Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Freeware, Leopard
Leopard killed these freeware apps?
Here's an interesting list of applications supposedly killed by Leopard. There's no question that there's a huge amount of functionality in Leopard that was taken care of in Tiger by third-party apps (and this is just a list of freeware-- commenters pointed out last week that Jisho was made almost obsolete by the Japanese dictionary included with Leopard), but I'm not so sure this list is all it promises to be. No amount of tweaking to Spotlight will ever replace Quicksilver, and as good as iChat has gotten, I still like Adium for its easy customization.And apps like CenterStage, who used to have a one goal (an open source Front Row replacement), have now been able to spread out and become more their own program instead of worrying about Apple's missing functionality.
As always, the best app for the job depends on both the job and the person doing it, so there are probably more than a few places where Leopard stepped up to fill functionality that users used to trust third-party software for. But it's a stretch at least to say Leopard killed these apps-- replication of one function now built into the OS doesn't mean all the apps other functions are useless.
[Via Fake Steve]
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
MetPhotoDotNet said 3:20PM on 12-13-2007
Not an easy one for Apple to win.
All OS manufactures need to add more functionality with every release and at the same time wish to encourage third party application developers to build new applications that use those and possibly enhance those features. These new apps help sell the OS and in the case of Apple the hardware.
How good do would TextEdit have to be before you have no need to buy iWork? Clearly a ridiculous example but the same principle applies to all sorts of apps and OS features.
Mark
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Edward said 3:20PM on 12-13-2007
Not to mention path snagger. Anyone have a way of grabbing paths any more ... without installing pathfinder?
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Rhywun said 11:52AM on 12-14-2007
> Anyone have a way of grabbing paths any more
http://www.pure-mac.com/cmm.html#filepathtoclip
Still works in Leopard.
brian said 3:22PM on 12-13-2007
CenterStage predates FrontRow. CS came out right when the Mac mini was introduced. Unfortunately, it has been in development forever and has never had a basic, stable, usable release. (Forgive me if they have improved recently; I gave up even looking at them after years of producing NOTHING usable--all the while porking up the list of what they wanted to be. Here's an idea--release something SIMPLE that WORKS, THEN start adding features.) MediaCentral started out sweet but it quickly went from free to non-free and got WAY bloated. (Skype integration--WTF?!?)
As for freeware apps in general, I think Apple should a) incorporate as many as possible and b) reward the developers. I love Saft to death. Safari has gained some of its features but not the one I depend on the most (session restore.) Apple should have written the Saft author a giant Ed McMahon-style check, cleaned it up a bit, and rolled it into Safari *years* ago.
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Nick said 5:04PM on 12-13-2007
You can session restore with safari by going to History -> Reopen All windows from last session. Yea, it's manual so I understand it's not quite as convenient. Also you can manually save your current tabs as one bookmark.
Aaron Davies said 3:24PM on 12-13-2007
Whatever happened to Apple buying third-party features? Who here remembers SuperClock? Hell, Font/DA Mover and Chooser were third-party apps in 1984.
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Macroy said 4:15PM on 12-13-2007
Isn't that what happened with CoverFlow?
Simon Arch said 1:14PM on 12-15-2007
Chooser was a 3rd party app? I think you're confusing it with Switcher. Chooser was always part of the system.
brian said 3:27PM on 12-13-2007
Edward--it's not the same at all, but 'OpenTerminalHere' might be useful.
http://www.entropy.ch/software/applescript/welcome.html
Still works in 10.5. Also, you can drag a file into Terminal and it'll spit out the path.
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Chris said 4:37PM on 12-13-2007
Jisho? You want to compare Jisho to the dictionary that Apple put in Dictionary.app? Don't make me laugh. I am a professional Japanese to English translator. Jisho used Jim Breen's (laudable, but falls short in some areas) EDict files as the basis of the dictionary program, but many of the entries are more red herring than useful for professional work. Further, Dictionary.app integrates throughout your system, in context menus and the dictionary panel. It also features one-click jump (or less) from an Japanese-English lookup to searching on multi-language wikipedia, an English thesaurus to help you get a better word, as well as a Japanese dictionary with examples, definitions, and contrasting uses for people that can read the language. Oh, and did I mention that the JE dictionary, and the JJ dictionary are both commercial products, endorsed by major publishers with professional editing done to all of the included entries?
But wait, there's more! Dictionary.app now allows you to develop your own plugins, so I can get all of those features, plus add a plugin for the EDict file Jisho is based on, as well as plugins for even (more expensive) more professional references than the Shogakukan dictionaries Apple included.
Apple didn't kill Jisho. It answered my prayers by adding pro-level dictionary support to the system wide facilities making Dictionary.app have the potential to become the single best reference tool on any platform. Well... it still has a way to go to catch Jamming (http://dicwizard.jp/jamming/top.php) simply because Jamming already has support for GG5 (if you can afford the data files), but that only takes time for a developer to release an epwing plugin for Dictionary.app…
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Rhywun said 11:55AM on 12-14-2007
Do you know if there is a Chinese dictionary for Dictionary.app? And do you have to be running the OS in that language in order to access these dictionaries?
Chris said 5:54PM on 12-14-2007
Re: Chinese Dictionary
I'm not aware of one, but that could be added. If you know of a good online one, it is easy to make a dictionary plugin that will search the website for you. Other dictionaries/multilingual wikipedia are available in the preferences.
Danny said 4:42PM on 12-13-2007
I'm surprised no-one's mentioned VirtueDesktops yet.
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Andrew said 5:04PM on 12-13-2007
I'm surprised you didn't read the article....
"VirtueDesktops: I had high hopes for VirtueDesktops and suffered through some of its buggier days for the benefit of multiple desktops. Then once the word ‘Spaces’ came out of Steve Job’s mouth, VirtueDesktops’ developer almost immediately threw in the towel. Thankfully, I have been very pleased with Apple’s Spaces, except for a few bugs and annoyances, that is."
Rhywun said 11:56AM on 12-14-2007
I'm thrilled with Spaces. VirtueDesktops was a good try but it crashed so much I couldn't use it.
DrWho said 6:14PM on 12-13-2007
The best advice is don't create an app that addresses what is perceived to be a deficiency in the os and expect to get revenue from it forever.
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smoke_tetsu said 6:25PM on 12-13-2007
I don't believe iChat has killed Adium yet. It's very subjective of him to say so just because he doesn't need or want any of the other features it has that iChat doesn't that doesn't mean everyone doesn't. Adium is still a lot more customizable and works with a lot more message services than iChat does. That said iChat does have a couple of things over Adium but Adium isn't sitting still and it's only a matter of time. Adium doesn't just replicate iChat it goes above and beyond the call of duty though with stuff like OTR messaging.
Also these are supposed to be freeware apps so revenue is irrelevant here.
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geochick said 7:00PM on 12-13-2007
I would disagree with the addition of Journler to the list of apps and Firefox still has loads of plug-ins that Safari does not have although I mainly use Firefox to test websites... BTW FF 3.0 Beta 1 is out... I tend to agree with Mike in that "the best app for the job depends on both the job and the person doing it." All these apps except for maybe VirtueDesktops still have their particular usefulness.
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umijin said 11:05PM on 12-13-2007
Puhleeze... The premise is misleading. You present it like Leopard prevents these apps from working - like they are incompatible. But that isn`t really what it says. And I would debate that MacOS 10.5x has really obsoleted most of the apps listed. Stacks? Eyecandy. Spaces? Awful interface. It sounds like dictionary already hosed Jisho. But GooDict (free) did that as well. Nothing has replaced Journler. If you don't use Mail, then its notes feature doesn't do jack for you.
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Jay Tyler said 3:40AM on 12-14-2007
Let's not forget that CenterStage is awful software
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