Steve's Mac Stuff Page

This page will point to all things Macintosh! It will often be sparse, as I have many sites already in my bookmark file that I keep available online. But I'll try to put sites of interest here so that they're readily available to you.

One of the things you may recall about me from my main page is that I'm a programmer by trade. As such, I like to experiment with programming on my Mac. I have done a bit of development with a product called REALbasic. I found that REALbasic had a reasonably short learning curve. Using REALbasic, I created some programs you might find of interest. If you want to try your own hand at Macintosh programming that's fun and relatively easy, visit the REALbasic link above and download it for yourself. You can try it free before deciding whether to purchase this excellent product.

     Next came a folder backup utility I call SaveIt X. It was originally designed to satisfy a need I found for making copies of folders that were important to me. I use it daily to help keep safe copies of ongoing projects, preference files, and many other items of importance. SaveIt X is only available for Mac OS X (an earlier version available below runs on earlier systems but is no longer supported). The current version is SaveIt X 1.0 (about 1.1MB). It's provided on a disk image. Mount the image, then copy Save It X wherever you prefer. More information is available via its Help menu.

You can still get SaveIt 2.5.2 here (about 711KB).

    Next up is a utility I call FolderUpdater. It was designed to satisfy a need shared by users of the popular Macintosh genealogy program called Reunion, from Leister Productions. You see, Reunion can create a really outstanding set of "Web Family Cards" based on the contents of your genealogy data. Over time, as that data changes, it can regenerate the entire set as often as you like. But it can't show you which files have actually changed from one set to the next. So FolderUpdater was born as a service to my fellow Reunion users. It can optionally ignore aliases or non-text files (e.g., images). And it will compare files' sizes first (non-text files only), contents second. Changed files will be placed into your "Old Web Folder" with the current date and time stamped on them, making it easy to spot which files have changed and may need to be uploaded to your web server. FolderUpdater will even show you a Result Window that you can print or save, listing all the changes it made. The current version is FolderUpdater 1.4.9 (about 744KB). This program supports both Mac OS X and earlier systems.

    Now there's ReunionCalculator. This too is a service to users of Reunion. After generating "Web Family Cards," ReunionCalculator can be used to get the URL of a particular Web Card or Person Sheet page based on the Person ID or Family ID. Thanks go to Alain Farhi and Roger Moffat, who worked out the calculations and allowed me to use them, and to Ron Norris for creating the image used for the icon (and used here). The current version is ReunionCalculator 1.0 (about 708KB). This program supports both Mac OS X and earlier systems.

I'm no longer maintaining my license for REALbasic. So when I next update any of the programs above, they'll be written using other languages and tools. I'm currently evaluating my options for a long overdue update to FolderUpdater, in particular.

In addition to being a programmer, you can tell that I'm also an avid Macintosh fan and supporter. As such, I belong to my local Macintosh User Group, known as MacInSteins (note our logo above). At present, I'm the group's Vice President. We meet on the third Sunday of each month at The Montgomery Academy (a local private school with an excellent Macintosh lab chock full of iMacs and other models). If you're in our area, we'd love to have you pay us a visit. You can email me for information if you're interested in details. Membership is currently $12 per year, which includes any and all members of your family. Our club year is from October thru September.