A slow night, the city was quiet, not much for a crime fighting defender of justice such as yours truely to do – so I figured I’d surf the net, My usual patrol of Mac news sites, xlr8yourmac and macminute kept me amused, educated and up-to-date, but it was when I casually sauntered up to version tracker that my night took an interesting turn!
There’s a new challenger for ‘must have’ preference pane in town my friends and I think that it’s chances are pretty darn good!
“What the hell are you dribbling on about Elroy?” I hear you ask. Read on, I reply, unencumbered by parentheses or correct grammar, and all will be revealed!
Billed as ” a Preference pane which allows you to manage items which have been added to Mac OS X in the /Library folder.”, Diablotin is nothing but short changed by that brief description.
With the recent (official) passing of OS 9 we lost not just an operating system – but a system of operating! Years of well honed skills, like the ability to track an extension conflict with a single reboot or disable extensions and control panels with a single finger at start up are now things of the past – put out to pasture. Along with such skills are some old friends too – in this particular instance I’m talking about the ‘Extensions manager’.
Well, mourn the loss of the ‘EM’ no longer – Sure, I know that you are thinking “but OSX doesn’t have extensions!” and you’d be correct – but Diablotin brings a similar functionality to OS X that ‘EM’ bought to OS 9. The ability to switch off (and on) system plug-ins and additions such as Screen Savers, Start up items and preference panes. Internet, iTunes and Quicktime Plug-ins are also controlled the simple toggle of a check box – But for mine, where Diablotin has bought me the greatest joy is it’s ability to turn on and off installed fonts.
You can get your hands on a copy of Diablotin (v1.2.3) from either Version tracker or from creator, Stéphane Sudre’s site.
And thusly, my friends, the tale of how yet another ‘must have’ addition to OS X made it’s way into my utility belt ends – Away!
- Elroy