Menu Utilities Collection 1.25 Mini-Review - OS X Odyssey 843
Included in the latest (version 1.25) compilation are 12 mini-applications:
• HD Free: displays the free and used space on your boot drive in the menu bar.
• HD Free +: displays the free and used space on all of your mounted drives in a pulldown menu.
• mCal: displays a small calendar of the current month inside a pulldown menu.
• MenuIP: displays your Mac's external IP address in the menu bar.
• MenuIP +: displays your Mac's external IP address inside a pulldown menu and lets you copy it to the Clipboard.
• MenuPrefs: displays your Mac's standard System Preference panes inside a pulldown menu for quick access.
• MenuRAM: displays your Mac's used and free RAM in the menu bar.
• MenuRAM +: displays your Mac's used and free RAM in a pulldown menu.
• Process Tamer: displays a list of all active application and system processes in a pulldown menu. You can then kill them with one click.
• SysLoad: displays the current system "load" of your Mac, which can help you gauge just how busy your Mac is.
• SysUtils: displays a list of all of the click-able applications in your Mac's /Applications/Utilities/ folder inside a pulldown menu, which you can then launch.
• yCal: displays a calendar of the current year inside a pulldown menu.
You can pick and choose, and run just one of the utilities at a time or a whole bunch simultaneously. HD Free, MenuIP, MenuRAM and SysLoad can be used alone or in conjunction with one another. The only problem with this is that if you want to use several of them at a time, they eat up menubar space pretty quickly, even on a widescreen machine like my 17" PowerBook.
Menu Utilities Features:
• The applications will run on any Mac with OS X 10.3 or later.
• Applications provide various handy and time-saving features to make using your Mac faster and/or easier.
• Applications are very small and consume very little RAM or system resources.
• Applications can be quit at any time or auto-started when you login.
• Applications are easily installed and just as easily removed.
- To install, simply drag the application(s) of interest into your Mac's /Applications/ folder (or any folder you wish).
- To launch, simply double-click on the application's icon.
- To quit, simply select the application's Quit option, which appears in the menu.
- To remove, simply drag the application(s) of interest into your Mac's Trash. However, make sure you quite the application(s) in question before you empty the Trash (i.e. they may still be running, etc.).
• Applications can run from any folder, which makes them ideal for use in 'managed' environments.
In more detail, the Menu Utilities Collection v1.25 release includes:
HD Free
Displays the free and used space (displayed as a %) on your boot drive in the menu bar. The drive info is updated every 60 seconds to reflect any changes (e.g. you just deleted 2 GB worth of crap, etc.). This can be very useful s because there's no easy or fast way of finding out the free space on your main drive without constantly resorting to the 'Get Info' command. The text readout does use up a sizable chunk of menubar space.
HD Free +
I prefer this one, which displays the free and used space on all of your mounted drives (this includes any iPods configured as drives) in a pulldown menu. Drive info is updated each time the HD Free + menu is selected reflect any changes. Drives will also be listed in the order that they were mounted.
mCal
A new addition in version 1.25, mCal displays a small monthly calendar of the current month inside a pulldown menu. Very handy and quick check on the date.
MenuIP
Displays your Mac's external IP address in the menu bar and polls the IP every 60 seconds. Users may find this useful for doing things such as setting up email or web services or just finding out what their public IP address is. This tool checks an external URL to get your IP rather than relying on the value of network interface en0, which should allow it to report your IP correctly whether you're using an ethernet, WiFi or even dial-up connection or behind a corporate firewall, etc.
MenuIP +
Displays your Mac's external IP address inside a pulldown menu. Selecting the IP in the menu will automatically copy it to the Clipboard. This tool also checks an external URL to get your IP rather than relying on the value of network interface en0, which should allow it to report your IP correctly whether you're using an ethernet, WiFi or even dial-up connection or behind a corporate firewall, etc.
MenuPrefs
The other newbie in Version 1.25, MenuPrefs displays a list of the standard System Preference panes inside a pulldown menu for quick access. This can save you several steps when accessing your Mac's various System Preferences just to make a simple change to your Display or Network settings. ONe limitation is that MenuPrefs only display the standard System Preference panes at this time.
MenuRAM
Displays the amount of free and used RAM by your Mac inside the menu bar were U is used RAM in Megabytes and F is free RAM in Megabytes. The menu is refreshed every 60 seconds to get the most accurate account of system RAM levels. Another space-eater with its text display of data. NOTE: There is a minor issue with MenuRAM's calculation of free RAM when run after just rebooting your Mac. However, once you run a program, it seems to work as expected.
MenuRAM +
A preferable solution space usage wise, MenuRAM+ displays the amount of free and used RAM by your Mac inside a pulldown menu. The indicators are refreshed each time the menu is selected. However the developer says this tool isn't as accurate as MenuRAM because it doesn't update on regular intervals (updates are user initiated), but is provided for users with smaller screens who want this type of info but don't want to sacrifice the screen real estate to get it. There is also a minor issue with MenuRAM +'s calculation of free RAM when run after just rebooting your Mac. However, once you run a program, it seems to work as expected.
Process Tamer
Displays a list of all active application and system processes in a pulldown menu. You can then kill them "nicely" (as opposed to terminate with extreme prejudice!) with one click. In many cases, Process Tamer will be more convenient that manually typing in individual process ID (PIDs) in the Terminal to accomplish the same thing.
Processes are sorted by their relative CPU use with the most processor intensive processes appearing at top. Information about the length a process has been running is also displayed. Process information is constantly changing during normal system use and this will be reflected every time the Process Tamer menu is selected.
Critical system processes won't appear in the menu nor will so-called "Zombie" processes. As this utility kills processes nicely, it won't kill all processes. Stubborn processes may still need to be killed via the Terminal using 'kill -9'.
SysLoad
Displays the current system "load" or CPU usage of your Mac, which can help you gauge just how busy your Mac is at any point in time. System load is polled in 1, 5 and 15 minute intervals and SysLoad updates itself every 30 seconds to reflect this.
What is "normal" in terms of system load will vary greatly between systems and what type of applications you run. Generally speaking, higher numbers, particularly those on the left-most column means your system load is getting high. However, system load does range from 0-nnn where nnn is a three digit number so if your load is under 3.00 during any given sample, you're doing fine.
The method SysLoad uses to determine system load that most flavors of UNIX use, including BSD (on which OS X is based) is inaccurate since it relies on averages. However, it is far from useless as it does give you a sense of the current level of activity on your system.
SysUtils
Displays a list of all of the click-able applications in your Mac's /Applications/Utilities/ folder inside a pulldown menu, which you can then launch with one click.
This can be handy as it allows you to free up precious Dock space when it comes to accessing important but sporadically used system utilities such as Grab, X11, Disk Utility, etc. Moreover, you can place other utility applications in your /Applications/Utilities/ folder and they will show up in the menu the next time it's activated.
yCal
Displays a calendar of the current year inside a pulldown menu. This is useful if trying to find out what day-of-the-week your birthday falls on, etc.
I think these little helpers are pretty cool, useful, and they seem to work as advertised. The drawback, as noted, is the amount of menubar space they require if you want to run more than a handful. I really like it that they can be used individually, but I think and excellent enhancement would be for the whole bunch - or much preferably a selection of them at the user's option - to be able to be started as a suite and accessed from a single menubar pulldown menu and submenus.
New in version 1.25:
• Added mCal.
• Added MenuPrefs.
New in version 1.23:
• Updated MenuIP to query an external URL to get your true IP, not what is reported by querying network interface en0.
• Updated SysLoad to update every 30 seconds instead of every 60 for a more accurate assessment of system load.
New in version 1.22:
• Made the contents of the HD Free + menu more compact to take up less room on screen.
• Made the MenuRAM display a bit more compact to take up less room on screen.
• Updated SysUtils to display only an icon in the menu bar to free up space.
• Removed UpTime from the distribution until some formatting bugs are resolved.
System requirements:
Mac OS X 10.3 or later.
System Support:
PPC/Intel
Free
For more information, visit:
http://www.flyingyogi.com/fun/
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Charles W. Moore
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