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Infinite Loop / The Apple Ecosystem

Reviewing random Mac apps yields random results

There are so many great FOSS and shareware programs out there no one will ever …

The great thing about FOSS (Free Open Source Software), shareware and freeware is that people can download and try it themselves. Yeah, if they find it. There are so many great FOSS and shareware programs out there no one will ever find if someone doesn't spotlight them. So, this particular Sunday, I've been wandering the ether looking for great new FOSS/shareware/freeware. Here's what I found today.

Solitude Solitaire

Wiz Solitaire is just fugly

Back in college, I dated the suite-mate of a guy named Eric, who just happened to be putting himself through CMU writing shareware. Remember Montana? Don't go that far back? Perhaps you remember Eric's Ultimate Solitaire. It shipped with Mac OS 8 (or was it Mac OS 9?). At any rate, Eric's Ultimate Solitaire is now owned by Delta Tao, and written by some guy named Robert. Remind me sometime to tell you the story of how Eric got his internship at Delta Tao. It's amusing.

So, today, in my search for a shareware alternative to feed my solitaire jones, I came upon Wiz Solitaire. Wiz Solitaire has some 20 different games and offers unlimited undo. However, its claim to fame is that you can use custom card decks. There are a small variety of third party decks for pervy Hobbit fanciers, heavy metal rockers, and Dale Earnhardt fans. This is a game that you really want to like, even if it's just because you have an Orlando Bloom fetish.

Unfortunately, the look and feel of the game is just not as evolved as the decks. Time warp to 1987! Wiz Solitaire is just ungainly. The layouts don't fit in the window and the window itself is a flat, matte gray. Ugh! This isn't Aqua software pretty; it's System 6.0 ugly—software for the design-impaired by the design-impaired.

If you absolutely must play solitaire, Wiz Solitaire suffices, but that's all. I expect more from production/stable software. Wiz Solitaire needs a major interface overhaul. And €15 ($20.82 at today's exchange rate) for this? You'd be better off ponying up $25 for Eric's Ultimate Solitaire X from Delta Tao.

Beep! Beep! Beeep!

gDisk is a cool, but unstable app, bears watching

The first rule of backing up your machine is to do it. The second rule is to store a back up off site. Keeping your backups on your desk is just asking for trouble. In 1997, I came this close to losing a decade's worth of data because I left the disks on my desk right next to my monitor... which caught fire and nearly burned my house down. Suffice it to say, the idea of off-site back up appeals to me. So gDisk was intriguing.

The premise behind gDisk is to put the umpty-scratch gigs of storage that come with your GMail account to good use. Wow. Now that is just what I need: convenient off-site back up that's free with a program that's FOSS. Excellent!

So I downloaded the program, used it to log into GMail, and got rid of the nagware screen only to slam into a critical bug. If you've never used gDisk before, you don't have any labels created (not sure what labels are, gDisk doesn't have documentation or help). So you get a dialog asking you if you want to create some. Click "Yes," and you get the dialog again and again until gDisk crashes. The key is to click "No" and then to create a label manually. After that, gDisk works pretty well. It supports drag and drop uploading and downloading and is all around friendly on the eyes.

Okay, so at version 0.6.1 gDisk is alpha (or at best beta) software. We should expect some instability, make some allowances. While it's not easy to find, you can report bugs at the project's home page. gDisk bears some watching. When it grows up, it might just be a neat little piece of software.

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