brhsaidthis

Agree with neuemodern! It always says I need updates, downloads said updates, tries to install them and then says something along the lines of "Cannot find anything to update..." something like that... When I clearly have CS3 installed, and in the default location. On both my machines. Buggy as anything.

Dropbox is pretty great, it's very seamless, feels tightly integrated with the OS.

WONDERFUL app, I use it for sharing constantly (Adium has file-transfer problems with the AIM protocol). Having a folder on your computer that anyone can read from using a URL is great. Dropping a file onto the sidebar in Finder and copying the link takes 5 seconds, compared to the 1-2 minutes of getting through all the webpages on a hosting service in order to upload even the smallest file. This is one of three programs that I'd ever consider paying for, 8/10 (-2 for not having any kind of preference pane and for having an ugly & unnecessary menu-bar icon)

Excellent app. Combined with fruux it's a really great MobileMe replacement!

@ open0source

If its strictly quick public file sharing you are after, use Papaya: http://osx.iusethis.com/app/papaya#opinions

You don't have to relinquish your files to a 3rd party in order to share them.

This app has promise, but as of right now it feels very unpolished. I have used several "recipe library" apps, including Connoisseur, MacGourmet, and YummySoup!

The importer is more intuitive to use and quicker to adjust than any of the aforementioned apps (excepting YummySoup! which I'd say it ties with). That said, it is peculiar that you can only adjust the size from the lower right corner of any field (as in an OS X window) rather than the 8-handle approach of an image editor. Allowing size adjustment from any side or corner would make the importer a lot more painless - as it stands, you have to move the field and then resize rather than simply resizing in whichever direction you need to. Every time I go to adjust the fields, this feels clumsy and poorly thought out.

The full-screen view definitely has a nicer layout than that of YummySoup! but it seems buggy. When resizing the ingredients pane, if it's shrunken "too small," the list becomes weird, ending (for example) with simply a number 2, when there is no quantity/measure of 2 for any of the ingredients. It also gives no indication (ellipsis, for example) that you have shrunken it "too small." Overall, it is still the best full-screen mode I have seen, and the speech/voice recognition integration is welcome.

Printing is okay, although it is clearly an oversight that printing a recipe with no associated image prints out the "Add an image" placeholder. This is ugly, and a waste of space. Because of this, I'd say that YummySoup! has an edge over Sous Chef, and MacGourmet comes out even further on top because of its cookbook plugin.

Editing yield is seriously broken! At least it has the feature, but the way it works makes it feel like beta software. The problem is this: suppose your recipe is 2 cups of milk, and your yield is 2. You can have SousChef automatically halve the recipe so that the yield is 1... It properly halves 2 cups milk into 1 cup milk. But it leaves the yield field at 2! And it remembers... So next time you go to make the recipe, you only use 1 cup milk, and expect it to serve 2... which it doesn't.

The online feature is alright, although the community is (understandably) small so far. You can't just do a keyword search, you have to search based on ingredients (which works well), recipe name, cuisine, or category. Cuisine and category are very arbitrary ways of defining food - searching "vegetarian" gets me 9 hits for category, and 4 hits for cuisine, with no overlap. YummySoup! suffers similarly, as neither app seems to allow for tagging/searching by tag. YummySoup!'s recipes are organized by category, but this fails too, as there isn't enough overlap (only 7 recipes come up under Main Dish -> Vegetarian, and this is the only vegetarian category... many other veggie dishes exist in other categories, but you have to weed them out). Publishing recipes through SousChef is automatic, rather than the somewhat clumsy email process of YummySoup!

A nice glass of wine goes well with any dinner, and MacGourmet and YummySoup! both offer some form of interface to include wine tasting notes inside the program. SousChef does not. I'd personally rather use Cork'd anyway, but it's still worth noting.

Price - $5 more than MacGourmet, which is $5 more than YummySoup! MacGourmet does have some tempting plugins (nutrition & cookbook) which will jack the price up quickly, but that's just to add functionality that neither of the other programs offers anyway.

SousChef does have some nice features - the pantry system sounds great, although I don't really see how to access what I have/don't have. YummySoup!'s grocery list feature is similar in nature, although it has its clumsy moments. The substitution feature is also nice in theory, but it always seems to be greyed out. I also wonder if this gets updated - having this as part of the "cloud" would be handy.

Aesthetics are anybody's call, but I personally hate the 3-panes-next-to-each-other layout. I don't see how people think that's a better layout for widescreen displays. YummySoup! is more palatable to me in this regard, and MacGourmet allows the user to choose. Other than that, it's easy on the eyes, definitely better looking than MacGourmet. I think (aside from the "widescreen layout") it ties with YummySoup! except that I hate, hate, hate YummySoup!'s icon and can barely bear to see in in my dock next to all the... well, professional-looking icons. It's adorable and all, but it doesn't look the least bit right in the dock.

Overall, I'm going to stick with YummySoup! for now. It's $10 cheaper, and it feels less like a beta product. If I had to choose between SousChef and MacGourmet, I'd probably pick SousChef, even though it could stand to gain some of MacGourmet's functionality (mainly the functionality that is only in MacGourmet through additionally purchased plugins, however). I'm definitely going to keep watching SousChef, in hopes that it matures into something... well, mature.

Hi. I'm the developer for SousChef. Thanks for the criticism (and compliments!). SousChef is a new product and we are working hard to smooth out some of the rough edges, many of which you identify correctly.

In regards to features, grocery lists among other things is something we're working on for a future point release. We'd also like to add Tag searching which we agree is a very important search method. It's also somewhat difficult, although we think we have some ways of working it into our current search algorithm/database.

Lastly, I wanted to address the UI layout issue. If you look at SousChef, user interaction is designed to flow from top left to bottom right; you select a source, then search and select a recipe, edit/view that recipe and finally cook or share it. This is the reason we use a utility bar at the bottom of the recipe viewer instead of having a toolbar. I feel this is a much more natural usage pattern when compared to competitors' UI layouts.

Thanks again for the criticism, we're trying to make SousChef the best of breed cooking software for the Mac.

I've been using ForkLift since it was first in beta. Has been the only file manager that I've actually paid for. That said, the UI was always a bit of a mess (although functional). The new beta, however, is amazing. The UI is as beautiful as it is functional, Leopard frameworks are being harnessed (QuickLook in ForkLift was just what I needed) and it's just showing more and more promise as time goes on. ForkLift is definitely a worthy file manager.

To me, as silly as it may sound, an application's icon is everything. That's why I'd like to say, I think the original icon was really much more beautiful. This one looks too dark and somewhat weird.

the best finder-replacement imo

Depending on the task at hand I am using ForkLift more and more but it still lacks the punch of my FTP app of choice, Yummy, for critical tasks. Looking forward to seeing how this one develops.

It always amazes me that people use Quicksilver to control iTunes. I love Quicksilver, and I tried using it to control iTunes - it's terrible! The plug-in seems to just be a pile of applescripts, and is an ungodly slow way to do things in iTunes. When someone is trying to talk to me, and I hit pause, I want it to pause now. Coversutra is quite quick at this. I couldn't justify the price before, but now that v2 has searching, I'll rarely even have to use the iTunes interface. That makes it worth the price to me. That said, the searching UI could use some improvements... IMO, it should behave more like spotlight, where enter plays the top hit. Also there should be a way to play album in iTunes instead of song (from the search dropdown) without using the mouse. It really is lovely software though - both visually and functionally.

Is Coversutra 2 going to be available to 1.2 owners?

Whats up with the hating? Coversutra is a nicely designed app, thats pretty low price and does what it says.

Is Coversutra 2 going to be available to 1.2 owners?

Yes version 2.0 is a free upgrade for existing customers. You should have received your new serial by mail.

I bought this, received a code for 2.0 but as I am running OSX 10.4 I need to use the older 1.2 version. Whilst I am able to download this version my serial number does not work and the author has not responded to the multiple support emails I have sent so sadly I cannot use this software, even though I have paid for it.

I bought this, received a code for 2.0 but as I am running OSX 10.4 I need to use the older 1.2 version. Whilst I am able to download this version my serial number does not work and the author has not responded to the multiple support emails I have sent so sadly I cannot use this software, even though I have paid for it.

May you please download version 1.2.1 from my website (http://coversutra.com/get/1.2/). This version accepts both the 1.x and the new 2.x serial numbers.

I'm sorry that you didn't received any reply from me. I always reply to support stuff like this so I guess either your mail to me or my e-mail to you got lost.

Thanks very much! I'll be sure to give that a go.

Thanks. Just tried that and all is well.

I've been reading about CoverSutra for awhile now, but Synergy + Growl made it unecessary for me.

I purchased the MacHeist bundle which included CoverSutra, and now that I've given it a try, I'm very happy with it. Good job!

This is one of those applications that once you've used it, you'll love it. But its not a necessity.

I tried it before but I didn't like its appearance, but now it seems to have gotten a new skin, the little heart icon and the search "pop up" you get when you click it is excellent