There’s nothing more aggravating than when your favorite utility or application gets broken by a System update, except when that same application stays broken for months—or even years—on end. You have a choice: either wait for the app to finally update or learn to live without it. Unfortunately, neither option is a particularly good one.
When those apps are finally updated, though, it’s sure nice. The last couple of days have been twice as nice with two updates of utilities that seemed to have fallen by the wayside.
AppleJack
AppleJack is a command-line tool designed to be run in Single User Mode when you first start up your mac. It’s great for clearing out cache files and repairing permissions, and the extended install even includes a version of [memtest], allowing you to check your memory for problems. It’s one of those great programs that you usually don’t have to think about until you need it.
Unfortunately, AppleJack had all sorts of problems with Snow Leopard, leaving Macs running the latest version of the OS in the dark until a new version appeared. That changed Monday, when the latest version was finally released with 10.6 compatibility.
You can pick up this great utility at: http://applejack.sourceforge.net/
DasBoot
In early 2007, I wrote a QuickTip about a nifty utility called DasBoot. It was a great little program that allowed you to create a simple, custom emergency repair disk containing your favorite repair and maintenence tools out of just about any bootable device.
When OS X 10.5 came out, support for DasBoot stopped, as did any apparent development. We found out differently on Tuesday, when a 10.5/10.6 version was released.
You can get the latest version of DasBoot from: http://subrosasoft.com/OSXSoftware/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=200&products_id=193
OWC has no affiliation with this software and receives no benefit related to this support (other than a benefit we all share in the continued support of these applications). If you appreciate the function or functionality this software offers, we encourage you to support the authors.
