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You are here: MacNN Forums > Software - Troubleshooting and Discussion > macOS > Unsanity Haxies...are they unsafe?

Unsanity Haxies...are they unsafe?
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Too Much Coffee Woman
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Oct 2, 2002, 02:15 PM
 
I was looking for something like shadowkiller and somebody pointed me to www.unsanity.com

are their hacks safe to install? will it mess up my OSX?

i'm interested in windowshade and fruit menu too.
     
barbarian
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Oct 2, 2002, 02:20 PM
 
I've had zero problems with window shade or fruit menu.

I have had some problems with Clear Dock, but that's probably because I have a weird monitor setup.
     
slava
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Oct 2, 2002, 02:33 PM
 
Originally posted by Too Much Coffee Woman:
I was looking for something like shadowkiller and somebody pointed me to www.unsanity.com

are their hacks safe to install? will it mess up my OSX?

i'm interested in windowshade and fruit menu too.
System stability is the top priority for us, so we try to keep our haxies as bug-free as possible, and release updates if any problem is found pretty fast (you can ask other forum regulars =).

Oh and thanks for your interest!
// slava@unsanity
     
littlegreenspud
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Oct 2, 2002, 02:53 PM
 
I've had no problems using fruitmenu. It is excellent!
     
Too Much Coffee Woman  (op)
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Oct 2, 2002, 03:03 PM
 
Originally posted by slava:


System stability is the top priority for us, so we try to keep our haxies as bug-free as possible, and release updates if any problem is found pretty fast (you can ask other forum regulars =).

Oh and thanks for your interest!


i congratulate you on making hacks that are not good...but should have been in OSX itself!

i am new to OSX and just have questions about hacks in general. thats why i ask, thats all.
     
wil
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Oct 2, 2002, 03:29 PM
 
Originally posted by Too Much Coffee Woman:




i congratulate you on making hacks that are not good...but should have been in OSX itself!

i am new to OSX and just have questions about hacks in general. thats why i ask, thats all.
you mean "not just good..." right?
     
Too Much Coffee Woman  (op)
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Oct 2, 2002, 03:42 PM
 
yeah...sorry professor,
     
Millennium
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Oct 2, 2002, 03:54 PM
 
Haxies use a mechanism which is similar to OS9's Extensions. So there is about as much potential for damage as with an Extension, but a programmer can take steps to make it safer.

In short, a well-programmed Haxie doesn't undermine system stability to any major degree. However, a badly-programmed (or worse, malicious) one could do severe damage.
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Schmidlapper
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Oct 2, 2002, 04:28 PM
 
Originally posted by Too Much Coffee Woman:
I was looking for something like shadowkiller and somebody pointed me to www.unsanity.com

are their hacks safe to install? will it mess up my OSX?

i'm interested in windowshade and fruit menu too.
I use Fruitmenu, Windowshade and Cleardock and find them excellent. The first two give me back a few OS9 functions that OSX should have and cleardock just looks cool. I did use shadowkiller also with no problems but removed it because I found it a little hard to discern windows on top of windows without a border w/shadow. I too looked for compelling evidence of problems but found none. Once in awhile I see messages that mention not using haxies due to stability but have not found any problems directly attributed to unsanities products.
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BatmanPPC
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Oct 2, 2002, 04:54 PM
 
Originally posted by slava:


System stability is the top priority for us, so we try to keep our haxies as bug-free as possible, and release updates if any problem is found pretty fast (you can ask other forum regulars =).

Oh and thanks for your interest!
Hey slava:

Love the haxies. Keep up the good work.

Have any thoughts on a haxie that'll allow the Menubar/System font (or size) to be changed? I currently have the submenus in fruit menu set to Small Font and I like how it looks.
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jules
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Oct 2, 2002, 05:53 PM
 
Fruitmenu is EXCELLENT.
     
Apple Pro Underwear
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Oct 2, 2002, 07:00 PM
 
If Slava can make these great haxies....

Why the hell hasn't Apple OSX staff just built them the hell into OSX?

Windowshade in particular and cleardock could be in dock options


GET ON IT APPLE STAFF!
     
stew
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Oct 2, 2002, 07:37 PM
 
Originally posted by Millennium:
Haxies use a mechanism which is similar to OS9's Extensions.
Which mechanism? I have would love to write some system tools myself, but Apple did not make any UI server or window server related APIs public.
I know Unsanity is licencing APE, but I can't afford spending money on that right now. Good work anyway...WindowShadeX is excellent (I love sublte shadows) and there are absolutely no stability problems whatsoever.


Stink different.
     
Mack
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Oct 2, 2002, 07:57 PM
 
No problems with FruitMenu, WindowShade or Xounds here.
     
smeger
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Oct 2, 2002, 07:57 PM
 
Originally posted by stew:

Which mechanism? I have would love to write some system tools myself, but Apple did not make any UI server or window server related APIs public.
I know Unsanity is licencing APE, but I can't afford spending money on that right now. Good work anyway...WindowShadeX is excellent (I love sublte shadows) and there are absolutely no stability problems whatsoever.
An APE license is free if the product that you create with it is free. That might be an impetus.

As far as the mechanism goes, it is similar to extension patching in that it allows a developer to alter functionality of something in the operating system. But there's an important difference - under OS 9, if an extension went insane, it would take down the whole operating system. An APE is limited to the memory space of the app that it's loaded into, so that's all it can kill.

Of course, if the APE sucks, it'll kill every program that's launched... But it still won't kill the operating system. You just won't care since you won't be able to launch anything
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stew
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Oct 2, 2002, 08:45 PM
 
Originally posted by smeger:
An APE license is free if the product that you create with it is free. That might be an impetus.
Might be? It is! They could have gotten me sooner if the had written that on their homepage. I don't plan to charge $5 for every 50 line hack.


Stink different.
     
nuckin futs
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Oct 2, 2002, 09:03 PM
 
Originally posted by slava:


System stability is the top priority for us, so we try to keep our haxies as bug-free as possible, and release updates if any problem is found pretty fast (you can ask other forum regulars =).

Oh and thanks for your interest!
not to sound like a troll, but...
what are your plans when Apple does start building those functionalities in OS X (just like watson). will you act like the watson author and throw a tantrum and cry foul or will you try to make your hacks better than apple's?
just curious.
     
chabig
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Oct 2, 2002, 09:10 PM
 
I loved Windowshade X until it interfered with the registration mechanism of one of my shareware apps. So obviously it does have the potential to interfere with other software. Since system stability is important to me, I have chosen to remove all Haxies from my own machine.

Chris
     
Terri
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Oct 2, 2002, 09:13 PM
 
Originally posted by nuckin futs:

what are your plans when Apple does start building those functionalities in OS X (just like watson). will you act like the watson author and throw a tantrum and cry foul
Apple has always done this. I remember having to buy Now Utilities to be able to customize my Apple menu and also buying the shareware Windowshade back before system 7.5.

I don't remember other software authors getting all bent out of shape when Apple starting including these features.

Personally I want to know what is happening with Labels?

I would also like to see tabbed folders return.
     
chris v
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Oct 2, 2002, 09:21 PM
 
I seem to have ever-so-slightly longer app launch times with Fruit Menu enabled than with it disabled, but it's worth the small price. None of their Haxies have ever really caused any crashes or instability.

CV

When a true genius appears in the world you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him. -- Jonathan Swift.
     
mrtew
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Oct 2, 2002, 09:32 PM
 
I love all the Haxies and have never had any problems except for one little bug with Xounds where the windowmoving sound will get stuck and just keep going and going and going and going and going, but to be fair it could be another program that is causing the problem and it is just manifested in the sounds. In fact I think it may be PTHPasteboard because I've recently found that clicking on it's menuitem will finally stop the sound.

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Millennium
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Oct 2, 2002, 09:38 PM
 
Originally posted by Terri:
Apple has always done this. I remember having to buy Now Utilities to be able to customize my Apple menu and also buying the shareware Windowshade back before system 7.5.

I don't remember other software authors getting all bent out of shape when Apple starting including these features.
If I recall correctly, Apple outright purchased WindowShade from its original author. As for the Apple Menu, it was possible to customize it all the way back to System 7; if I remember right, that was before Now Utilities came out. What Now Utilities did was allow you to make the Apple menu hierarchical; there were several shareware utilities which allowed it as well. IIRC, Apple purchased one of these for System 7.5, when they made the Apple menu hierarchical (but NowMenus, as well as BeHierarchic, stayed on because they offered more options and were rumored to be more stable).

They did not, of course, purchase Watson. Why? I don't claim to know; it probably would have been cheaper than paying their own programmers to clone it. Which is one of the reasons I don't think it was a rip-off of Watson; had Apple truly intended to co-opt Watson into the OS it would have been cheaper to just buy it.
Personally I want to know what is happening with Labels?
As I understand it, something like Labels is in the works. I don't think it will be entirely the same as the relic from System 7, but same concept and probably similar UI.
I would also like to see tabbed folders return.
This is something I'd like to see, only I'd like to see it possible to stick the tabs to the sides of the screen as well as the bottom. As it stands now, sticking them to only the bottom makes little sense; the Dock would get in the way.

And yes, I know this is possible with Drop Drawers. To be honest, I just use the Dock myself. But I have tabs set up on all my families' machines (I haven't had time to walk them through a switch yet). I stick aliases to their favorite apps in the tabs and then set the tabs to Button view -another thing I really miss- and they just love it.
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Terri
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Oct 2, 2002, 09:54 PM
 
Originally posted by Millennium:
I stick aliases to their favorite apps in the tabs and then set the tabs to Button view -another thing I really miss- and they just love i

I do the same thing on my main machine which still runs 9. It's really nice when I'm doing web work I need to open a document that was created in a different program then what I want to open it with, just drag and drop in on whatever I want to open it with.
     
Deal
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Oct 2, 2002, 11:28 PM
 
All of my problems (and they are few) were resolved with keeping current on the haxie version.

I use windowshadex and clear dock. I am glad WindowShadeX is cheap. Eventually I regret paying $30 for Watson, although I still use it because it does a couple things Sherlock can't.

Haxies are good. Good advice is to let others use them first. And keep up to date with versions.
     
Gul Banana
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Oct 2, 2002, 11:50 PM
 
Originally posted by stew:

Might be? It is! They could have gotten me sooner if the had written that on their homepage. I don't plan to charge $5 for every 50 line hack.
Just be prepared for confusion... the documentation for the APE SDK, while technically adequate, does make it rather difficult to get started writing modules. It's frustrating to spend hours trying to get something to work and then realise that it's a limitation which wasn't in the docs... and I've got an uneasy feeling that I'm still not using the dyld stuff right, but can't be sure:/
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philzilla
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Oct 10, 2002, 02:57 PM
 
Originally posted by mrtew:
...except for one little bug with Xounds where the windowmoving sound will get stuck and just keep going and going and going and going and going
they're aware of this bug, so i would imagine it's being squashed as we speak
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Terri
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Oct 10, 2002, 03:01 PM
 
Labels is out. I've already installed it and it works great.
     
CharlesS
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Oct 10, 2002, 03:55 PM
 
Originally posted by Millennium:
This is something I'd like to see, only I'd like to see it possible to stick the tabs to the sides of the screen as well as the bottom. As it stands now, sticking them to only the bottom makes little sense; the Dock would get in the way.

And yes, I know this is possible with Drop Drawers. To be honest, I just use the Dock myself. But I have tabs set up on all my families' machines (I haven't had time to walk them through a switch yet). I stick aliases to their favorite apps in the tabs and then set the tabs to Button view -another thing I really miss- and they just love it.
Drop Drawers doesn't have a monopoly on this anymore. The latest version of DragThing has added the ability to make drawers as well. I find it to be more attractive looking and less buggy than Drop Drawers by far. In addition, it has a bunch of nice touches that DD doesn't have - for example, it has an option to collapse its drawers whenever it is not in the foreground, so if you click on the Desktop after clicking open a drawer, it will spring shut. DD can't do that - you have to collapse the drawers yourself after you open them if you decide you don't want to click an item in them.

Of course, DragThing isn't perfect - it lacks the ability to auto-sort items, and resizing the windows is definitely a feature that needs work. However, even though I've only been trying it for a few days, I already am starting to like it better than Drop Drawers.

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Ookla
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Oct 10, 2002, 03:58 PM
 
Originally posted by chabig:
I loved Windowshade X until it interfered with the registration mechanism of one of my shareware apps. So obviously it does have the potential to interfere with other software. Since system stability is important to me, I have chosen to remove all Haxies from my own machine.

Chris
I had a similar thing happen with Xounds, it interfered with Gene Construction Kit, a DNA sequence manipulation program. Somehow having the Xounds .plist in my preferences file forced GCK to unexpectedly quit. The fix? I added GCK to Xounds exclude list and everything worked fine after that. You might try the same with WindowShadeX and your conflicting shareware program. Otherwise, I echo everyone's comments about how well Unasanity's haxies work. They have added valuable functionality that is missing in OSX.
     
barbarian
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Oct 10, 2002, 04:06 PM
 
Labels seems to work perfectly. Really a grade A hack (just like the other unsanity hacks). Seems totally integrated and works perfectly.

I'd love to read a discussion of how the hack was accomplished.

Slava if you are around, you are my personal hero.

Suggestion for new haxies (we can never get enough!):

-a way to change and control the system font and the font used on the desktop
     
Terri
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Oct 10, 2002, 04:17 PM
 
Originally posted by barbarian:
Suggestion for new haxies (we can never get enough!):
Would it be possible to write something that allowed a window to be grabbed anywhere, not juts the title bar?

Back in the System 7 days we had the same problem as what we have now in System 10. You couldn't grab a window by anything but the title bar and windows would get stuck because their saved state was on a larger monitor or something. There was a extension that allowed you to grab a window anywhere by holding down a key combo. Something like this would be great for System 10.
     
gorickey
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Oct 10, 2002, 04:26 PM
 
Suggestion for a new haxie:

A new sub-system "Logging" feature for iChat, the current implementation is frigin terrible! We need a logging system like Adium that can be searchable, view date/time, etc. etc....

     
kenm75232
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Oct 10, 2002, 07:16 PM
 
Originally posted by Mack:
No problems with FruitMenu, WindowShade or Xounds here.
I use all three of these also and have had zero problems. Thank you Unsanity!!!
     
Terri
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Oct 10, 2002, 07:56 PM
 
First thing I'm doing is using Labels to mark which ones of my 17 gigs and always growing MP3 collection has been backed up. Then next month anything without a label I will know needs to be backed up.

I should be switching the machine that I do design on to X by the end of the year. Thanks to Unsanity software it will be a smooth move.
     
OverclockedHomoSapien
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Oct 11, 2002, 12:49 AM
 
No problems with Clear Dock, other than that it makes the icons difficult to see on many desktop pics. Went back to Apple's default because it's the nicest balance of transparency.

Tried the sounds for OS X, but they aren't very good. I only used the sounds in OS 9 as a novelty, and the novelty wears off REAL fast in OS X. Maybe it's because Aqua is so bitchin' already.
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VValdo
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Oct 11, 2002, 01:15 AM
 
My Haxie request is simple. Can the dock be configured so that a double-click launches items rather than a single click...?

Why?

I'm SICK of reaching for a scrollbar or arrow at the end of a window and accidentally launching the Classic Environment because I was off by a pixel or two.

Thanks.
     
barbarian
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Oct 11, 2002, 03:08 AM
 
I've been labeling like mad for the last several hours. God I missed this feature (it was something I used extensively in 9 for file organization). After windowshade which is my favorite 3rd party enhancemnt on OS X, this is a close second.

Second haxie suggestion (for which I would gladly pay): Adobe Type Reunion functionality. OS X's font management is a mess and none of the major font enable/disable apps address the problem of grouping font families.
     
WJMoore
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Oct 11, 2002, 07:01 AM
 
APE - What does it stand for and where's the info. I searched the Apple main site and ADC without success.

Wesley
     
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Oct 11, 2002, 07:19 AM
 
Originally posted by WJMoore:
APE - What does it stand for and where's the info. I searched the Apple main site and ADC without success.
APE stands for "Application Enhancer" (aka Hacking). You don't find any info about it at the ADC site because Apple doesn't encourage hacking applications.

If you really want to find out how this works, my guess would be that you'd have to look at how the debugger works (probably Darwin documentation).
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lookmark
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Oct 11, 2002, 11:47 AM
 
Originally posted by VValdo:
Why?

I'm SICK of reaching for a scrollbar or arrow at the end of a window and accidentally launching the Classic Environment because I was off by a pixel or two.
Personally speaking, I don't keep windows and palettes flush against the Dock for just that reason.

If you're running 10.2, you can set Classic to display a "Are you sure?" dialog before launching.
     
   
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