And while reading this post with its slightly outdated result charts, remember to use the one that’s besides this paragraph to get the updated results.

Update 1 (2008-03): EagleFiler’s new version 1.3 makes it fare much better.  Read this review to know what changes regarding the following comparative review, as I haven’t updated this post in any other way than this mention.
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Although computers are great to work with information, in the last 10 years using a Windows PC, I never found any software solution that would work well for my information collecting and management needs, although OneNote and EverNote came close to it.  But now that I use a Mac, I wanted to see if I’d be able to find something really great.

Our Problem

I believe what makes it hard to find the good application for our needs is that we all have our own very personal ways of dealing with the information that comes before our eyes every day; but most importantly, I believe we still haven’t seen our software in general become mature. Software still behaves like a baby who won’t share his toys. Software will grow someday, but Software just isn’t there yet. Say, Software, what will you do when you’ll have grown up?

Our Need

Until Software becomes an adult, there’s many applications available, and some of them might solve most of our information collecting needs. How would we define the best proposition?

I believe what we need in any application is that it:

• supports the features needed,
• interacts comfortably with us, and
• keeps doing the previous two criteria in a consistent manner.

This definition is most probably critical in the case of information collection software. When I speak of consistency for information collection purposes, I mean, for example, that whatever the web browser I use and the method I use to collect something, it will always produce the same kind of rich text entry, accompanied by its link.

The Contenders

Now, since this is all about reviewing different applications to see which one of them is closing the most towards maturity, here’s what I tested: