Review
The Awesomeness That Is Bodega
Jan 17th
Let’s get one thing out of the way first thing: I’m a big fan of Bodega and have been since I heard about it firsthand from the guys at centrix.ca during WWDC 2009.
Bodega is a free Mac application that helps you discover and download Mac applications. It is built in the spirit of great software sites like MacUpdate, but takes the experience and puts a great looking Cocoa wrapper around it. Make no mistake, this project is a big undertaking with a lot of moving parts and a lot of coordination between those parts. Yet with steady progress and determination these guys are really crafting something cool.
The impetus for this particular blog post is to gush about what I think is Bodega’s killer feature: keeping track of and installing updates for the applications installed on your computer. I really like Andy Matuschack’s Sparkle framework, but one of the necessary evils of that framework is that it doesn’t notify you that there is an update for a particular app until you run that app. When I launch an application it is done with the intention of performing a task immediately, but if there’s an update for that particular app I am yanked out of my workflow to deal with the question of updating the app first. Yes, I can continue to work, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking about how I don’t have the latest version of the software that I am currently using, and it bugs me.
Enter Bodega. Once every few weeks I will launch Bodega and click on the Applications section in its sidebar which presents me with a list of all the software currently installed on my system*. The killer feature is that Bodega scans all of the Sparkle feeds in these apps and will tell me if there’s an update for any of them. With two clicks (one to download and one to install) I can download and install any of the updates that I want. This simple process greatly reduces the chance that the next time I launch an app I will be presented with the option to download and install an update, Bodega has already taken care of it for me.
If you haven’t downloaded Bodega yet I highly recommend that you do and take it for a spin. If you’re a developer and you haven’t submitted your software to Bodega, I highly recommend that you do that too.
Downloading and installing updates (Stolen shamelessly from the Bodega website)
* Bodega is opt-in for developers, so if a developer hasn’t submitted their software to the Bodega site it won’t know about that software on your computer.
Review: 1Password
Feb 15th
Overview
1Password, by Agile Web Solutions, can best be described as OS X’s Keychain concept on steroids. To quote their website:
1Password takes care of all your online passwords so you can use strong and unique passwords for every site and never forget any of them! … In short, 1Password keeps track of all your web passwords, automates sign-in, guards from identity theft, and allows you to stop worrying about your safety while online.
I was skeptical of this utility before using it, willing to give it a shot after watching their 3 minute movie, and totally sold after using it for a week.
The Good
After installing, 1Password looks right at home in the Safari toolbar, providing access to a wealth of functionality.
Whenever I try out new utility software I want it to integrate into my current workflow as seamlessly as possible. This area is one in which 1Password excels: after installing it I didn’t have to change the way I worked. 1Password just stepped in and took the place of Safari’s keychain integration. It would have been nice for 1Password to offer to import my keychain passwords, but on the other hand it was nice that it just got out of the way and let me keep working. Importing your Safari passwords into 1Password is accessible through a menu item.
The wallets feature is a fantastic implementation of something that I’ve shoehorned into Keychain Access for years. It provides a simple, intuitive way to store credit and bank card numbers, software serial numbers, and much more.
Wallets at work
1Password also provides a feature called Identities, which allows you to set up different sets of personal information that you can use to automatically fill in web forms. For instance, I currently have two identities set up: Trusted Info and Untrusted Source. When I visit a site that asks me for registration information I can simply click on the 1Password icon in Safari and fill in the form on that site with my real information (Trusted Info), or, if I think they might spam me relentlessly, my mostly-real information (Untrusted Source). It’s a fantastic feature that expands upon Safari’s AutoFill functionality in a great way.
One of the mini-workflows that I have put in place for myself recently goes something like this:
- Come across a site where I need to register an account, so I choose a user name.
- Open Keychain Access and create a new entry for this particular registration.
- Use the password generation feature to create a new, random password for that entry.
- Copy that password into the clipboard, switch back to Safari and paste the password into the registration field.
Now, with 1Password I have been able to turn those four steps into two: I click the 1Password button in Safari, choose Strong Password Generator from the menu, and, assuming I don’t want to configure my password, hit the Fill button. When viewing your passwords in the 1Password application you also get a nice password strength indicator for all your passwords so that you can see which ones you may need to beef up a bit.
Four steps reduced to two.
There are many more features that 1Password touts that I have yet to even touch (Palm and iPhone syncing, Secure Notes and smart categories). While I can’t vouch for them, if these features have been given the same attention to detail as the rest of the app I’m sure they are fantastic.
The Bad
A plethora of import options await you, just not one for the OS X keychain.
One issue that I found a bit frustrating was that there was no way to import my entire OS X keychain. As I said above, I have shoehorned a lot of information into my keychain over the years and it would have been great to see an intelligent import feature. The omission is particularly glaring in the face of all the importing that is available.
I tried for a while to come up with additional “bad” things to say about 1Password, but it really is a solid app that has very few poor qualities.
Final Thoughts
Like I said at the beginning of this review, before using 1Password I was pretty sure it had very little to offer me. I couldn’t have been more wrong. In a world where time has become a very precious commodity 1Password has streamlined a lot of my workflow. It may not sound like much, but I find myself navigating the monstrous number of passwords, numbers, and serials much faster and easier than I ever have with OS X’s Keychain Access app. If you are looking for a beautifully designed, easy to use app that integrates perfectly with, and improves the way you presently work look no further than 1Password.
You can buy 1Password from their website for $39.95 for a single user license, or $69.95 for a family license.
