macnn
01/23/2008, 3:00pm, EST
Wednesday, January 23rd
Jolt defeats Mac OS X energy saver
Independent coder Bryan Hansen has released Jolt, a system utility for Mac OS X. The tool defeats a common problem for Mac owners, in which a user wants to keep the default timing for the energy saver, but is continually interrupted by it when watching videos or reading long documents. By clicking on the Jolt icon located in the Menu bar, users can temporarily delay screen dimming by several minutes. A timer within Jolt's own menu shows how long it will be before a system returns to normal.
The basic version of Jolt, Jolt Lite, is a free Universal Binary, but people can also opt to pay $5 for a complete version, which allows for five different delay settings. Timings can be set anywhere between three minutes and infinity, and each preset can be assigned its own color. Half of the app's price is furthermore being donated to charities, including the International Justice Mission and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition.
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When I decided to create Jolt, I first looked at the options and while some offered most of the features, I really wanted something that:
1. I only had to click once 2. Could have different timing durations 3. would turn off automatically, so that if I got up from the computer and forgot to turn it off that I wouldn't drain the battery (and also one less step is nice) 4. Could be easily set to start at login 5. Has a nice icon, yes shameless ego here, but I just didn't like the big X through the icon of Caffeine
Also, hot-corners aren't bad but I end up there on accident sometimes. Also, does a hot corner keep the machine from going to sleep? I'm not sure...
If you guys have any other thoughts or suggestions I'd love to hear them! Bryan www.driftinglight.com