I’ve been using for a couple of years now, all the while marveling that it was donationware. It was such a handy and well-developed bit of software that I couldn’t figure out why the developers weren’t charging for it.As of this week, that has changed. The software was updated, turning it into an even more useful application than before, and the developers are finally selling it — $10 right now on an introductory sale.
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For us European users, that works out to 7.50 euros.It is so worth it.iStat Menus allows you to monitor various aspects of your computer’s activities via small icons in the menu bar. Two of them — Date/Time and Battery — replace OS X icons, so you don’t lose any menu bar real estate on those.
Dotnet add package EyeSoft.Accounting.Italian.Istat -version 3.0.7333.34942 For projects that support PackageReference, copy this XML node into the project file to reference the package.
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And they do so much more than the Apple default versions. For instance, Apple’s Date/Time doesn’t do this:(continued after the jump)I can add any cities I want to the World Clock section, allowing me to see at a glance not only what time it is in those locations, but also their local sun and moon movements. This so tickles my inner geek that I added my own location just for easy comparison. (For the record, today the sun rose 32 minutes later here than it will in Eugene, Oregon, and will set five minutes later.) And I love having the moon phases so easily accessible.Apple’s Date/Time also doesn’t allow you to edit the clock readout so that it reads exactly the way you’d like it to.Besides the clock and battery, iStat Menus will monitor CPU activity, disk usage, disk activity, network stats and speed (both upload and download), memory usage, and various sensors including temperatures, current, power, and fan speeds. Users can even control the fan speeds, with different rules for plugged in vs. Battery power. And of course, all of these options are just that, options.
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You choose which activities you want to monitor. Currently I’m monitoring my network, CPU activity, and memory usage, in addition to battery usage and time/date. Discounting those last two, which would be in my menu bar anyway, here’s how much real estate I’m using for the other three:Not only do you choose the activities, but you also choose exactly how you want your menu bar readout to appear. It’s all up to you. For instance, I could use less real estate than you see in the image above, except that I prefer to have both a numerical and graphic readout of my memory usage.You can even customize the colors used in every aspect of both the menu bar icons and the dropdown menus. As I said in the post title, it’s candy for geeks.
Warning: hours can pass while you play with settings.Another very handy aspect of this software is the way it allows you to see at a glance what your resource hogs are. Both the CPU activity and the memory usage dropdown menus will list the five biggest resource users. Here is my current memory usage readout:Right now Safari is the biggest memory user, but 124 MB is not a big deal for that program. I do note, however, that Dropbox is using 82 MB and yet I won’t be using that software until my nightly online backup. So I can quickly pick up 82 MB of free memory by quitting a program I’d forgotten was even running in the background.This at-a-glance readout came in very handy recently, when I experienced a major computer slowdown. My menu bar icon indicated that my memory usage was maxed out, and when I activated the pulldown menu, I saw that Dropbox had suddenly developed a profound memory leak and was using a whopping 500 MB.
I quit the program and my computer instantly returned to normal. (And yes, you can do this in Activity Monitor as well, but iStat Menus makes it so simple and quick. Also note that if you want, you can launch Activity Monitor directly from the iStat dropdown menu.)iStat Menus has become one of the rare third-party programs that I rate as “Can No Longer Be Happy Without It.” It was an unbelievable deal when it was free, and it’s still a great deal at $10. You know, when I grow up and am working in the states, I’m by GOD getting a Mac. I had one that died and I’ve been in mourning since.This iStat just made me drool. You have no idea how often in the last month alone I’ve said, “I have to get a Mac.I’d kill for an iBook.
” and so forth. I have an Acer NETbook.
It refuses to allow a restore or anthing, tells me to see the admin. I AM the admin.
But until I get the CD attachment, not much I can do.The years on a Mac spoiled me. No viruses, no blue screens of death, no screaming at your computer “Die, you bastard!” or “Oh GOd, don’t die NOW!”. Never knew there where hot corners on a Mac. But no, that’s not the problem. The activation corners aren’t activated. Thanks for thinking along. No worries, it doesn’t happen often.
I just thought that iStat might help too understand what happens within the system just before it blacks out to a complete stop. But up till now, after a while the Mac functions as if nothing has happened and there never was a loss of data. For worse case scenario the HD is backed-up every hour to an external drive. So we just accept it as a iMac having a mind of it’s own. Sometimes the best view is from the outside, and an American expatriate living in Portugal is, in many ways, outside of both nations.
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January 2023
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