Like a lot of folks, I updated my Mac to run Panther this weekend. It was mostly uneventful, though I did have to upgrade Kung-Tunes in order to keep posting the most recently played song to this blog. Priorities you know. (Ok I did have to re-install emacs, and a few other minor system-ish things, but overall not much worth noting.)
One tool I have grown quite fond of, Desktop Manager, doesn’t work using Mac OS 10.3, but that turns out to be a good thing. DM is a good, free, simple yet functional program, and I grew used to it within hours of installing it a few weeks ago. It is, however, produced by one person, under a limited development schedule, and this shows in its limited feature set.
Although a number of useful new features are planned for future releases, the fact is the app doesn’t currently work under my new OS and may not gain the extra functionality (sticky apps, ability to position apps via their icon, etc) that I would find useful, for quite some time.
And so, the good news I mentioned. I’ve installed Codetek’s VirtualDesktop and haven’t looked back. Fast, unobtrusive, and quite functional. At 30$ the program’s a bit pricey for what it does, but it performs so well I’ve no complaints.
Speaking of virtual desktop managers, long a staple in unix environments, less so under windows, the first one I used was part of HP’s dashboard, a windows 3.1 addon that provided virtual desktops as well as other system control panel features.
Great comments guys. Peter FDA