Filed under: OS, Software, Odds and ends, Bad Apple, Developer, iPhone, App Store, Snow Leopard
All is right with the world; iStat Menus 2.0 is here
The world was looking bleak and dreary after Snow Leopard arrived last week, for my little menu bar friend, iStat Menus for Mac, was incompatible with the new version of Mac OS X.This morning, however, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, fluffy kittens are playing again (see image at right for proof), and all is right with the world! iStat Menus 2.0 has arrived, and now my CPU monitor, calendar, and clock are back in the menu bar where they're supposed to be. The new Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard compatible version is running just fine, and less than a week of darkness filled the hearts of all of those who love iStat Menus. You can download it for free, although a donation is requested.
While iStat's developer, iSlayer, has resolved this disturbance in The Force, there's still a dark and evil presence in the universe. Apple, taking on the role of Emperor Palpatine with gusto, recently forced all iPhone developers to remove or retool apps that use a Free Memory function to display memory usage and/or clear out wired or inactive memory. As a result, iStat for iPhone [App Store] version 1.1 was released with the Free Memory function removed. Bjango (the iPhone arm of iSlayer) has kindly posted instructions for how to use version 1.0 to keep the function intact, but we're all wondering why Apple decided to axe all apps that performed this useful function.
Since this latest kerfuffle has forced Bjango to release a feature-limited version of iStat for iPhone, the company has reduced the price to US$1.99. There's no word from Apple on why they chose to kill all of the Free Memory apps. When you're the Emperor, you don't have to give any reasons for stomping on kittens.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sam said 12:19PM on 9-03-2009
I was panicking! I found myself looking for my stats, longing for my stats - My stats are back!
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emil said 12:31PM on 9-03-2009
If only there was a way to ignore updates on the iPhone; I'm usually fanatical about keeping red update badges cleared off my screen, now I have to accept a perpetual "1" as meaning "0". This app saves so much time; without it, I'd probably have to reboot my phone 2 or 3 times a day to render my system responsive again. WTF, Apple, clean up your memory management issues!
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Jim said 12:49PM on 9-03-2009
Wow, really? I have to reboot my iPhone 2 or 3 times a *year*. Why kind of apps are you running?
7egend said 11:59PM on 9-03-2009
I too would like to know what apps you are running. My phone is jailbroken with resource eating themes enabled and sbsettings and not once have I needed to use it's free up memory function and I play games read books and use all sorts of other useless apps ony phone.
As for iStats itself I'm going to give it another go but my previous experience has been it's made shut down and boot up times slower which irks me. Not to mention I don't truly run enough to actually bog my macs down. Maybe it's infused with some snow leopard goodness or something.
emil said 9:44AM on 9-10-2009
Nothing out of the ordinary; I think when I open Google Latitude, things tend to get bad pretty quickly, so maybe it's related to Safari. My iPhone isn't jailbroken.
John Laur said 1:43PM on 9-03-2009
With OpenCL coming to the plate it would be awful handy if they added a GPU monitor to the menubar. Currently the only app that does this is atMonitor (that I can find anyway)
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mal said 12:47PM on 9-03-2009
kudos for islayer, i'll be donating! Big fat minuspoint for tuaw for referencing the undeserving kidmovie.
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Robert said 12:49PM on 9-03-2009
One neat thing I found in iStat Menus is the availability to toggle disk space figures between base 2 and base 10 formats. IDK if that's always been there (since I'm just starting to use it), but it is a good thing.
If only that option was extended to the Finder! ;-)
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Victor said 12:57PM on 9-03-2009
Bout time they released this bad boy! Although admittedly I did download the beta version. It sucks they didnt just allow a public beta, but what you gonna do. Because of my previous indiscretion downloading the beta, I figured I would throw a few bucks at them as well. Love me some istat menus!
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Brooklynguy said 1:04PM on 9-03-2009
I lost all my iStat Menu settings after upgrading. Now I'm rebuilding the settings.
Does anyone know where the setting for Fan Speeds is? It seems to have disappeared from the preferences panels. I relied on this 100 times a day with the pre-2.0 version and really need it back for my MacBook Pro.
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Mathew said 2:07PM on 9-03-2009
My menubar won't be so lonely looking now!
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FoO said 1:08PM on 9-03-2009
Menumeters has also updated with a Snow Leopard compatible build: http://tinyurl.com/8d5vn Takes up a little less room and gives you more information if you can handle the more utilitarian and less fru-fru look of iStat.
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tevetorbes said 2:32PM on 9-03-2009
Mac users are nothing if not "fru-fru". Take your crumb-bum uggo proggie to some other platform, buster!
;-)
Brooklynguy said 1:27PM on 9-03-2009
Apparently you have to download the file "SensorsModule2.0.bundle", copy it to /Library/Application Support/iStat local/, log out and back in.
Still can't find that setting that combines the display of both fans into one rpm sensor on the Menu Bar, though. I wonder if they took that out.
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dagamer43 said 1:29PM on 9-03-2009
Growl still isn't fully 64-bit, and other developers are waiting for the update before releasing their 64-bit apps.
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iGO said 3:23PM on 9-03-2009
I installed the 64Bit Beta og Growl (third on the list, under the link below) supporting Snow Leopard.
So far working like a charm for me.
http://code.google.com/p/growl/downloads/list
Josh C said 2:54PM on 9-03-2009
I was running version 1.3 in Leopard and after updating to its wintry counterpart, was still running 1.3 with no problems.
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Ryan said 3:00PM on 9-03-2009
finally! my menubar was so naked.
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fevio said 4:05PM on 9-03-2009
I definitely love the new option to have a white drop-down menu! It finally matches the rest of the OS. Also, the date/time display updates are pretty slick. I think I'll use it instead of the default.
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Alex Blauvelt said 6:06PM on 9-03-2009
BEWARE! I think they got hacked. Anyone who downloaded 2.0 .... Check your activity monitor for a DashboardClient that is taking up 99% CPU.
I installed it, and found a dashboardclient process that wouldn't go away no matter what I did.
There's some malware here. Its a tricky little bugger too.
It seems to revolve around: /System/Library/Extensions.mkext you delete it, and it comes back. I've disabled my dashboard for now to prevent the invisible dashboard widget from doing whatever it is doing. Getting rid of the kernel extension is going to be a much harder battle.
-Alex
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