iPulse And iClip. iGreat iUtilities For iMac, Or Any Mac.

You can tell how well Mac OS X is doing in the market place (marketshare notwithstanding) by the number of developers and non-Apple applications. And how useful those applications are and how they complement Mac OS X.

iClip and iPulse are simply two of many that make Mac users more productive. Useful eye candy is Alexis says. I say they’re nifty and worthy every nickel.

First, take a look at the number of applications available for Mac OS X Tiger (and Panther). There are thousands. My Mac has less than two hundred, and most of those fall into one of the so-called ‘shareware’ categories.

Second, note that most are really true applications for the Mac, and most of those are utilities in the ‘try then buy’ vein of applications (I fear ‘shareware’s days are numbered).

Third, so it is with iClip and iPulse. Two excellent, affordable, useful Mac applications from two different Mac developers.

iClip is downright addictive. If you use cut and paste on your Mac, you know what a pain it is to cut, paste, then forget to cut something different (or ‘copy’ as that works the same), and then paste again.

If you cut or copy and paste often during the day, then you’re probably pasting many of the same images, text, etc., and have to go back, find the text or image, and paste it again.

iClip is one of those handy utilities that should be built in to Mac OS X but isn’t. It creates a number of ‘cut and paste’ bins where you can store those frequently used items so you don’t have to track them down when you’re ready to paste.

Text, pictures, URLs, sounds, movies, images, and more. Drag and drop or paste into a clipping ‘bin’ and they’re all right there, ready to paste when you’re ready to paste.

If you’re a pre-Mac OS X user (remember? Mac OS 7.x, 8.x, 9.x?) then you might remember the old Mac OS X ‘Scrapbook.’ iClip bills itself as what the Scrapbook should have been. They’re right.

There’s no scrapbook in Mac OS X so no easy way to hold and find all those pieces of text, images, etc., that you need to paste in a hurry.

iClip does that. It floats above other windows so it’s always handy. Collapse orhide when you want. Add a new bin to add more items. Delete a bin that’s empty or no longer used.

In true Mac fashion, iClip is $20 well spent. Oh, one more thing. Yes, there are other multi-level clipboards, and some are free, and very useful. None are anything like iClip.

It’s not eye candy, it’s useful. Click Here for all the details and the download link.

For the geekier among us who require a little eye candy to go along with useful, there’s iPulse.

If you’re like me, then you don’t have a Mac with 8 gigs of RAM, 14 300 gig hard drives, and quad CPUs. I’ve got an aging PowerBook with a gig of RAM, a smaller than necessary hard drive, and a slower-than-new CPU which sometimes feels as though it’s pedal driven.

That means system monitoring is a must. I sometimes run out of RAM and things slow down as the hard drive gets used. A few times, I’ve even maxed out the hard drive and had to dump files.

iPulse is one of those always available Mac utilities that monitors your Mac. Yes, MenuMeters does some of the same functionality for free, but the eye candy aspect, and feature list just isn’t the same.

iPuluse does the basic CPU activity, system load, and in and out network activity. For my PowerBook it also show battery and wireless strength, motherboard temperature, and disk usage.

So what?, you ask? It’s the eye candy. iPulse is a graphic circle utility on your screen; a little larger than a quarter, and it continually displays all those monitoring goodies I’ve come so used to checking.

Roll the mouse pointer over the iPulse graphic on your screen, and up pops a small window with all the information in even more detail. Think of it as $12.95 eye candy that’s actually very useful.

iPulse is mature, works well, takes up little screen real estate, and displays more Mac information than you or your Mac really need.

Love the eye candy? Well, there’s little iPulse ‘jackets’ that change the look and feel (think ‘skins’). Click Here for the details, download link for ‘try before you buy.’

Alexis Kayhill
Nice eye candy but I prefer Menu Meters. Free is good.

Jack D. Miller
Quiz time, Carol. Is there anything in iPulse that can’t be shown in Terminal with a few windows open? For free?

Bambi Hambi
I like iPulse and use it to show off Mac OS X’s more mainstream eye candy applications. It takes up a chunk of screen on a 12” iBook or PowerBook, but is a none issue on the 17-inch or larger screen Macs.

Tera Patricks
This may be the prettiest of many ways to skin the ‘monitor your Mac’ cat.