Mailsmith, an iBook, and Glider Pro Walk Into a Bar

Friday, 1 August 2003

Neuburg on Mailsmith 2.0

Matt Neuburg writes a glowing, spot-on review of Mailsmith 2.0 for TidBITS:

The fact is, 2.0 is indeed much better; the problematic aspects of 1.5 are now a thing of the past. The folks at Bare Bones have done a painstaking and thoroughly professional job of revising the program. Menu items and interface elements have been rearranged in a more sensible fashion, threading has been tweaked, just about everything has been sped way up, and bugs have been ruthlessly tracked down and squashed. The result is that Mailsmith 2.0 feels peppy, clean, crisp, and totally reliable. Where I suffered through Mailsmith 1.5’s drawbacks to take advantage of its special strengths, 2.0 is in every respect a delight to use.

iBook Screen Enhancer

When connected to an external display, iBooks are limited to mirroring, whereas PowerBooks can drive an external display in addition to their built-in screens. But recent iBooks are equipped with powerful video cards that are capable of handling multiple displays.

The German computer magazine c’t has released a tiny AppleSript application that lets you turn on genuine external display support in recent iBooks. Open it in your script editor to see how it works. Very clever.

Update: This page has full details on the iBook display patch, including a list of exactly which iBook models are eligible — and warnings about applying the patch to older iBooks. (Thanks to Sven-S. Porst, who sent the link via email.)

Glider Pro

John Calhoun has released Glider Pro, his long-standing and most-excellent procrastination tool, as freeware:

Since Casady & Greene Inc. went bankrupt, the rights to the game Glider have reverted to me, the author. To that end, Glider PRO and Glider 4.0 are now free and I am giving them away for free download on this web page.