Two great apps that I’ve found recently are iSlayer’s iStat programs.
These little apps are basically a window into your Mac’s inner workings.
The iStat Pro is a dashboard widget that displays all sorts of good information about how your Mac is running. Anything from RAM usage, to Drive stats, to temperature of components, to fan speed are all at your disposal. The units are dragable to any most any order you’d like. Also the skin has a few different colors so you can change to taste.
The iStat Menus contain the exact same information but in your OS X menubar. The advantage over iStat Pro is the always available visual readouts. (Yes, that one click to open the dashboard makes a difference!) You can customize the individual icons to contain more or less visual info and you can (by the order in which you activate them) dictate their position in the menubar. Also, the colors can be tweaked.
They work well together too. I use the menus for “critical” – or at least what I call critical – info. RAM, drives, network usage, and CPU usage are all just a glance away. I can then open up the widget for other info – like temps, fan speed, uptime, and power stats – that I don’t need in front of me.
In any case, these apps are small and fairly light, and can help troubleshoot if you need some quick info. (Example: Why is my fan always running! Oh! It’s some malfunctioning program! I’ll fix that!) Hopefully, you can find good uses for these two programs!
Do you have any apps to recommend?
