Filed under: Software
Bokeh locks down your idle apps
I'll admit that when I first heard of the new utility from Elgebar Studios, Bokeh, my first thought was of Kenan Thompson's SNL exclamation ("Bokay?") and not the Japanese photography term (the control of out-of-focus areas) that presumably inspired the tool's name. Bokeh is a $17 utility from Bokeh allows you to put applications into suspended animation and free up additional processing power for your crunchiest tasks (3D rendering, Photoshop filters, etc.) when you need it most. You can select a single app for focus, or suspend applications one at a time. It's not the sort of thing everyone would need but in a production environment where time is money, it might be worth the cash. You can download a Bokeh demo directly from the site.
Update: Ollie from Elgebar sent a quick note to clarify the benefits of Bokeh: When you select one app to focus on, Bokeh actually blurs the background and helps you isolate the task at hand. It's also highly scriptable, so you could include an automatic 'freezeout' before starting a rendering pass or other CPU-intensive task.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Mikek said 11:51AM on 5-09-2008
If you want your applications frozen why not just use Windows. :-)
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Evan said 2:40PM on 5-09-2008
Zzzzzzz-Zing!
Tom said 12:07PM on 5-09-2008
Or you can use the free Freeze Frame.
http://freeze-frame.en.softonic.com/mac
There's another app that does this, but I forgot what it was.
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Kolby said 2:11PM on 5-09-2008
second freeze frame, super nice developer, works great, and it is free (unless you want the focus feature then its a 14 bucks, which I paid for).
heres a direct link to the developers website http://www.elgebar.com/freezeframe.html
only thing that lets me watch hulu on my aging my awesome 20" imac g4
Michael Rose said 2:42PM on 5-09-2008
Kolby, note that Freeze Frame is from the same developers as Bokeh -- I think it's the same product now.
aaalexxx said 5:24AM on 5-10-2008
http://www.elgebar.com/freezeframe.html:
Freeze Frame 2.0 is Bokeh 1.0. You will be redirected in a few seconds.
;)
gar said 12:08PM on 5-09-2008
Freeze Frame is another option - I've had pretty good luck with it when I'm on a slow internet connection and want to make sure no apps are taking up any of the pipe.
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helfire said 12:10PM on 5-09-2008
It's amazing how much money people can make wrapping command line utilities that have been around for 30 years.
Look at iFreeMem, runs the command 'purge' for $21 bux!
This app for $17 will send halts and resumes to your apps.
I need to dig through old commands and charge money to run them!
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Ollie Wagner said 12:15PM on 5-09-2008
Bokeh is not just *simply* a way to freeze a single application.
The focus feature lets you pause ALL apps but ONE in order to focus the CPU allocation. It does so with ease for any user, and I think that's a lot more than you could claim about CLI use.
Hell, even OS X is based around putting a nice UI on unix commands :)
helfire said 12:27PM on 5-09-2008
Ollie Wagner: So find all open apps, iterate over them and pause all but what you want. I wish I had time to learn xcode/etc I'd just rewrite these simple apps and save people some $$. (could write a bash script to do this in 10 minutes, but it's not as "cool")
I have nothing against shareware, just do something unique and useful (eg: not just a loop'd unix command)
Evan said 2:46PM on 5-09-2008
When it all comes down to it, pretty much all applications are fancy faces for command lines. Hell, the GUI is a fancy face for command line, are you still working in DOS because it makes you feel cool? Do you do everything in terminal?
Well good for you, but for the majority of computer users, they want something to work easy and nicely without typing a load of gibberish in black and white to get around their computer.
helfire said 8:26PM on 5-09-2008
Think ya missed the point there Evan, but thanks.
Tom said 3:28AM on 5-10-2008
Yeah, when I was looking up the alternative program (never found the one I was looking for) I found that you can use the command line to do the same thing.
Of course, someone's charging for Split & Concat, which actually works worse than learning the command line (hint: it's really bad at wildcards)
ecobore said 12:27PM on 5-09-2008
Actually what is needed is an automatic App quitter!
I have sold so many people on Macs, but many of them (even quite experienced users,) are not used to quitting apps and simply close the window, leaving a huge number of apps running in the background. Mostly they never restart their machines either. I see this every time I visit their houses and look at their macs. Each time I remind them to quit apps, and always they forget! An app quitter that quits all but selected apps when no windows are open after a user definable time, would be an excellent utility.
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Jim said 6:31PM on 5-09-2008
The point you raise is one thing that Windows has over Mac (IMO). OSX is a great OS that is well thought out in so many areas but that one and I'm guessing it's still like this due to compatibility reasons and to appease most longtime users.
As this utility I don't think such a utility really makes much of a difference to those users who don't realize their apps are still open. It's just a mindset along with a certain amount of computer know-how.
Wysiwyg said 10:06AM on 5-10-2008
ecobore, there's an app named QuitApp++ that quits programs after a user-defined time. I think you'll want to check it out:
http://mactips-lib.net/m/software/qa/en/main.html
TranceMist said 2:01PM on 5-09-2008
LOL. Someone put a GUI on ^Z
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Simon Arch said 3:36PM on 5-09-2008
Looks nice, BUT it doesn't seem to support dual monitors. I just tried it out and it only blurs the main screen. The other screen remains unblurred (though of course the app is paused).
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Ollie Wagner said 11:10AM on 5-11-2008
Hi. Check out Version 1.0.1. We've added dual display support as well
as have fixed a couple other bugs, and added Italian localization!
http://bokehapp.com
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Jason said 8:21PM on 5-11-2008
for any Quicksilver fans out there, there is a plugin available that will let you do this for free ... suspend/resume/quit/force quit and maybe a few other actions you can run on apps, can't remember for sure
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