So, the question is: when will that be?
Turns out the counter can help us have a certain strategy.

I decided to take a look at how the counter uses its data after reading an interesting post over at the MacRumors.com fora.

First, one should know that the counter displayed on the aforementioned contest page at Apple.com is a JavaScript counter that fetches its data from a .txt file, countdown.txt.
How is this useful? Knowing where it gets its data means that we can know what is the “hard” data. Basically, the counter isn’t “live”.

Here’s the data I collected:

11-APR-2009 21:00:00|938030517|275391
11-APR-2009 22:00:00|938271179|240662
11-APR-2009 23:00:00|938477072|205893 (8.43 AM in Brussels, 11.43 PM in CA [California, Apple's area])

7.40 (22.40 CA): 938477900
7.57 (22.57 CA): 938548000
7.57 (22.57 CA): 938503000 // => variation!
8.00 (23.00 CA): 938511841
8.40 (23.40 CA): 938673000
8.45 (23.45 CA): 938693000
8.46 (23:46 CA): 938638000 // => variation!
8.50 (23:50 CA): 938649000
9.00 (00:00 CA): 938682965

As you can see, the data from 11 PM was added at around 11.43 PM, and the counter data was adjusted at 11.46 PM.

The data of the countdown.txt file can be summarised as follows:
Date – Time – Number Sold – Delta
The last number, which I call “delta”, seems to represent the number of applications bought between 10 PM and 11 PM (as 938271179 + 205893 = 938477072).
The interesting thing is that the counter then uses the delta to calculate what it’s supposed to be at the following hour, i.e. 12 PM in this case. Thus, at 12 PM San Francisco time, it displayed 938682965 (I have just checked).

Therefore, the countdown.txt file is updated approximately 40 minutes after the hour, and the delta is then used to adjust the counter, though that can apparently take up to 15 minutes (see the examples of counter data between 10 and 11 PM, where the change occurred at 10.57 PM).

How can this be of use?
Well, it can be useful to take a look at the fluctuation of data, as collected by MacRumors.com member omahajim and posted at GoogleDocs, and see what is the average during certain hours over a few days. The idea is that you can then determine whether at a given hour, the “delta” found in countdown.txt will be close to reality or not (based on previous days – during hours where it’s night on the American continent, fewer apps are downloaded), and that will especially be useful during the last hour of the countdown.
One should note, however, that there is a good chance that, during the last hour of the countdown, the number of downloads will surge after a certain point (read: after 999.999.500, there could be something crazy like 5000 downloads a second).

Nevertheless, this might be of use to someone who hopes to win the mega (and only) prize of “a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card, an iPod touch, a Time Capsule, and a MacBook Pro”.
I know I’d love to win it, but there’s a good chance the countdown will end while I’m asleep, so I figured that it would do me no harm to reveal such data.

If by a strange twist of fate you do win after reading this, may I ask for the Time Capsule or a couple of App Store purchases?

I had an exam the following day, and a power cut right when Phil Schiller was on stage, so I was unable to follow it immediately. However, when I did read up about it, I was surprised by the reaction of some of those large websites who covered the event.

First, one should mention what was announced by Phil Schiller: updates to the iLife and iWork software suites, and an updated 17-inch MacBook Pro, along with an announcement relating to iTunes. Schiller explained in detail, too much perhaps, the main new features of the software updates, and the effect was a much more technical and detailed keynote than the ones Steve Jobs had done in the previous years.

In their live feeds, Engadget and Gizmodo had many comments, by those covering the event, relating to how boring the many iWork announcements were. One of the people involved kept on writing “updates” such as “wake me up at the next announcement”.

In the main articles that followed the keynote, many plainly stated that the MacWorld announcements were “underwhelming”, disappointing and whatnot. Many comments posted in reply to these articles mocked Phil Schiller for delivering a keynote which would be forgotten sooner than any of the previous ones.

Well, I’d like to pitch in.

I am one of those Mac users who does not have a massive photo collection. I am one of those who doesn’t ever create home movies. If I record music, I create my own, and don’t create a track based on pre-defined loops. iLife is therefore not a suite I use a lot (the only application I use among iDVD, iMovie, iPhoto, iWeb and Garageband is Garageband, and only to record a few songs per year).

On the other hand, since iWork ’08 came out in the summer of 2007, I have been using Pages every single day at university and at home. It’s a word processing application that does almost everything I want it to do, and it does it in a very pleasant way. It’s fast, and it’s simple. I don’t get frustrated using it, unlike Microsoft Word.

I don’t use Keynote, because I never have to do any presentations (though that will most probably change as soon as I start to work), but I’ve found that I use Numbers more and more.

All in all, I’m certainly more of an iWork user than an iLife user.

And with a MacBook which is not even two years old, I’m not in the market for a new machine. I don’t care much about the availability of a new MacBook Pro with a 17-inch screen, and I certainly wouldn’t care either about a new MacMini or iMac, or even an iPhone Nano (I’m happy with my iPod touch ).

No, I didn’t want a keynote about awesome new machines. I wanted one about software.

So, how did this keynote go?

After Phil and the developer behind iMovie had talked about three of the iLife applications in great detail, and after many details concerning Keynote, I was extremely disappointed to see that Pages had been mentioned for only a short time, just to say that it has a cool new “full-screen” feature (great to write without distraction), lots of new templates (I don’t really care for those, because I tend to build my documents from scratch) and integration with Numbers (very nifty feature, which I’m sure I’ll be using in the future). Come on, Phil! I was hoping for some more detail on my most-used productivity application!

Still, word processing is not many people’s idea of “fun”, despite the ease at which one can make great looking documents in Pages. Which is probably at least partly the reason why iWork didn’t get as huge an update as it should have (I know there are a couple of bugs I’ve been reporting to Apple for a year that still haven’t been fixed, despite their absolute necessity for professional papers).

I guess I’m a little annoyed at Apple and at Mac users in general. It seems that Apple’s stereotype of the Mac user is true (the Mac user only cares about “fun stuff”, like “nice photos” and “cool home movies”), and Apple hasn’t yet realised that there are power-users of the iWork suite who would like Apple to iron out some bugs rather than pour all its software resources into the iPhone and the impressive but less “professional” iLife suite.

Well, here’s to hoping that at some point Apple wakes up to hear the voices of those Mac users out there who truly use iWork and would love to see it become better. After all, they’re the ones who will bring the Mac among the white collars and suits.

I guess I must applaud Apple for even mentioning iWork, despite the audience which was far too oriented towards gadgets and “cool” stuff. But really, there’s still so much to be done.

Now, will it please fix the footnote and table of contents issues?

All of these are completely unrelated, yet somehow linked in time. And when you write the bolded letters together, it gives the word “coseismal” (“relating to points on the earth’s surface affected by an earthquake simultaneously”). Coincidence? I think not! We’re doomed!

On Friday, I received an e-mail from King’s College London stating that they wished to make me a conditional offer for an LLM (read: a Master’s degree in Laws) in Information Technology Law. This offer means that if I get 13/20 as an average for my current Master’s degree, I’ll be accepted into King’s. Doable, as I’ve never had an average under that level, though over-confidence is never a good thing.

The following day, I had to solve an interplanetary crisis. Well, not quite. But basically, I had to send an e-mail to all the “Master 1″ students (all 450-500 of them – e-mail lists rule) to tell them where they could obtain an electronic version of the legislation compilation I’d made for Social Security Law.

Sunday, I noticed that the MacHeist webboards had seen some recent activity, outside the “Lounge” section (which is basically “random ravings about different subjects”, and wholly unrelated to the MacHeist concept of unlocking free applications and getting a whooping bundle of a value above 400 US Dollars for 39-49 USD). And on Monday, the frenzy started again. MacHeist 3 will be launched very soon, so if you’re interested in free Mac software and a great app bundle, be sure to sign up.

On Monday, well, nothing special happened. Much like during the week-end, I had to study. I just love studying, don’t you?

Tuesday, two things: first, I watched Catwoman, with Halle Berry, just for the hell of it. I knew it had been voted many times over the worst film ever, so I had to watch it. I forced myself until the end not to switch channels. Hard, though, as the plot was “not great”, and neither was anything else in the film. Actually, the whole movie deserved its disastrous ratings. There was one nice bit though, when Catwoman steals a Jaguar.
Second, I read on AppleInsider and MacRumors (eugh, no “u” in Rumours?) that Steve Jobs will not deliver a keynote address at the upcoming MacWorld expo in January. Disaster! Perhaps not, but I so enjoyed watching Steve Jobs do his keynote presentations in the past to unveil cool products every six months (at MacWorld and the WWDC). Oh well. Hopefully, Apple will understand that there’s a problem with their pricing at some point, and that people who want OS X all wish they could pay less to enjoy it (though I know they have very good arguments backing their pricing plan).

And finally, this Wednesday, I had an interview with Allen & Overy, an international law firm, because I’m applying for a summer internship. Hopefully, if someone from A&O stumbles upon this post, they’ll take the randomness as the sign of a healthy mind: after all, it’s unhealthy to study 24 hours a day. You go mad. Mad, I tell you!

As you can see, my mind has gone bonkers. All because of this studying time. It’s gone seismic, with break points everywhere.

Coseismal, I told you.

Strange string of events.

And to think that my first exam is only on the 5th of January. And I finish on the 16th. I wonder in which mental state I’ll be by then.

So, what exactly do these glyphs look like?

Here is the little mock-up Dustin made:

As you can see, the design blend rather well with the “curved pill” design included in iTunesque. I can assure you they also work well with the “rectangle pill” design, which was also included in the previous stable release of iLeopard. However, I cannot guarantee that they won’t clash with the stock appearance of the Mail & Preview button pills.

Note: the glyphs are completely independent from any theme elements and are located within the applications in question. As such, you can use them with any theme, but you may have to re-apply such modifications if Mail and/or Preview are updated.

Here is a more (but not completely) comprehensive view of these glyphs, again using the iTunesque “curved pills” (click the images to see in full-size):

Mail glyphs:

Preview glyphs:

Now, the ZIP package to which I’ll link in a bit includes an automated installer, which offers you the possibility only to install the glyphs for one of the applications or to install them for both. I myself prefer to have these glyphs in Preview and not in Mail, for some reason, but Dustin told me he is “using them right now, and [he loves] them!” Basically, your choice (as is the general philosophy of iTunesque).

You will also be glad to know that these glyphs will also be an option included in iLeopard 2.1 (according to the creator), which brings many of the iTunesque options (even one I never released here) to iLeopard in order to make the possibilities almost endless. If you are an avid iLeopard fan, I suggest waiting until you get the complete thing.

So, without further ado, here is the link to the glyphs.

Download, and have fun customising your Mac even more.

This software update was “the big one”, because Apple launched an application store (the “App Store”) accessible to all iDevices with that new OS update. As any self-respecting Apple fanatic, I promptly upgraded my iPod Touch. And boy, am I amazed at this thing.

I rarely marvel at electronic gadgets. The only things that ever really impressed me before were the iPod, my piano keyboard, my HD-fitted DVD-recorder (admiration for that has fallen fast) and my Macs. Wow. I really am an Apple fanboy.

But with the App Store, Apple made the iPod Touch, a previously “ultra cool but not all that super” device, into the greatest thing I’ve ever seen fit in a pocket. Since upgrading, I’ve been keeping an eye on the App Store (inside the iTunes Store) every single day. That’s how incredible this thing is. And no need to jailbreak the device anymore (and therefore void the warranty) to get this functionality.

Before going into more detail, this is what the iPod Touch looks like before downloading applications from the App Store:

(image courtesy of Apple.com)

And this is what I now have (click for larger images):

It is worth mentioning I only paid for three apps in there (iDrink, iDrops and FileMagnet), for a total of only a few Euros.

The greatest downside of the App Store is that you can’t try applications before buying them. I hope this is soon going to change.

So, are these apps worth anything? Are they of any use?

Productivity

There are many, many productivity apps on the App Store. To-do apps are there by the dozen, and so are note-taking apps, and given that you can’t “try-before-you-buy”, you have to be really sure you want this or that app before clicking on the “Buy” button. But plenty of these apps are there for free as well, so I’ve downloaded the free ones and tried them out.

And two of these free apps struck me as very good.

The first is “iProcrastinate Mobile”, which appears as “Tasks” on the iTouch. It’s the first free to-do app that seems to show some real promise, and probably more so than many of the <$10 to-do apps. Why? Because it looks smart, is easy to use, and will soon be supporting reminders/alerts. Once it does support reminders, I'll definitely be donating to the creator, because it will be all I need.

The second is "reQall", which I find very useful for shopping lists, but it's really an all-round productivity app. My major concern with it is that it seems not to work as well when it can't sync with your data on the reQall servers or something.

Document readers

One feature I thought was lacking cruelly on the iPod Touch was the ability to use it as a storage device, which all other iPods can do. But now, FileMagnet comes to fill the void. This app allows Leopard users to put all kinds of files on their iTouch: iWork docs, MS Office docs, folders, photos, movies, text docs, …

Secondly, eBooks. Ah, eBooks. I never got into them, but Stanza has managed to convince me otherwise. This app allows you to download hundreds of eBooks for free (and you can probably pay for others too), notably lots of classics. Easy to use, and very nifty.

Games

With a whole page of games, I have to mention them. You’d be surprised at the quality of some of the free games out there (Aurora Feint, Othello, Sol Free). Because of my satisfaction with these things (and iDrops, which is by far my favourite iTouch game), I haven’t ever felt compelled to purchase the big titles (SuperMonkeyBall, Crash Bandicoot, CroMag, …).

And, believe it or not, competition is so fierce that many games priced at $9.99 saw their prices drop within weeks.

I should mention that half of the games on my iTouch are not my favourite kind of game, but are there for others. For example, I’m no Sudoku lover, but many around me are (such as my brother & sister), so I still tried to find the best free Sudoku game.

Random things

I’ve found that if I ever feel the urge to learn languages, the iTouch is a great device. I discovered that first when trying out audio lessons for Japanese, but I really see it now with the App Store. Many language apps have appeared, some of them for free, some of them at a cost, so it’s worth checking out. I’m keeping the Italian, Spanish, Mandarin (Chinese for the uninitiated) and German in case. Anyway, I should get my German back up to speed.

There are a number of nifty random apps out there as well. iDrink is a very nice cocktail app, for those who would every now and then be interested in trying out or making new drinks, … There’s also the Mocha VNC Lite app, which basically allows you to control any computer, PC or Mac (I’ve had fun controlling my MacBook from my iTouch), just like Remote allows you to control iTunes.
And there are apps to help you use the device: SpeedType and TouchTrain are perfect examples.

All in all…

I’m very glad to have an iPod Touch, and I’m even more glad to have it updated to version 2 of its operating system. The App Store is a real hit for me, and I love it.

Thank you Apple for this. Finally. And a big thank you to the developers too. Looking forward to see what comes up on the App Store in the weeks/months to come…

It so happens that this Monday, the WWDC kicked off with a keynote by Steve Jobs, the prophet who guides all Apple fans throughout the world. For the uninitiated, “WWDC” stands for “Worldwide Developer Conference”, and it is one of the major yearly Apple-related events.

Last year, Steve Jobs showed the world a feature-complete version of Mac OS X Leopard, among others. But this year, big disappointment if you’re not much into the iPhone and were hoping for a sneak preview at “Snow Leopard”, the next version of the OS. Disappointment, but surprise right afterwards.

At the beginning of his keynote address, Steve Jobs stated that he was “going to take this morning to talk about the iPhone” (source: Engadget).

And it is indeed admirable that for the following 90 minutes, Jobs and many developers talked about how many things were coming to the iPhone platform.

I own an iPod Touch, and will definitely be hoping to upgrade my iTouch software: lots of great improvements, most notably the App Store, which looks like it’ll hold a good number of free quality apps.

But no talk of the next version of the OS. Pity, really. The developers will hear about it later today.
No, the real news is twofold.

First, the change affecting the old .Mac service, and secondly, the new 3G iPhone, which is the first example I’ve seen of Apple taking international pricing into consideration.

Regarding the new .Mac, entitled “MobileMe” and featuring great syncing between Macs, PCs and mobile devices (read: iPhone/iTouch). Still $99 per year though.

But now, the 3G iPhone will be much cheaper and available in many more countries:
“The maximum price around the world is $199 USD” (source).

This move surprises me. Since when does Apple make affordable devices whose pricing isn’t going to change throughout the world?
Does this mean European customers (among others) will soon see more similar prices for Macs?

Just speculation. But this is good news for me.

And in other news, MacHeist has spiced up their “Retail Bundle”, and it seems that you can now get “14 Top Mac Apps for just $49″ (and a bonus app if you buy as soon as it launches).

All in all, a very good week for the Mac community and for the growing iPhone/iTouch community.

Themes

I never was interested in themes under Tiger (Mac OS 10.4), partly because I had a 1999 G3 iMac, and partly because the only tool “average users” could use to apply themes was Unsanity’s ShapeShifter (which came at a hefty price for a student, and which is a “haxie” that requires “Application Enhancer” [APE] to run, and APE has caused me a couple of problems in the past).

Then Leopard came along, and while I was very happy with the new unified metal look for all applications, the blue aqua (scrollbars, list headers, …) was starting to feel old.
So I decided to take a look at Leopard theming options.

It turns out that Apple has completely changed the way OS X draws the User Interface (UI) in Leopard, because it hopes to move towards resolution independence (something you can see in action here).
But we’re not there yet, and so Leopard uses a number of old and new sources of data to draw this UI (when resolution independence isn’t enabled – if you wish to try out resolution independence, Vector UI instructions are here).

Since the 18th of May, it is possible to theme (in great part) Leopard, by replacing images found within these different sources, thanks to the release of ArtFileTool, a tool to complement ArtTools and ThemePark.
If you are interested in theming, by using these different tools, I strongly recommend heading over to the MacThemes Wiki.

But for the average user, who doesn’t want to spend hours replacing images (trust me, this kind of time is required), what are the possibilities?

Right now, there are no “full theme” options, because theme developers are only starting to get things done with the aforementioned tools.
But if you’re interested, there are already partial themes, and there are a number of themes in development.

First of all, I’d like to mention a way to “iTunesify” your Leopard. If you prefer the iTunes look to standard Aqua scrollbars, progress bars and list headers, this kind of change is possible:
(click for full-size)

To do so, read this post. It contains links to all the required files, step-by-step installation instructions and even an installer package.
A more complete “iLeopard” theme has been released in the works.

Another partial theme is a scrollbar replacement, Ether (and an Ether-inspired theme is also in the works).

Other themes in development for Leopard include Metal Muku, Kaer and Siro.

Unfortunately, as you can see, the list isn’t very long. Yet.
Given time, a number of themes will appear to feed some spice to your Leopard.
And, a little note to (would-be) developers: a new tool to make this whole image replacement business easier is in the works, a sort of “ThemePark for Leopard”. Keep an eye out for Architect & Façade.

That’s it for this series on Leopard customisation. Hopefully, you will have learnt something useful and have found this interesting.
If you have any questions, do leave a comment, or send an e-mail address to the address on the “About” page.

Edit: updated 14th of November to reflect some recent developments.

Dock

The Dock itself

The 3D Dock introduced in Leopard was one of its most controversial features. Many users far preferred the 2D Dock from Tiger. But then someone found how to customise the 3D Dock, and now, you can find Dock skins and instructions on how to install them all over the place (LeopardDocks.com and LeopardDocks.net spring to mind).

Best of all, you can even find apps to help you organise & apply your Dock skins. CandyBar comes with that functionality, but freeware DockDoctor is my personal choice for that.

The Dock’s contents

But the Dock skin isn’t the most important. No, the most important is what appears on your Dock (and what is hidden), how it reacts and how it’s arranged.
For many months, I had "just" three main Stacks (University, Arpia Novels and Downloads). I then added a Games Stack, and finally an Uploads Stack (because I upload lots of stuff, for university & for other things).

You’d be surprised how easy Stacks are to use as an application launcher. Before Leopard, Quicksilver was my application launcher: I hit "ctrl" + "space", then typed the first letters of the app’s name, and there we go. Then came Leopard, and Spotlight became my app launcher, because it was much faster than Quicksilver. And finally, I discovered how useful Stacks could be.

The thing is, you can create folders (I create them in my "Documents" folder) with aliases to applications, and make Stacks out of them. I have a "Web" Stack (CotEditor, CSSEdit, Firefox 2 and 3, Forklift, IE6 thanks to Darwine, and Webkit), an "Office" Stack (the MS Office suite, Grapher, OmniOutliner) and an "Organisers" Stack (Bento, Cha-Ching, Linotype Explorer X and Wallet). And to make it even easier to use, I replaced the system "Alias" icon with a blank one, which means that my Web Stack looks like this:

And now, to launch Forklift (so from the first move until the application is completely open) takes me 4.4 seconds using the Stack, where it took me 5.1 seconds using Spotlight. Wooo, 0.7 seconds saved!

And then, there’s the "Applications" side of the Dock. I put those I really use a lot there (Mail, Safari, iTunes, iCal, Pages) and the apps I use occasionally but still regularly (Adium, System Prefs, TextEdit, Keynote, Numbers and Photoshop). The rest is either in a Stack, or easily accessible via Spotlight. But you can see how, if it’s faster to open an app using a Stack, it’s even faster to open it if it lies on your Dock.

Wallpapers

Wallpapers are most probably the first thing the average user changes when he/she gets a new Mac. Let’s face it: the wallpapers that come with Leopard aren’t perfect, and certainly don’t match everyone’s personality.
I find that InterfaceLIFT and DeviantART are among the best repositories for wallpapers.
But what if you have a personal favourite, yet still want the wallpaper to change randomly every 5, 10, 30 minutes? I asked myself the question, because Aurora, Leopard’s default wallpaper, became my favourite (it’s the closest I’ve found to saying "this is for Peter" – I swear, Steve Jobs thought of me when he approved this wallpaper). The answer is simple enough: make duplicates. Little tip, but if you have over a hundred wallpapers (I know I do), having half a dozen copies of your favourite gives it a better chance of showing up.

One thing I’d like to mention is that it is possible to also customise the wallpaper that appears behind the login screen (if you have automatic login disabled), and it’s even possible to make that background change randomly every time you log out/shut down.
Unfortunately, I can’t remember exactly how to set it up. Here, however, is a place where you can see what I did (scroll down to the comment by "Pace", i.e. me). If you’re interested, I recommend doing a Google search for "logout hook".

Well, that’s it for the Dock and wallpapers. Next volume: theming and forcing OS X to appear even more as you want it to be.

So, what can you do if you have Mac OS 10.5, a.k.a. Leopard?

Until this weekend of mid-May, icons and dock changes (which I’ll detail later) were pretty much all you could do, because Apple has changed the way OS X generates the user interface in many ways. Not completely yet though: it appears 10.6 will be the first to fully use the new "CoreUI".
But enough technobabble. In short, since this week-end, all parts of Leopard are customisable. At least, that’s the theory.
And to illustrate, this is a normal Leopard screenshot. But here is an example of a new appearance, without using any hacks (note that system fonts can also be changed), and here is my personal Leopard’s appearance.

Note: there are still some limits, but for example, window backgrounds are customisable, …

In this series, I’ll talk about the different aspects of customisation, mostly for the sake of those users not entirely familiar with it, but it will contain some advanced customisation information as well.
Part II will concern the Dock and wallpapers, and part III, theming.

Icons

Icons are the first thing I believe every Mac user should give some thought to. Why? Without at least one new icon, Macs look like they’ve just come out of the Apple store. They are only half-alive, and they haven’t truly become the property of their owner.
Icons enable you to distinguish one folder from another, and this can be both crucial and a true timesaver.
I love icons, and if you take a look at my Leopard, you’ll see it right away:

So where can you get such icons?
My favourite source of Leopard icons (which are made to be nice from 16×16 pixels [mini size] to 512×512 [HUGE]) is MacThemes2.net (with a blog of announcements too). My personal choice has been Jonas Rask’s Maji icon set, modified to fit my needs and taste.

But getting icons isn’t enough. You then need to apply them, modify them, even change the system icons.
Fortunately for us, there are freeware options to doing all that.

First off, applying icons. This YouTube video shows you that applying icons requires no external software: you have it all in OS X.

Your first freeware friend is LiteIcon. LiteIcon enables you to change the stock system icons (that generic folder, that sidebar Desktop icon, that generic USB external drive icon) in no time, and makes it painless and costless. If you really want to do lots of changing, you might consider donating to the creator of this nifty app. If you want to also organise your icons within the same app, you’ll need CandyBar, by Panic, which does cost money.

Now, secondly, I’d like to mention an app I discovered by chance, after looking for a long time for "the right app" for creating custom icons by combining existing ones. IconCompo is one of the few apps out there to support Leopard’s 512×512 sizes (though it’s not apparent when you use the app), and it allows you to create icons that appear to be imprinted on another icon or icons that seem to be in front of another. A lot of trial & error is necessary before you can fully understand the app, which means it isn’t the easiest to use, but it’s the most powerful I found for free (and pretty much the only one that does what I wanted it to do).

Once you’ve got all that worked out, it’s time to move on to step 2: the Dock.