At long bloody last, this bog standard feature has arrived courtesy of TextGuru. The app has garnered quite a bit of attention thanks to it being a rather well-designed, easy to use text editor, one that includes the holy grail of missing iPhone features: cut and paste. I’m not terribly excited by the text editing features, to be honest—if I want to write and edit text, I’ll do it on something with a keyboard (though I’m fairly sure I’ll be writing longer emails in TextGuru before too long).

Anyway, here’s how to get a text file from your computer to your iPhone, then email it to your irate boss.

1. Install TextGuru on your iPhone (at the time of writing it costs 59 pence).
2. Download, install and launch the TextGuru File Share application for your Mac.
3. Find the file you want, and copy it to the TextGuru folder (you’ll find an alias to it in your Documents folder, it’s really in ~/Library/Application Support/TextGuru/Files).
4. Launch TextGuru on the iPhone
5. Click on the File Shares button
6. Click on ‘TextGuru FileServer’
7. Click on the name of the file you copied to the TextGuru folder a moment ago.
8. Click on the Download File button.
9. Click on the Documents button.
10. Click on the name of your file.
11. Click on the little ‘i’ button.
12. Click on ‘Send via Email’.

The technical term for all that is ‘a bit of a faff’, even if you discount the first two steps as one-time affairs. But I’m still really very grateful to the TextGuru developers for giving me a feature that Apple should’ve included from the off.

• Jumpcut A wildly handy clipboard enhancer, that gives you access to the last 20-odd items you copied. Free.

• Path Finder Alternative to the Finder, with many more features at your fingertips, including an incredibly useful ‘stack’ for moving files around and easy access to running applications. Essential. $39 Shareware with a 21 day trial.

• Quicksilver is an application launcher and file manipulator that essentially allows you to access and manipulate everything on your computer by whacking Command+space and typing the name of what you’re looking for, whether it’s an application, file, Address Book contact or song in iTunes. My current fave features are the ability to set system-wide command key ‘triggers’ for opening applications, and the ability to pre- or append text to a file, or rename it, from within the QS interface. It’s great for moving files around, too (even if you have no idea where they’re kept). Abso-fucking-lutely essential - I can’t even use a computer without this anymore. Free.

• Saft: Unbelievably cool plugin/patch for Safari, that adds a ridiculous number of extra features, like saving open tabs on quit or crash, a customised Search field that lets you perform various Google, Dictionary.com and IMDB searches, plus type-ahead search. Essential. $10 Shareware.

• Sidetrack: This is a replacement driver for the Trackpad, which lets you use the edges for scrolling vertically and horizontally, set a finger-tap in each corner to emulate a mouse button, or any command key combination you can think of. (I have the top corners mapped to Command+Shift+right/left arrow, so I can tab around Safari with a flick of the thumb, and the bottom left corner pretending to be a right click on a mouse, so I can access contextual menus easily). Essential. $10 Shareware.

• SoundSource lets you switch your audio input and output sources with a single click. Free.

• SpamSieve: In my experience, Mail’s spam filtering sucks bad. This adds Bayesian filtering to most popular email clients, and will catch everything, with next to no false positives. Maybe not essential, but, depending on how much spam you get, a massive time-saver. $25 Shareware with a free 30-day trial.

• Services: There’s lots of useful things you can add to the Services menu, which provides a sort of system-wide set of handy things for use in most applictions, often accessible via quick command key combinations. I find the following essential:

  • HumaneText: Markdown is a syntax for marking up text in a nice human-readable way, and this Service lets you easily convert Markdown documents to HTML and vice versa. (That mightn’t sound awfully useful, but it is, honest.) Free.
  • WordService makes it easy to do a lot of text formatting stuff quickly, but I mainly use it as a word counter (because I tend to write in SubEthaEdit or Smultron, rather than a fully-fledged word processor). Free.

• Whiteout removes the brushed metal look from most Apple applications, replacing it with a pinstripe look that is much easier on the eye. Free.

Enjoy!

And then click the ‘Related Linking’ links below for a ridiculous number of pointers to more applications, utilities, tips and tricks.

• SafariStand

  This wee bundle adds some fantastic features. There’s type-ahead searching of bookmarks and history, a ‘shelf’ where you can store links (or, better yet, groups of links to be opened in tabs), syntax colouring when viewing source, a host of configurable command key options, and it even saves state on quit. The user interface is a little clumsy, but, in effect, this extension lets you have all the drool-worthy features offered by Omniweb. It’s free, too.

• SafariExtender

  This adds a contextual menu item to Safari that lets you save and load a set of tabs, move tabs around, quickly email URLs and web pages, change the User Agent string Safari sends (handy for sites that deny access to Safari even though the browser can handle them), turn off images (great when you’re on dial up) and, as they say, much, much more. I have a feeling I’ll pony up the measly $10 shareware fee once my 15-day trial period is up.

• SafariNoTimeOut

  I’ve been using this for as long as I’ve used Safari - it does what it says on the tin, resetting the browser’s request timeout (to ten minutes) so that sites that are slow to load actually load, rather than returning a timeout error after 60 seconds. Essential, and free.

• AcidSearch

  Adds ‘search channels’ to the Google search field, which you can switch between using command key combinations. You can define your own sites to search, but I’ve just been using the Google This Site option and the built-in dictionary and thesaurus searches. Handy, but I find it’s easy to forget to reset the search field to Google after using it for something else. Your mileage may vary according to the state of your short-term memory. Again, this is free.

• Whiteout

  This utility rids your Mac of all that distracting brushed metal, giving 10.3 Finder windows and iApps the pinstripe look of 10.2. Even though it’s a system-wide thing, I’m including it here as I just can’t believe how much better Safari looks after the Whiteout treatment. Once again, a freebie, and, oddly enough, one made by Suicidegirls.com, a porn site for people who like looking at naked goths.

• SubEthaFari

  This improves on Safari’s naff View Source feature, opening up a site’s source in SubEthaEdit, giving you all the oomph of the wonderful text editor in place of a plain NSTextView. I’m not actually using this at the moment - it can be slow to load a page’s source, and fails to load some pages - but it’s worth trying out if you regularly rip off code learn new techniques by snooping around well-made sites. You guessed it: this too is free.

Get ‘em while they’re hot!

That’s what I felt when I first launched Jumpcut.

It’s one of those wonderfully simple-but-powerful utilities, like Launchbar or LiteSwitch X, that within seconds becomes absolutely essential, to the point that you can’t quite believe it isn’t part of the operating system.

All Jumpcut does is enhance the Clipboard by remembering a history of items you copy, making them available for pasting via a command key combination.

Whack Ctrl-Alt-V (or whatever combination you like) and a translucent window pops up displaying an excerpt of the last item you copied. With the key combination held down, tap the Shift key, and you can scroll through recently copied items. Release the keys, and the currently displayed item is pasted.

That’s it: simple to use, unobtrusive, incredibly useful.

There are some limitations: it only works with copied text, not images, and you can only scroll backwards through your clipboard history, not forwards - rather annoying when you tab too hastily and go past the item you wanted to paste. And it’s a bit buggy, too: from time to time it seems to forget, or muddles up the order of, recently copied items. (I say ‘seems to’ because the frazzled state of my short term memory makes me suspect it is me, not Jumpcut, doing the forgetting). But, for something that’s still beta, is billed as ‘experimental’ and comes with the proviso that the developer ‘cannot promise that Jumpcut will not wreck holy hell with your system’ it works well enough.

If you’re after something a bit more stable, there’s quite a few clipboard-enhancers and replacements out there; most offer much more than Jumpcut in terms of features, but most lack its simple interface.

For those still running OS 10.2.x or willing to tweak the app to work with Panther, PTHPasteboard is the inspiration for Jumpcut and offers similar functionality, but is no longer available through official channels. The dizzyingly clever Quicksilver launching and file manipulation utility has a Clipboard history function, but I never quite got to grips with it - as you can see from the documentation, it’s not the app’s most immediately accessible feature. The shareware utility iClip is somewhere between a scrapbook and a clipboard, letting you store everything from URLs to movies in a floating window that’s a little too obtrusive (on a laptop at least). YouControl is shareware that offers multiple clipboard functionality, but its primary purpose is creating custom menus (for launching applications, controlling iTunes and the like) that sit in the Menu Bar or on the Desktop and at $69.99 it doesn’t come cheap. Finally, Spike is a Rendezvous-aware application for both Mac and Windows that lets users share multiple clipboards over a network. It’s bloody brilliant - I use it a lot in combination with Apple Remote Desktop when tinkering with the old iBook that lives in my wardrobe - but, since you have to switch to Spike and re-copy a stored clipping to the Clipboard before pasting, it can’t match the speed and ease of use that Jumpcut’s command key combinations allow. (And those are just the one’s I’ve tried out - at the time of writing there’s 40-odd clipboard-related tools listed on Versiontracker.)

Where was I? Oh yes: download Jumpcut now. It’s essential, even in its current unfinished, mildly buggy form.

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!

The excellent Salling Clicker allows you to control iTunes or DVDPlayer from your ‘phone, among many other things. Romeo has similar functionality, and an ever-expanding feature set thanks to user-contributed plugins. The Address Book has caller ID functions, and lets you carry on SMS conversations from your computer, and a new application called BluePhoneMenu expands on these features.

But I still can’t find an application that will let me make my ‘phone ring so I can find the bloody thing.

Given that all the applications mentioned above can do all manner of wild and wonderful things, I can’t imagine it would be impossible for a canny developer to whip up a menu item, dockling or what have you, that, with a single click or key combination, would cause my t610 to ring.

I would gladly pay for such a thing - not much, admittedly - since I lose track of my ‘phone at least three times a day, and having to dial my mobile number from my land line is such a chore.

I will ping the LazyWeb with this post, in the vain hope that someone awfully clever will hear my anguished cry, and make me the application of my dreams. I even have a crappy name prepared: RingRingFindMyBloodyPhone.

For those who haven’t been bitten by the Launchbar bug, the utility allows you to launch applications, open files and display contact information from your Address Book, all with a couple of keystrokes. It even learns as you use it, quickly working out what application you want when you type a couple of letters, with an efficiency that is almost creepy.

Now, there’s competition in the form of Quicksilver, a free application that works in the same way as Launchbar, but with greater flexibility, more features and a choice of display options.

At first glance, this makes Quicksilver seem unwieldy in comparison to the elegant simplicity of Launchbar, which you can use out of the box, intuitively. After a few days use, and a bit of tweaking, I think I’ll be pimping the new kid on the block from now on.

Here, in no particular order, are a few reasons why:

• iTunes integration

  This is just amazing. Whack the command key combination you have set to invoke Quicksilver, type browse or itunes and up pops a listing of all your iTunes playlists. You can then browse them by typing initial letters, and hit return when you find a playlist you want to play, or move down a level to look for a particular song. That sounds a little complicated written out, but in practice, it means you can be playing a song within a split second. (The same applies to iPhoto Libraries too, if you use that to manage your photographs.)

• Window, Menu and Bezel views

  You can choose from three display modes for Quicksilver. The Window option is default, but makes the app feel more of a standalone thing, lacking the tightly integrated feel of the other options. For now, I’ve been switching between Menu, which layers the Quicksilver interface over your Menu Bar - a nice, neat option for those of us lacking screen space - and Bezel view. I’m leaning towards the latter, which is not unlike the centered pop-ups you see when changing volume or brightness settings, or Liteswitch X’s interface for tabbing through open applications. (Although the fact that many icons end up looking ugly and pixellated is putting me off a little)

• Clipboard Viewer, the Shelf, and Finder replacement

  Hit your Quicksilver command key combination, then Command-L and you get a view of the last ten items you copied to the Clipboard. I don’t need to explain how handy this can be. The Shelf is a feature I haven’t used much, because the slickness of the basic features almost render it unnecessary, but with Quicksilver running, tap Option-Command-S and you get a little place to keep stuff: just drag whatever you like there - files, folders, apps, contacts - for easy retrieval. Lastly, I hate using the Trackpad on my laptop, and there’s no room on my messy desk for a mouse, so I like to do everything from the keyboard. Quicksilver makes browsing the Finder as quick as navigating from the command line, but with all the advantages of graphical cues. You can, say, type a forward slash to start browsing from the top level, and find what you’re after by typing initial letters, or using the arrow keys, very quickly indeed.

• Launching URLs

  I can’t quite put my finger on this, but I quickly disabled URL launching in Launchbar, finding that the thousands of bookmarks available cluttered up results. With Quicksilver, and its little window displaying lists of choices, finding what you’re after is an easier proposition, and it seems to learn more quickly than Launchbar, figuring out immediately that when I type s I want to launch Safari, and when I type sr, it’s this website I’m after. A subtle difference, maybe, but one of several deft touches that are persuading me to switch.

• It’s cute!

  When I invoke Quicksilver, and type the first couple of letters of a friend’s name, up pops their photograph from Address Book. With a click or two of the right arrow key, I can launch their homepage, send them an email, or display their ‘phone numbers. It’s not more functional than Launchbar, but it’s a nice little touch, and shows the attention to detail the developers have put into maintaining the familiar look and feel of OS X.

So - and it almost pains me to say this - Quicksilver is the new essential OS X launching utility, and Launchbar is unlikely to keep its place among my Startup Items. I should say at this point that comparing the two is, perhaps, unfair: Launchbar is still the better simple launcher, but the extra features of Quicksilver just about make up for the fact that the learning curve is a couple of degrees steeper. And, where Launchbar is as stable as can be, there are still a few bugs in the Quicksilver beta, not least the annoying window layering quirks when using the Clipboard Viewer or Shelf.

The fact that it’s free and soon-to-be open source is not a clincher for me, as it might be for some. But, that said, having replaced Photoshop with the Gimp and installed OpenOffice in place of Word some time ago, if I now ditch Launchbar I’m fairly sure my computer will be completely free of commercial software and shareware, either stolen or paid for; exclusively running bundled Apple applications, freeware, donationware and open source software instead.

Even for someone who isn’t a raving open source evangelist, this feels pretty good. The open source underpinnings of OS X aren’t just a boon in terms of making for a vastly improved operating system. They allow those of us too fond of shiny, pretty things to move completely to an open source platform - however much we know it is, politically, the right thing to do - a chance to claw back all the cash those capitalist pig-dogs at Apple grub out of their users for hardware and software upgrades. Which is, I’m sure you’ll agree, A Good Thing.

Update: In a timely fashion, Quicksilver now has preliminary documentation, which reveals that it’s even more sophisticated than I thought, including features allowing you to move files around, manipulate them, even compress them. Wow.