Submit Response is a weblog by Jack Mottram, a Stattoo Review
A fortnight ago, Panic released Stattoo, an application that ‘tattoos’ information and statistics onto the OS X desktop.
It’s a neat little utility, and pretty - Panic are past masters at making applications that are as easy to use as they are good to look at - but, I thought, an utterly useless one.
After running it for a week or so, though, I’ve found it pretty handy.
On my 15” screen, the Menu Bar is incredibly cluttered, what with the built-in battery status, Airport signal strength monitor, clock and script menu; plus third party Menu Bar items, from the Salling Clicker to Audioscrobbler to MenuMeters.
Extracting some of these semi-useful bits and bobs to my Desktop in the form of Stattoo ‘capsules’ turns out to work wonderfully well. If the Desktop isn’t hidden by windows, I can, for example, see what’s playing in iTunes, or the next three appointments in iCal at a glance; if it is, tapping a user-configurable command key combination brings Stattoo to the front for a second, before it (very gracefully) fades away.
Some reviews have identified Stattoo’s main competition as Konfabulator. Panic developer Steven Frank doesn’t see it that way, and I’m inclined to agree. For one thing, Konfabulator is a framework for user-contributed Widgets, which range from simple clocks to daft puzzle games, while Stattoo provides a small selection of genuinely useful tools hard-coded into the application. For another, Konfabulator widgets tend to be interactive - site and web search modules are popular - and it feels like an application, whereas Stattoo simply displays information, and feels like a part of the OS (which might well be its downfall - Apple aren’t exactly shy of aping utilities that integrate so seamlessly). Aside from these intrinsic differences, for me there’s no competition, for one reason: on a small screen, Konfabulator is incredibly intrusive; even Mini Widgets are huge hulking things, and most Widgets share a rather OTT dayglo bubblegum aesthetic.
All that said, Stattoo needs work: some capsules just don’t work - the one meant to display recent emails seems to pick old messages at random - and it has a tendency to freeze up from time to time. With that in mind, and much as I like this little app, I’m not sure Panic can justify the $12.95 shareware fee. At least, not with the current set of capsules - if a future, more stable, version adds a CPU meter, network traffic monitor and a display of new messages in Mail that actually works, I’m pretty sure I’d pony up the cash.
For now I’ll take advantage of the generous unlimited free trial. You should too!
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