February is Freeware February on TUAW
We here at TUAW want to help our readers avoid the winter doldrums, but how? Since our credit cards are maxed out
Barb’s idea of a Mac mini for each reader didn’t work
out. Laurie suggested we all gather together and petition Apple to recognize the
Cube as the best computer that the company has ever produced, but that
was lacking something.
Then it came to us; what do Mac users love above all? That’s right,
one button mice.
No, wait, Mac users love the high quality freeware and shareware that is available for our computing platform of
choice. Therefore, from now forward February shall be known as ‘Freeware February’ here on TUAW.
Each day one TUAWer will post about a piece of shareware/freeware that they find useful in their everyday Mac
experience, or that they think is just plain cool. If you have some freeware that we should think about featuring
please submit it via out Tips form.
Tomorrow shall start our glorious 28 day freeware/shareware-fest, so strap yourself in and get your downloading
fingers ready.
![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
arkowi said 4:16PM on 6-16-2005
this is an awesome idea.
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KIVERS said 4:16PM on 6-16-2005
well smack me in the face and call me sally, this is a great idea!
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Mike Beard said 1:08PM on 6-29-2005
YAY!
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Pedro said 4:16PM on 6-16-2005
im all excited already... lets get the first one early!!
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Marcello said 4:16PM on 6-16-2005
oh, well, actually coming from the windows/unix world i've always been quite contrariated by the fact that on the mac market people want you to pay for every single, little, silly thing they make. i'm thinking about software to copy your mp3s back from your ipod, risible games, rss aggregators.
OMG, i've just found a shareware GPRS SCRIPT GENERATOR (the same software house makes a 25$ EUROCONVERTER?!?!?!)...
come on, that's just crazy.
i'm not saying that everyone must work for free, but at least people should refrain from selling high-school-experiment-level software as commercial products.
regards
Marcello
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Chris K said 4:16PM on 6-16-2005
Marcello, I'm coming from the Windows world too, and I completely agree: The Mac shareware market is out of control. For a community that purports to be a kinder, hipper group of people, Mac developers are a bloodthirsty lot. I hate to say it, but the Windows community is much more consumer-friendly.
My new Mac mini is my first Mac since my old PowerMac 6100, and in the past couple weeks I have been pouring over the web looking for utilities to make my life a little easier. I wouldn't even mind paying $40 for something like Now Utilties. But when I see stuff like $30 for DragThing, $20 for LaunchBar, or $15 for a utility that merely gives us old System 7 users their app menu back (ASM), I'm sickened.
Do these people realize that Apple charges $80 for a suite of software with at least two orders of magnitude more developer time invested? I understand people want to make a little money, but $30 crosses the line. Just a few years ago you could buy a commercial SUITE of utilties that blows any of these utilties away for only $10 more.
I'll register a $10 piece of shareware if it's decent. I'll register a $20 piece of shareware if it's REALLY good. But $30? iLife sells for $80 with four apps. That's $20 for iPhoto, people.
Scott, please at least mention the shareware terms of each program you review. Price and how the app is crippled would be nice. And if possible, please mention any free alternatives. Many of us can't afford these hefty registration fees.
Thanks!
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Marcello said 4:16PM on 6-16-2005
yes, a freeware/opensource applications month would be more than welcome...
it's true that fink has been quoted quite often lately, but fink (or darwinport) is definitevely for advanced users while there are many alternative solutions for everyday use (x-chat, the gimp, to name but a few).
Just adding infos about the price and what is crippled would be an interesting addition.
Thanks
Marcello
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barb dybwad said 4:41PM on 10-07-2005
That's funny - because I am a hardcore Mac user who has a new contract that is supporting 30% peecees, so I have a Wintel machine on my desktop (as well as a Mac) and I was having the opposite conundrum. I kept thinking:
1) Yikes, why do Win shareware developers always cripple their demos? (almost no Mac shareware that I try out is crippled in any way in the demo)
2) Duly noting that most Win shareware expires and won't run in 30 days or so, whereas most Mac shareware will keep running with some sort of reminder on launch or exit that you should pay the shareware fee (note not all, but most)
3) Duly noting that OS X includes out of the box a good deal of the stuff I find myself hunting and pecking for as Win shareware
4) Why are Win shareware sites so butt ugly? ;)
Please take with a grain of salt - nothing I love more than poking fun at the "OS wars."
Anywho - the intent of Freeware February is to promote primarily those apps that are free and/or open source software. I'm sure we won't have too much trouble coming up with 28 useful and free products.
Also - I beg to differ that Fink is for advanced users while the Gimp is easy to grok for everyday usage. I'd almost say it's the other way around... unless they've changed it significantly in the past few years, but a few years ago, knowing nothing about UNIX, I installed Fink and many X apps with absolutely no trouble, whereas the Gimp I always fire up, hit the learning curve and slowly trickle back to Photoshop...
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