Useful and Fun in Equal Parts

We Mac users know that Apple has had a long and storied history of idiosyncratic and unique hardware, and its interesting to know just what theyve come up with over the years. Mactracker is the best tool for seeing through Apples history, and as informative as that may be, it also serves very good practical purposes.

I had this app before the Mac App Store opened, and I must say, this new version of Mactracker is an excellent improvement. The graphics are an appealing improvement, with cool textures and a more readable font; its a welcome improvement over MacTrackers old interface, rendered in very basic Aqua. The icons for each Mac are also much larger and more detailed, and the new way the entries are laid out, with their large text-based buttons, are much better than the old versions smaller tabs. The toggle buttons to go between each entry without having to close the window is also handy.

Its a little confusing that now you have to click the Macs icon to hear its startup sound, instead of in the old program where it was a button that said "Startup Chime", and I still havent found the button that lets me hear the computers "Chimes of Death", one of my favourite features of the old program. Hopefully the feature hasnt been omitted, and Ill find it eventually.

As for how this little bit of Apple nostalgia is actually useful, you can look up your own Mac with it automatically, to look up any important info that might be a bit confusing to see in the System Profiler. You can also see the other models of that particular Mac available, what OS it originally shipped with, and even instructions on how to install more memory. You can also index all your Mac products with Mactracker, record how long the warranties on them will last, and it lets you quickly access Apples support page for your devices.

Mactracker is an excellent app, both for the Apple hobbyist and the practical Mac user. With this wealth of information at your fingertips for free, in a way thats much easier to access than Wikipedia or Google, you cant go wrong!

Uberman5000 about Mactracker, v6.0