Der Activitiy Monitor gehört bei mir zu den Default Tools im Dock auf einem Mac. Nicht primär um Programme abzuschießen sondern um mir einen schnellen Einblick in den Zustand meines Macs zu geben.

Dies betrifft die die CPU Verwendung, den Speichergebrauch, Festplattenaktivität, Festplattenverwendung, Netzwerk sowie eben obig bereits erwähnte Prozesse an sich.

Einen Großteil dieser funktionen kann man sicherlich auch mit Programmen wie iStatsMenu, MenuMeters o.ä. erschlagen, nichts desto trotz ist der Activitiy Monitor ganz praktisch.

Hilfreicher wird dieser wenn er als Login Item definiert wird und man zusätzlich das Icon im Dock abwandelt Read the rest of this entry »

Just found the project Sleepwatcher

Quote from the project page:

SleepWatcher 2.0.5 (now compatible with Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard”) is a command line tool (daemon) for Mac OS X that monitors sleep, wakeup and idleness of a Mac. It can be used to execute a Unix command when the Mac or the display of the Mac goes to sleep mode or wakes up or after a given time without user interaction. It also can send the Mac to sleep mode or retrieve the time since last user activity. A StartupItem, sample start and sleep scripts and the source code for sleepwatcher are included in the download. A little bit knowledge of the Unix command line is required to benefit from this software. You can also download a standalone source code archive for SleepWatcher 2.0.5. SleepWatcher 2.0.5 runs with Mac OS X 10.3 to 10.5. For Mac OS X 10.1 to 10.3, there is still SleepWatcher 1.0.1 available. SleepWatcher is published under the GNU General Public License. Awhile ago, it was a Pick of the Week at Mac OS X Hints.

Apple implemented DTrace into 10.5 Leopard which can be used to monitor applications and much more.

Sun as DTrace founder describes DTrace as:

DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for the Solaris Operating Environment. DTrace provides a powerful infrastructure to permit administrators, developers, and service personnel to concisely answer arbitrary questions about the behavior of the operating system and user programs.

Its pretty nice that we have this tool now in 10.5 but like always its not totally perfect=)

Adam Leventhal explains the limitations of Apples DTrace in his blog

Quote:

So Apple is explicitly preventing DTrace from examining or recording data for processes which don’t permit tracing. This is antithetical to the notion of systemic tracing, antithetical to the goals of DTrace, and antithetical to the spirit of open source. I’m sure this was inserted under pressure from ISVs, but that makes the pill no easier to swallow. To say that Apple has crippled DTrace on Mac OS X would be a bit alarmist, but they’ve certainly undermined its efficacy and, in doing do, unintentionally damaged some of its most basic functionality. To users of Mac OS X and of DTrace: Apple has done a service by porting DTrace, but let’s convince them to go one step further and port it properly.

Links:

• My last blog-entry regarding DTrace
• German ::: heise.de about apple and DTrace

If you have XCode Tools / Developer Tools installed on a Mac with more then 1-Core take some minutes and check CPUPalette.app in

/Library/Application Support/HWPrefs/CPUPalette.app

Source: macosxhints.com

It will provide you with CPU usage information, as well as let you disable one or more cores.

Till today i was using MenuMeters and MagiCal to add several functions to my main menu bar in OSX.

Today i realized there is a non-widget version of iStats called iStatsMenu. The application can be found here.

Functions:

• Monitor Temps
• Monitor Fans
• Monitor Memory
• Monitor CPU
• Monitor Network
• Monitor Disks
• Display Date & Time ( the MagiCal part)

A short preview

The configuration is easily done via a System Preferences entry.

I am using it on my both Mac’s and it looks & works as supposed. I can really recommend this tool as MenuMeters alternative.

I noticed a small problem…..the amount of applications on my 2 macs are heavily increasing (about 12 month mac-usage).

The problem is: how can i get rid of all those updates, new releases, downloading, testing without being forced to play admin 24/7.

Maybe i found a solution today called: AppFresh

Short quote about AppFresh:

AppFresh helps you to keep all applications (third-party and Apple), widgets, preference panes and application plugins on your Mac up to date, from one place. It works by checking the excellent iusethis.com for new versions and lets you download and install available updates easily.

Image:

I have noticed that there are several applications with same features….like:

• Widgets
  • App Update
  • Widget Update

…but as i am not even using DashBoard itself….Widgets are not the solution for me.

AppFresh has some nice advantages:

• SnapShot function
• Freeware
• IuseThis integration

If you need for informations about AppFresh take a look into the development blog.

EDIT: if i got it right…the application itself is supposed to get an commercial app, if they have reached a stable level.

Today i found a quite small but powerful application for both PPC and Intel Macs in the web, called “Menumeters”.

According to Versiontracker it is:

MenuMeters is a set of CPU, memory, disk, and network monitoring tools for MacOS X. Although there are numerous other programs which do the same thing, none had quite the feature set I was looking for. Most were windows that sat in a corner or on the desktop, which are inevitably obscured by document windows on a PowerBook’s small screen. Those monitors which used the menubar mostly used the NSStatusItem API, which has the annoying tendency to totally reorder my menubar on every login.

The MenuMeters monitors are true SystemUIServer plugins (also known as Menu Extras). This means they can be reordered using command-drag and remember their positions in the menubar across logins and restarts. MenuMeters is open source freeware released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

After installation you can access the application in your System Preference Panel. After 2-5 minutes it will be completly configured and display several interesting informations in your main panel, at the top of your desktop.
I am using it to display Network-, RAM- and Disk-Usage. CPU would we possible too, but from my point of view the Apple Activity Monitor does this job very well.

Some Links:

• Project page
• Download at Versiontracker