Aladdin presents this collection as "Ten for X rounds up cool, top-rated Mac OS X utilities and delivers them to you in a single convenient package at one great price," and for the most part, it does.

By providing $170 worth of ten shareware items for $49.99, Aladdin does two things: it presents a variety of utilities to people who may otherwise be unaware of them, and presents the items in a "go-ahead-and-try-it,-you-already-own-it" opportunity. The items presented display a significant range of utilities as there is something there for both the left and right sides of the brain. And, as you look at the various items provided, your first thought might be that Aladdin can't count because there are twelve items. Well, Ten for X has a better ring to it, so just go with it.

Just like their new set of "Ten for X Games," Aladdin's role here was to assemble the utilities and produce the CD. An agreement was made for disbursement of moneys so that everyone is happy. When installing the software, the instillation code you are given is globally inserted for all programs except LaunchBar and Print Magic--both of which require separate instillation codes (which are provided).

Part of Aladdin's agreement with these other companies is that ownership is just as complete as if you had purchased the program separately. Any upgrades available to purchasers of the individual program are equally available to purchasers of Ten for X. This included the unique LimeWire Pro agreement that is only viable for 6 months--nothing better, nothing worse.

You can perform the upgrades in two ways: either directly with the individual programs on a one-by-one basis, or the occasional upgrades provided by Aladdin. So, for example, if you have the "Ten for X, v.1.0.1" package, and download the "v. 1.0.2" package, you will be re-installing the entire package all over again. As this is a 15 MB+ package, it's up to you as to whether you want to install everything or only the programs you end up selecting to use. Aladdin does provide on their web site links to the updater page of the various programs.

My biggest complaint is that Aladdin only produced the software collection, but did nothing to combine them into a single package nor advise the shareware companies on how to present their own software. Thus, one program may have its instructions in a PDF, while another may use an HTML interface and yet a third use the "RTF" of TextEdit.

Particularly poor is that some shareware companies do not know how to present their product. For example, I spent quite a lot of time trying to figure out what piPop did, what it's for, and how to use it. Neither the information provided by Aladdin, nor the information provided on piDog Software's web site (the company that makes piPop) explain any of this. Either it doesn't work or I do not know what I'm looking for--and there is no information provided to let me know what to look for. Gosh, a picture of piPop in operation would have been wonderful.

All that notwithstanding, this is the Ten for X package:

In addition to these, a full installation also provided a QuickTime movie on OS X tips and some PDFs from PeachPit press on selections from some of their books on subjects like Digital Video, Internet Security, Photoshop Blend Modes, etc. Lots of fun good stuff.

Here are some quick observations on the provided software:

Alarm Clock S.E.: Never did find out what the S.E. stands for even when I did find the original Web page, as the one provided on the CD was a bad URL. (The correct URL is here.) Despite that, Alarm Clock SE was a pleasant surprise. What it provides is a clock and/or a calendar that sits on your desktop. It's easy to set it to go off at any specific time and/or day, and that's about it. You can customize the appearance in a variety of ways and can even have the time show up in your Dock. However, for me the best part of Alarm Clock S.E. is the "Kitchen Timer" part. Have you ever said to yourself "I need to get off the computer in 15 minutes so I can make that meeting" and 25 minutes later you find yourself still stuck on the computer? I know I have. Set the Kitchen Timer for 15 minutes and you won't need excuses. This is a must have. There is also a timer so you can find out how long you've been working on a given project.

ExectutiveSync: As its name would suggest, a synchronization program. You establish the main folder on your hard drive and the back up folder either on a network or physically connected (i.e., a zip cartridge), create the document for which folder and where, let the two be compared and let 'er rip. While it does create history and archive information, all the information for any collection is saved in its own folder. As such, I don't like the fact that it doesn't create a separate document that I can administer from (say) a Zip Cartridge. Additionally, while I successfully ran a test of a folder from my hard drive to a zip with about a dozen files, it choked on a folder with about 1100+ files. As a small point, I like to compare documents in sync program left and right, not top and bottom. When the files needed to go from the Zip to the HD, or the file is going from the HD to the Zip, the arrow always points to the right, and in my mind that is wrong. Sometimes it's the small things.

FruitMenu: Another application that could do with better explanation. As best as I can tell, FruitMenu lets you customize your menus. What's good about this is that it lets you add thing from OS 9 like "Recent Applications" and "Recent Documents" to the Apple Menu. Accessed from the Preference Pane, one can customize many of your menu capabilities. While FruitMenu does allow customization in both the Apple Menu and Contextual Menus, I found glitches where on the Contextual Menus I'd get messages saying that my "Fruit Menu Demo Expired." Sorry folks, this is part of Ten for X. Some of what FruitMenu can do is handy, but some of it falls into the "cute" category such as instead of showing the name of the program on the menu (just to the right of the Apple menu), it can change that to an icon of the program.

iClean: This one is from Aladdin and is my favorite mixed-blessing. If you do not know much about computers in general or Macs in specific, leave this program alone as it can create much damage. Or, it can also save significant amount of dead space on your computer--depending on how you use it and if you know what you are doing. What iClean does is look through your hard disk for files that haven't been used for a long time: preferences that seem dead, internet cache files that are lying around, and lets you know about them asking you what you want to do with them. If you know they are dead files and have no purpose, it is a very good idea to just get rid of them. Sort of like the old clothes you have in your closet--they are just taking up space. However, the preference you haven't dealt with in 3 years may be the preference for an application that you suddenly need when the deadline is in several hours. I love this program and I fear this program--use at your own risk.

ideaSpiral X: One of the wonderful things about computers is that you do not have to think in a linear order when writing. If you are busy writing away the thoughts b, d, and f, at any time you can go back and fill in the a, c, and e. ideaSpiral does this one better by letting you create your thoughts in any order and have instant access to them for a better visualization of what you've created. Among the powers of this program is that you can easily subdivide your ideas for easy access and visualization. For example, if you are creating a cookbook, you can have one section show all your chapters, then another section showing cooking techniques discussed in the book, then another showing where to get supplies. This is for brainstorming and creation, and it's nothing that can't be done in any word processor, but ideaSpiral X provides a clean and neat interface for the thought process. My one complaint: while you can export your brainstorming into a text file, you must independently click on every subject and sub-subject for export. It would be nice if there were triangle drop-down selections to catch things in groups for easier selection.

LaunchBar: Imagine that instead of going into your Applications folder, scrolling to find a specific application folder, opening the folder, and then double-clicking on the application, you typed "Command-spacebar," then typed the name of the application and selected it from the upper right part of your screen--boom you are done. In short, LaunchBar lets you do that for your applications and documents. This is a great application that performs extremely well and does exactly what it advertises unless you are a sloppy typist, a rotten speller, or can't remember the name of the application or document you want. Otherwise it's pretty handy.

Limewire Pro: Forgive me if I'm stepping on any toes here, but as much as I can tell, Limewire does the same thing that Napster did, but hasn't gotten into deep waters--at least not yet. Using "Gnutella" abilities, you can search the internet for media files to share. The difference between the Pro version and the free version is that the Pro version doesn't have any adds running. As mentioned earlier, the Pro version is only good for 6 months when you will then have to start paying Limewire their fee to stop the adds.

piPop: See my comments in the discussion before I talk about the programs. I have no clue as to what this program does or how it does it. piDog needs some beta testing of their instructions.

Pseudo: You bought OS X because you love working in Unix, right? Oh, you got a Mac so you didn't have to use key commands for everything. Well, let's say you share a computer with other users and one of them has an application that you do not have access to. Run Pseudo, drag-and-drop the application on Pseudo, give it your access code and you will have the Administrators or root's access. It's nothing that you couldn't do if you knew Unix, right?

PrintMagic X: Let's say you see an interesting article on eastern basket weaving on the web and want to just print the text but do not want to deal with all the adds on the page. Drag across the text and then drag the text over to PrintMagic and print it. You can select the text to drag over the date and/or note and date to let you know when you printed the material and/or with comments. You can also take a document on the desktop, drag it over PrintMagic and print one or multiple copies of the text--also with date and/or comments. PrintMagic can be left on the desktop for easy access.

WindowShade X: When I first read that OS X didn't support WindowShade I was shocked. After all, there are times where you want to see behind a window for a second and dropping a window into and out of the Dock just took too much time. Well, at that time I didn't realize that in OS X, each widow was separate from its parent application so it was possible to have 5 browser windows open, but have the TextEdit window in front of the other 4 browser windows. That notwithstanding doesn't forgive the fact that if I do have an application's window in the Dock and I then click on the application's icon in the Dock, the Docked window will come flying out even if I don't want it to. Seems like there is a need for WindowShade after all. But now it's got all the power of Quartz graphics, so you can either have the window scroll up into the title bar or just go semi-transparent. You can control how transparent the window will be as well as the shadows and, if there are any applications that you do not want WindowShade to work in--just add them to the Exlude list. An excellent job at bringing back OS 9 functions with OS X features.

Xounds: If you like funny noises taking place when you are mousing around, typing, tossing files out, going to the menus, whatever. And you miss them in OS X--Good News. Xounds brings them back. Well, mostly. You can use the Platinum sounds that came with OS 9, but that's about all I could use. Xounds claims that it can import other Appearance sounds from OS 9 into OS X Xounds. I went to their web site, downloaded a variety of different types of sounds and despite my best efforts, I was not able to figure out how to convert the sounds into something I could import into Xounds.

In short, Ten for X is a great idea that I'd like to see tightened up a bit. I'd like to see better integration between the products and I'd like to see some professional guidance offered to the developers on how to write up their instructions. Someone needs to beta test the instructions beyond the developers. While none of these items are necessary, many of them are neat to have. Which ones fill that need depend entirely on your needs, not mine.

I would like to see a "suggestion box" at Aladdin's site for people to suggest future selections (or developers to suggest their own products) for "Another Ten for X" or whatever they plan to call the next version.

One comment on instillation. When I installed this package, I did not know if the installer was going to spew ten programs all over my Applications folder, so I created a new folder specifically for the instillation and forced the installer to install within this. Bad idea. First, Ten for X correctly creates its own folder--dont' worry about a spewing of programs. The big problem with the creation of a folder during the instillation process seems to initiate a curious glitch with OS X. What happened was I gave ownership to this folder to Unix's root which meant that I could not delete, move, or alter this folder or its contents. This was corrected with Batchmod, but it shouldn't have been necessary in the first place.

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