14 DAY TRIAL // iStat Menus, one of the most useful freeware Mac apps out there, finally has Snow Leopard support. Version 2.0 of the piece of software not only lets you monitor your system right from the menubar, but also adds tons of options and enhancements. Each menu comes with many different display modes, while each features customizable colors, font sizes and widths.
As usual, a lot of effort has been put into developing version 2.0 of iStat Menus (which is why donations are encouraged), beginning with the addition of Mac OS X 10.6 support (requires at least Mac OS X 10.5), and ending with a removed Bluetooth extra. In between, according to Bjango, users will see the following changes and improvements (highlights): - Aqua skin support in all dropdowns. - New menubar layout selectors. - Installer now allows you to install for all users. - Added option for “Preferences...” item on each dropdown. - Added red and purple skins. - Display options for each mode are built into the new layout selector. - New calendar and world clocks. - Added over 20,000 new cities to world clock database. - You can now add custom cities to the world clock database. - Calendar icon can now be placed anywhere. - Calendar supports any day as the first day of the week. - Improved calendar support for countries where weekends are on Thursday and Friday. - Option to group items together for CPU extra. - Improved CPU dropdown display on 16 core systems. - Added pie graph mode to CPU. - Option to limit CPU history graph to 1 item. - Added Console item to CPU and Memory extras. - Added pie graph mode to Disk Usage. - Added disk ejecting and mounting. - You can now have multiple disks or sensors in the menubar. - Added option to use base 10 match for calculating hard drive sizes (same as Finder in 10.6). - Added Disk Utility item to disks extra. - Added new Activity extra for disk activity. - Improved support for 2009 Mac Pros. - Removed Bluetooth extra (most features will be included in a new extra later on).
These are just some of the enhancements available with iStat Menus 2.0 for Leopard and Snow Leopard. To see a complete list of changes, see the full changelog here. Unfortunately for Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) users, iStat Menus 2.0 takes full advantage of frameworks only found in Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6, so it’s not supported. Nevertheless, iStat Menus 1.3 is still available for those who continue to use Apple’s Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.