You Don't Have to Leave It Behind:
Some traditional Mac wares that have been ported to
OS X
by Alan Zisman (c) 2002
First published in Low End
Mac.com,
February 11, 2002, X-Wares series
When I first installed the OS X public beta in the
fall of 2000, it
felt like watching The
Wizard of Oz for the first time and suddenly, like Dorothy,
emerging
into a new
land, where everything glowed in Technicolour -- and everything
was very different.
With the release version the following spring,
it was apparent
that Apple had
listened to many of the criticisms made about the public beta.
The release version,
while still different from the classic Mac OS, was much more
Mac-like than pre-release
versions. The Apple Menu was back in the left-hand corner and
actually did things. There were drive icons on the desktop by default.
The Finder worked in ways that were more comfortable for long-time Mac
users.
Still, there's more that can be done to get the
best of OS X's
new features
without tossing out everything that worked well in previous Mac
environments. In
last week's article, Alan's
Favorite Things, I wrote about several freeware and
shareware enhancements for OS X, adding (among other things)
WindowShades
and the Application Switcher to the new interface. (Reader Tod
Abbott wrote to
recommend ASM
as a free Application Switcher enhancement.)
Besides making OS X a little more (dare I say)
Mac-like, it may
also be a relief to
know that increasing numbers of favourite Mac applications are
showing up in OS
X-native versions. This is true for many of the big companies'
products (Microsoft
Office, most of Corel's graphics products, some Adobe and
Macromedia
products),
but it is also the case for many of my favourite shareware and
freeware
applications.
Some of my long-time favourites that have
reappeared as OS X-native:
GraphicConverter.
The
title
is more-modest sounding than this $30 German
shareware gem deserves. Far more than a mere file conversion
program, this
powerhouse does most of what I need when working with graphics.
It slices, it
dices.... Well, it resizes, changes colour depth, converts
between
a huge of
number of PC and Mac file formats, can be used with scanners,
and can be used
with filters. It lacks Photoshop-like paint tools, but for
prepping
graphics for print
or the Web, it does everything I need faster (and much cheaper)
than Photoshop.
This Carbonized version runs under both OS X and OS 9.x. As with
other GC
updates, the OS X version is free for anyone who has registered
an older version.
Eudora Pro.
OS X comes with Apple's Mail application, but I would rather stick
with Eudora, which I've been using since I first started on the
Internet around
1994 or so. Like several recent versions, Eudora Pro 5.1 comes
in several
flavours, all from a single installation version. Users can
choose
a full-featured
free version with ads (but no spyware), a lite (and still free)
version without ads,
or register for the paid (US $40) version with all the features
and no ads. The Pro
versions include support for multiple email accounts and
powerful,
but
easy-to-use, filters, among many other features. Like
GraphicConverter,
the new
Carbonized version runs both as a native OS X application, and
under OS 9 as
well, but there's a hitch.
By default, Eudora (running under OS 9) wants to
store mail (etc)
in a Eudora
Folder inside a Documents folder. Under OS X, it wants to use
the Documents
folder that's inside each user's named folder inside OS X's Users
folder. As a
result, on my system at least, I get different sets of saved
mail and settings
when I run Eudora under OS 9 and OS X. (Yes, there's probably
a work-around for
this -- and if you know what it is, please let me know!)
Glider
Pro
demo.
Games are also coming out in native OS X versions. A mere
237 KB download updates the cavemen in cars game from Pangea,
for example,
while the Mac-classic no-frills Klondike
Solitaire was an early addition to the
OS X download list. I first came across Casady and Greene's
addictive
Glider in a
black and white version for compact Macs. Over time, it gained
colour while still
keeping its basic premise: Users maneuver a paper airplane
through
a series of
rooms in a house. You can buy the full product for US$20, but
the downloadable
demo is free and lots of fun in its own right, even without
killing
anyone.
All of these, and lots of other programs, can be
downloaded from Apple's
Mac
OS
X download
page. OS X users have an instant link hard-wired into the
non-customizable blue Apple Menu: click on "Get Mac OS software?"
and explore.
(If you want a little utility to allow you to customize that
blue Apple Menu, check
out Unsanity's
FruitMenu -- a bargain at $7.)
You can have OS X and the best shareware of the
Mac's past, too.
