New ACDSee Pro Beta for Mac – mini review
The day one has waited for with baited breath, the Software one assumed would never be seen again on the Mac, the grand daddy of all image and file managers – ACDSee has arrived for the Mac OSX platform after a gap of nearly ten years.
Ecstatic, enthused, just plain over the top happy to see this App finally make it to the next version (after the non-starter v2.5 back in the day), I downloaded it the first thing this morning on receiving my Invite in the mail. The first impressions, just gobsmacked. They have managed to streamline the Mac version so that the installer DMG is just three MB and footprint is just eight MB. It is blazingly fast in browsing and viewing images. The developers have managed to keep the right-click menu options very contextual and to the point.
One pet peeve though – clicking on an image on the Manage screen (main screen) takes one to the View Screen. To view a full screen image, one must double click it in this screen. One extra step. I imagine the view screen will be improved in the later Betas to include image manip features.
I for one can’t wait for the final version, and do hope that the developers keep the simplicity and the speed that once made ACDSee the best image viewer (and for some File management software) on Windows.
It is fast, it is beautiful, it is simple, and it is here. Go get it.
Remove Attachments in Apple Mail ⌘
Right under my nose all the time, and never did I actually care to look for it, but rather bemoaned the lack of a “remove attachments” feature in Apple Mail.
You see, I was looking in all the “wrong” places, namely in the contextual menu when one right clicks an email in Apple Mail. Other clients like Thunderbird and Entourage offer the option to remove attachments from an email in the contextual menu. Apple decided against it, as perhaps people don’t use it (the world according to Apple).
Message -> Remove Attachments
This morning I tried and lo and behold I found the option to remove attachments from the emails I get. Now I can archive the message without necessarily storing for all eternity the added fluff some people usually attach with their mails. My Mailbox size has gone from 420 MB to just 11MB.
The discovery of this feature has made this already amazing Apple Mail app, even more invaluable in my book.
How to edit the Normal template in Mac Word 2008
As I began to rely solely on Word 2008 for my needs, I found myself messing around with the app to customize it to my needs. One of the first and most basic issues I faced from the get-go was using my own “Normal.dotm” template, as well as my letterhead. I could of course double click on the template files on my HD and work on the same in Word, but that was an extra step I didn’t wish to undertake, not to mention if I happened to press CMD-S I could overwrite the template with whatever I happened to be working on then.
Turns out the solution, in true Mac fashion was simple. The default template “Normal.dotm” resides in
~/Library/ Applications/Application Support/Microsoft/Office/User Templates/Normal.dotm
Open it in Word (make sure to open it via Word, and not by double clicking the file). Modify the template, and save. Voila, the template is modified. This location is also the central repository for all templates.
However, if you are anal like me, and don’t like personal documents, templates and such lying around in the ~ folders, make a Symlink!
Trying out Blogo
My search for a reliable and aesthetically pleasing offline blog editor for Mac has led me to Blogo. I am excoriating myself for never having tried this puppy out earlier. I am so impressed by how easy this app makes blogging – every aspect from writing (in full screen mode when one needs to concentrate), to attaching images (Drag drop please). Just wonderful. Blogo is a prime example of how Software designed for Mac is far superior to anything for any other platform.
Available as a 21 day trial, and $25 to buy, this is well worth the money spent. Go gettit!
PS: Wonderful feature! Preview your post exactly as it would appear on the blog. Wow. I have seen other editors try and miserably fail at that. Blogo does it, and with aplomb!
CookBook Pro
Impossibly hot – that was my proclamation right after I performed surgery on the MacBook Pro. It was uncomfortably hot around the area where the magsafe adapter plugs in, with temperatures ranging from 160-190 F (70C-90C for the metric minded) for the GPU Diode and similar for the CPU. Many fanbois claimed that this range was well within the tolerance limit, but how do you explain that to your palms while you work on the beautiful machine? I decided to get to the bottom of this CookBook phenomenon.
First thing I AppZapp‘d was Pathfinder. A very useful application, but the CPU spikes while using it, were unforgivable. Next down was Microsoft Office ’08. A useful suite, but easily supplanted by Open Office & Thunderbird (replacing Entourage). Another one down was Adobe Suite CS3 (PhotoShop). I installed Pixelmator to supplant this.
Things did seem marginally better, but nothing like what I had expected to see – disappointing to say the least. But then I AppZapp’d Little Snitch – (firewall for Mac), and lo and behold – at full load I average temperatures around 148-150F(~64C).
Back to reinstalling the cast-offs.
