Comments on: OS X : Unplugged(.prefpane)

By: Nicki Brøchner

Nicki Brøchner — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:48:39 +0000

@Josh you where right ..thanks :D

By: Josh

Josh — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 04:34:28 +0000

@Nicki: It looks like iPhonesque.

By: ex2bot

ex2bot — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 03:19:29 +0000

[Caution: Somewhat childish rant] Click Next to continue.

Does anyone else think these Growl notifications tend to end up being a prettier version of Windows speech bubbles? Usually unnecessary and annoying.

Examples from WinXP (imagine a yellow speech bubble):

“Take a tour of Windows XP.”
“Hiding your inactive icons.”
“A cable is unplugged.”
(pre-sp2) “Blah blah blah Passport blah.”

In Win Explorer: something like, “You shouldn’t mess with these files. Click here to . . . ”

In IE 7: “You’ve opened a new tab!” Congrats! You’re now special.

I read somewhere where Windows was described as excessively chatty. IMO that’s one of the best features of OS X, it stays out of your way.

I know some of my fellow geeks have very good reasons for running Growl. But I can’t help but feel that some people use it because they miss Windows’ goofy banter.

Search doggie: “What kind of files are you looking for? It’s very important that I know. You can’t just type in what you’re looking for. That would require too few steps. Click Next to continue.

“This message is now finished. Click here if you would like to configure your message options.”

Click Finish to end this message

___ Check here to display the next message.

___ Check here to add a shortcut to your Desktop.

(Finish)

Bot (and my apologies :-)

By: Aditi

Aditi — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 00:08:38 +0000

This looks really great, but MiniBattery widget also offers the same functionality as long as you have the widget running in Dashboard.

By: Sara

Sara — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 12:07:46 +0000

What I’d like is a function that does something about those low battery features, like shutting down while there’s still enough juice in the battery to sustain it until I realize I’ve left it unplugged. There’s nothing worse than coming home from work and realizing that I’ve accidentally left the laptop on and unplugged, and now it’s totally drained the battery and I’ve lost my work.

By: Karsten

Karsten — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:08:19 +0000

well for me the top icon was always there but i didn’t look at it. same for the power plug, it#s glowing, but i never realize when it stops glowing. when i developed unplugged i used my powerbook and it could be unplugged just by some power fluctuation, so i really didn’t notice it.

UnPlugged also notifies every couple of percent of power loss. i have it on 5% here, the default is 10% i think. these are special notifications that happen separately from the unplugged notifications.

Karsten

By: Garrett

Garrett — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:01:55 +0000

I don’t know, seems like too much effort. Isn’t that basically what the battery icon at the top of the screen does?

By: hamad

hamad — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:00:10 +0000

chris richards was right: hardware growler already dose this with a note that also gives you current charge. the bonus is that you get the same notes for wifi, network and other system events that usually do not have a dedicated and easily visible indicator.

By: Nicki Brøchner

Nicki Brøchner — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:32:10 +0000

I was wondering how do you get Growl to look like that in the screen shoot I have looked trough all of the standard options and no one looks like that ?? :D

By: Chris Richards

Chris Richards — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 14:20:16 +0000

HardwareGrowler already provides this functionality with percentages. It has the bonus that it also shows you many other hardware events, such as when drives are mounted/unmounted, wireless networks are acquired/lost, etc.

By: Opal Tribble

Opal Tribble — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:58:48 +0000

I’ve never heard of it, but I’m definitely going to try it out, thanks!

At times, my MacBook Pro has become unplugged without me noticing.

By: Karsten

Karsten — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:42:19 +0000

Thanks a lot for this very nice review!