by Frank Petrie phranky@mamugs.com

If you want to control many aspects of OS X, you probably have many apps to handle these functions. Or you call up some sucker like me and have me come over and do it for a bunch of chocolate chip cookies.

But with its extensive collection of tools, Mac Pilot promises that you can dispose of all those apps and use this ONE.

"With its complete feature set and easy to use interface, Mac Pilot is truly your digital companion. Easily run advanced system optimisation scripts, enable hidden options and features, and even erase your tracks!"

Let's go.

THE GOOD

"Drag this file into your Applications folder." The interface is definitely Aqua and very clean. Navigation is very intuitive.

Mac Pilot is a one-key solution to all the under the hood tweaking that you could want to do in X. The pane lists these tabs: Dock, Finder, Mail, Safari, Logs, Network, Tools, Caches & Histories and Other. From within this single pane, you can easily do the same adjustments, repairs, what have you ... that you would normally use at least a half dozen apps to do.

I can repair permissions. Customize the dock. Enable/disable Java and JavaScript in Mail. I can enable tabbed browsing and limit my web history in Safari. I can check just about any log file that my geeky little heart desires. I can check every address that my network can spit out. I can repair permissions, force delete files/folders, run my cron script, force empty the trash, enable/disable journaling, clear my caches and receipt files, place my scrollbars, change window resize speed and on and on and on and on and on.

Darn! My fingers hurt now!!

THE BAD

No preferences as of yet. They're greyed out. But then again, I can't imagine what is left to adjust.

THE UGLY

Darn! My fingers hurt now!!

NUTSHELL

This is interesting in that it's a one trick pony that is comprised of many, many tricks. Granted, some of those apps are freeware. But I consider US $9.95 pretty much freeware, especially when I'm given the convenience of having to launch only one app instead of many.

Buy it and your toolkit will become less cluttered but remain just as powerful.

(c)2003 Frank Petrie, Technologies & Products Specialist The Mid-Atlantic Macintosh User Groups Team (MaMUGs) MaMUGs is a division of The Apple Groups Team (TAGteam). http://www.mamugs.org