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iStat Menus Out Now! - Exclusive Review

forums.mactalk.com.au — The iSlayer.com team has been consistently in the top 10 widget downloads on Apple's Widget Download section, not only with iStat, but with their seminal I Love Lamp, and have had their praises sung by many around the Internet. Now, the iStat widget evolves onto your menu bar, giving you real-time feedback right at the top of your screen.

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  • adcat, on 10/11/2007, -30/+5Because, like, hitting the F12 button to see the iStat widget was *such* a drag...
    • kazumaSHELL, on 10/11/2007, -0/+21Some people don't use the dashboard to save memory. You also may want to be able to check something at all times, without going into the dashboard.

    • Ninjab3ar, on 10/11/2007, -8/+10I don't understand how people "don't use the dashboard to save memory". They are neglecting themselves from a very awesome feature. I have many widgets that show me anything from my gmail inbox to a doppler radar of my area (pretty useful), and theyre only a push of a button away.

      Besides, if I need the extra ram it's using up, I just go to the terminal and type "killall Dock" to turn off the dashboard (until the next time you hit f12 [or whatever hotkey you use]). You can also go to the activity monitor and quit the dock process.
    • miniboss, on 10/11/2007, -4/+5Anyone have an opinion about this vs Menu Meters?
    • Photar, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2@miniboss Menu meters has a graph view for network iStat doesn't. It should be in 1.1 though.
    • incubowski, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3Hitting F12 might be the preferred method again shortly, considering this might look like crap on a transparent menubar.
    • nbeighley, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4@kazumashell > 'Some people don't use the dashboard to save memory'

      Everyone complains about memory usage in dashboard! Is it really possible that this app uses absolutely no memory at all???
    • icoms, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Direct link http://www.islayer.com/blog/?p=203
    • turpenine, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1@incubusowski, it does look like crap in leopard. No need to wonder.
  • tcn33, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24So much better than MenuMeters.
    • Photar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5No graph view for network though.
    • autodata, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4Meh. MenuMeters has more detailed graphs and is less cartoony. iStat's only real advantage seems to be the fan/temp monitoring and the non-standard black background (if you consider that a plus)
    • Sferrero, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2MenuMeters tends to be inaccurate for me when it comes to memory usage. I don't know why but it always reports less memory being used then Activity Monitor...
    • autodata, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1The only difference between the memory in Activity Monitor and MenuMeters is that inactive memory (memory that was used by recently closed programs) is included in "Used" in Activity Monitor while in MenuMeters it's included with "Free". This information is detailed in the MenuMeters chart. Note that iStat counts inactive memory as "Free" just like MenuMeters and, therefore, provides the exact same Used/Free numbers as MenuMeters, although iStat doesn't provide a chart with as much detail as the pie chart in MenuMeters.
    • SkydiveMike, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3So much not; and MenuMeters has been available for years
  • jarebearkb, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8i love it already, i can get rid of the default time and have a nice calendar also...love the app!
  • seros22, on 10/11/2007, -6/+19i like big butts and i cannot lie
  • ecbtln, on 10/11/2007, -3/+14one word, masterpiece!
    wow
    • insomniac8400, on 10/11/2007, -13/+3But apple didn't make it, TRAITOR!
  • corcarpemei, on 10/11/2007, -0/+15I love it and it's fixed/replaced just about everything that I hate about the standard OS X menubar...but where's the battery monitor?
  • marcedwards, on 10/11/2007, -0/+26Battery monitor will be coming soon. Possibly in version 1.1 or 1.2.

    We want to make sure it's perfect (try and include UPS support etc).
  • alexish, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3FINALLY!!! I have been looking fowrard to this release for a very long time! :D
  • Stricker, on 10/11/2007, -7/+1iMake original titles!
  • NoNamesLeft, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8Brilliant, at last I can have a nice little realtime network activity monitor in the menu bar that's free and doesn't suck! Dugg
  • Iwantawii, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Col that it shows page in/outs. Might help diagnose why my MBP has suddenly begun running much more slowly. What kind of values are you guys getting for page ins/outs during day to day use?

  • DonCarcharo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6For those of you who don't know, you can hold down command (apple) and drag an istat menu item to rearrange them. This is helpful for getting the date and time back where it should be. It probably says this somewhere when you're setting it up but I never read directions and I know I'm not alone. :)
    • marcedwards, on 10/11/2007, -0/+6You can also apple-drag items out of the menubar if you no longer want them there (both the Apple default ones, iStat menus and other items).
  • halik, on 10/11/2007, -1/+4Awesome widget, but can you please make it not display annoying update dialog box every 2 days? There's this thing called 'release cycle' and it makes users happy, because their application doesn't nag 'em for update on daily basis....
    • marcedwards, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2This is the initial release. There hasn't been any updates yet (unless you were part of the beta team... and if you were then you should expect a few updates!).
    • halik, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4I'm talking about the actual dashboard widget, not the menu istat.
  • marcedwards, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Here's all our releases: http://islayer.com/blog/?cat=12

    iStat pro 4.1: June 14th, 2007
    iStat pro 4.01: April 23rd, 2007 (silent release... ie. didn't trigger an update)
    iStat pro 4.0: April 21st, 2007
    iStat pro 3.4: March 12th, 2007
    iStat pro 3.3: January 15th, 2007

    Certainly not every 2 days. We like to respond quickly to bugs and develop these things fast. If you'd prefer to not be notified, then please turn off the update checking on the back of the widget.
    • halik, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2Oh hehe, I didn't notice there was an option to do that... :)
      Keep up the good work though, I've been using iStat for over a year to monitor my G5's temps (fans are jacked up, need to calibrate)
  • mwhatley, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3iStat is friggin' awesome, but I'd rather keep it in my dashboard then clutter up my menu bar.
  • ookxtreme, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1COOL!!..... i would have loved to run this on my ole' titanium!! you could fry an egg on how hot that used to get!! i would have loved to see the temp sensors on that one!!!

    THANX & CHEERS TO YOU GUYS!!!
  • rschluss, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Just curious...

    Does anybody know if the iStat menu bar is more memory efficient than the dashboard widget?
    I recently disabled a lot of the "fluff" widgets I was using (but couldn't give up iStats) and saw a definite performance increase. If the menu bar version uses less memory, I would happily use it.
    • DirtySnachez, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1564
    • marcedwards, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1It's harder to measure... but we believe they use less resources than the widgets under normal circumstances.
  • iFox, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2OH I WISH I COULD DELETE MY COMMENTS! *looks at Digg*
  • Fantomfreq, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2This is freaking fantastic. Works great and looks FAR better than MenuMeters.
  • jasonpoon, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Love it!
    but I wonder is the "Fans" only functional in Intel Mac? Also the Temp, I never see the numbers change unless I restart my Mac. (I notice that in iStat Pro widget too.)
  • directive0, on 10/11/2007, -1/+2Temp works great for core 2 duo too, XRG and menumonitors was no help there. Sweet!
  • timtimes, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1Outside the knowledge of how hot my processor is, or how fast the fans are spinning, could somebody explain to me why I would want to have this piece of software? I'm curious because I love neat gadgets/apps, but I've owned my Mac-mini for over a year now without any problems. It doesn't have the fastest processor, and relies on a laptop internal drive (slowish). Nonetheless it gets the job done without me knowing any of the aforementioned statistics. The dam thing just works. So now I'm leaning towards being a Mac fanboy and yet I can't figure out for the life of me what makes this such an attractive application to so many of you. HELP?

    Enjoy.
    • Fortuna2, on 10/11/2007, -0/+0By chance, I'd just downloaded iStat Menus and installed the HD and CPU info on the menu bar when I began a burn of 88 TIFF images from Adobe Lightroom. This took an hour and a half. Lightroom doesn't provide a progress monitor box for DVD burning, and without the iStat CPU figures dancing away (I have a dual-800 G4) I would have been chewing my fingers to the bone worrying what was going on - if anything! That said, the installation did not go well. iStat did not install as a Widget, but simply floated into prime position in Dashboard, so that every time I opened Dashboard I got iStat. I finally trashed it out of frustration, but the useful data remains on the menu bar. Can anyone explain how to put it on the Widget bar?
  • timtimes, on 10/11/2007, -3/+1Found this at the forum pointed to by this post:
    --------------
    You have always been able to display the date in the menu bar? It is just not very obvious.

    Go to System Preferences > Date and Time > Open International >Format > Times - Customise

    After the time format enter a date format eg: 21/06/07, make sure 'Show' is set to medium and apply this setting and presto! date in the menu bar.

    Also see for pics: http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/06/11/...os-x-menu-bar/

    ------------------

    That is something I DO find useful but it is already built into the O/S.

    Enjoy.
  • timwillox, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1This is the kind of thing that makes me think hard about hurting the credit card for a Macbook Pro. Good work

  • totorototoro, on 10/11/2007, -0/+2I love the iStat dashboard widget..but this menu version just clutters up the menu bar/desktop-the beauty of Dashboard (to me, YMMV) is that it keeps stuff like that out of sight til you need it. Fortunately, iSlayer provides both options :)
  • WiCk3D, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1great!

    much better than menu meters

    thanks islayer
  • test5477, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1yeah love this version looks great..

    also fist version to have my fan speed working, pb g4.
  • lakai, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I would be great if there are indicator lights for the network and hard drive access.. menumeters has this.
    • marcedwards, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1There's 2 different modes for viewing disk access in iStat menus ;)
  • Ossuary, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Two things where I think MenuMeters still excels are:
    1. MenuMeters seems much more compact in the menu bar - The spacing between modules and even some of the text (I am looking at you CPU percentages!) seems to be much larger than needed. It would be nice to be able to shrink or enlarge the spacing and text as needed.
    2. The CPU meters in iStat Menus don't change color to reflect different User, System, and Nice loads, but just gives the one solid chunk.

    Very nice for a first release though. I am sure they can tweak it a bit with time.
  • myplague, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1this is great, I can finally get rid of the istat widget since I rather have this info on my menu bar.
  • haugenhaus, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1i'm a fan, the guys (and gals likely) at iSlayer rock!!!
  • timothyallan, on 10/11/2007, -1/+1I'm buying a macbook JUST to use this app, awesome!
  • Sharpened, on 10/10/2007, -0/+0Nice one. I have been using this for ages now, right throughout the beta releases and they have been superb, great job!
  •  

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