iStat Menus Updated With New Look, History Views, and Bandwidth Monitor

Upgraded now. Observations?

Someone described the graphs as 'cartoonish', but I'd say 'clunky'. They are way too big. The graph size in v3 was about right IMHO. Also, the title text on the menus is also way too big, again IMHO. Maybe it's partly because I've got a retina screen and things can be so much smaller yet still be clearly readable.

I notice that the calendar, as it did in v3, retains the month you select after you've closed and re-opened it. This caused me a problem once on v3 as I hadn't realized I was looking at the wrong month. I'd much prefer it if it reverted to the current month on closing - maybe make it an option since some people will prefer the current behaviour.

EDIT Just noticed, there are no Enclosure Base temp. sensors in v4. There were 3 in v3. Where have they gone?

Also, it reports the backlight voltage as 45.98V Is that correct, or a bug? I thought that the battery was only ~20V

Graph opacity and Theme have no effect.

conigs said:

Hold down ⌘, then drag it off the menu bar.

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Thanks. And if I decide I want to readd it to menu bar, how do I do that after i dragged it off?

GIZBUG said:

Thanks. And if I decide I want to readd it to menu bar, how do I do that after i dragged it off?

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You can't, they're gone for good. Only a complete reinstall of OS X will get them back


Seriously, you re-add them through System Preferences, but they are each in their respective sections - battery is in Energy Saver, clock is in Date & Time (Clock tab), etc.

bmauter said:

What's wrong with MenuMeters? It's free.

http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/

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MenuMeters FTW!!

Bjango said:

Do you have the Primary Interface set to Automatic? It's possible you're monitoring an interface that's not the one you're using for internet.

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I tried Automatic and my wired interface and neither work. The graphing of bandwidth utilization works, it's just the text that does not.

Bjango said:

Ugly in which way? We're definitely going to make some design changes as version 4 progresses.

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They're huge and blue and look out of place with the rest of OS X. The previous version looked really nice. The indicator bars were small yet easily-readable and had a color that fit in with the OS. The color also changed depending on the theme, and that functionality appears to be gone.

Bjango said:

Which Mac model do you have? The text is already smaller than Apple's standard menus. I'm not sure we'd want to go much smaller.

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Eight core 2009 Mac Pro. Your previous version had smaller text and looked great.

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parish said:

Someone described the graphs as 'cartoonish', but I'd say 'clunky'. They are way too big. The graph size in v3 was about right IMHO. Also, the title text on the menus is also way too big, again IMHO.

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I would say "garish" instead of "cartoonish" or "clunky", IMO.

Version 3 looked quite nice. There has to be a new graphic designer at Bjango because the same person could not have designed version 3 and 4.

parish said:

Also, the title text on the menus is also way too big, again IMHO. Maybe it's partly because I've got a retina screen and things can be so much smaller yet still be clearly readable.

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Yeah, these things tend to look pretty different on Retina vs non-Retina. We're planning on tweaking the section headers though. The next update *may* contain smaller text for those (I agree that it's too big, even on a non-Retina display).

parish said:

I notice that the calendar, as it did in v3, retains the month you select after you've closed and re-opened it. This caused me a problem once on v3 as I hadn't realized I was looking at the wrong month. I'd much prefer it if it reverted to the current month on closing - maybe make it an option since some people will prefer the current behaviour.

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Yeah, that's a tough one. I definitely see your point and agree that it can be undesirable. I bet if we made it revert to today some people would expect the current behaviour and complain. We'll consider adding it as an option though.

parish said:

EDIT Just noticed, there are no Enclosure Base temp. sensors in v4. There were 3 in v3. Where have they gone?

Also, it reports the backlight voltage as 45.98V Is that correct, or a bug? I thought that the battery was only ~20V

Click to expand...

Which Mac model do you have? Sensors are one of the hardest part of iStat Menus and we regularly audit them to add new ones, make corrections and sometimes remove sensors we don't have the right info for. Different Mac models have different sensors, so it's a big job.

parish said:

Graph opacity and Theme have no effect.

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Here's the change they should be making to your menubar bar graphs, history graphs and pie graphs.

bobobenobi said:

I tried Automatic and my wired interface and neither work. The graphing of bandwidth utilization works, it's just the text that does not.

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Which Mac model do you have, and which network interface are you using? Hopefully we can fix that.

bobobenobi said:

They're huge and blue and look out of place with the rest of OS X. The previous version looked really nice. The indicator bars were small yet easily-readable and had a color that fit in with the OS. The color also changed depending on the theme, and that functionality appears to be gone.

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All the graph colours can be customized. The history graphs have editable widths. The bar graphs are 1 pixel different in width to version 3 — the border makes them 1px wider overall, but the graph itself is actually 1px narrower than iStat Menus 3.

bobobenobi said:

Version 3 looked quite nice. There has to be a new graphic designer at Bjango because the same person could not have designed version 3 and 4.

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I'm the co-founder and designer at Bjango and I've designed every single thing we've done, past and present.

Bjango said:

Which Mac model do you have? Sensors are one of the hardest part of iStat Menus and we regularly audit them to add new ones, make corrections and sometimes remove sensors we don't have the right info for. Different Mac models have different sensors, so it's a big job.

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15" retina MBP

Bjango said:

Here's the change they should be making to your menubar bar graphs, history graphs and pie graphs.

Image

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Ah, they only change the graphs on the menu bar? I'm using Combined with only Network, Battery, and Time on the menu bar (so no graphs). I assumed those settings would apply to the panels that open from the combined menu item.

iStat Menus 4.01 is out. You can download it right now from our site:
http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/

It'll appear as an update in iStat Menus at some point over the weekend. Here's a list of the fixes and new things added:
http://bjango.com/mac/istatmenus/versionhistory/

I actually like the new UI. Looks clean and fresh compared to the neon themes in v3.

Is there a way to remove unwanted sensor info from the dropdown menu?

I think the app is beautiful, and everything is the right size. : ]

Ice-Cube said:

I actually like the new UI. Looks clean and fresh compared to the neon themes in v3.

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Me too. I think iStat Menus 3 was looking a little old, tired and in need of a refresh. I'm really happy with the way iStat Menus 4 turned out and like how it matches iStat for iOS. We do have some tweaks to make on iStat Menus though. I'm working hard on those right now (it's 4PM on a Saturday!).

Raunien said:

Is there a way to remove unwanted sensor info from the dropdown menu?

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Not currently.

Blaine said:

I think the app is beautiful, and everything is the right size. : ]

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Thank you.

Bjango said:

Me too. I think iStat Menus 3 was looking a little old, tired and in need of a refresh.

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Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that point. Having said that, it's the functionality that's the important thing.

One minor niggle. When you have Network displayed on the menu it is shown with Upload at the top and Download at the bottom. That's logical - up/top, down/bottom - but on the menus/panels it's the other way round which is illogical and inconsistent.

Bjango said:

Which Mac model do you have, and which network interface are you using? Hopefully we can fix that.

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It's an "Early 2009" eight-core Mac Pro, aka MacPro4,1. I am using "Ethernet 1".

Bjango said:

All the graph colours can be customized. The history graphs have editable widths. The bar graphs are 1 pixel different in width to version 3 — the border makes them 1px wider overall, but the graph itself is actually 1px narrower than iStat Menus 3.

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Does this work for the menu that appears, for example, when you click "HDD"? If so, how?

It tells me the wrong HD space.

Another really annoying bug is in the time calendar, it locks up after selecting another day or month.

This is on 10.8.2

Raunien said:

Another really annoying bug is in the time calendar, it locks up after selecting another day or month.

This is on 10.8.2

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I emailed their support yesterday regarding this issue and they said it has been fixed in the update released yesterday. I will install to check.

cannot find an option to enable time separator in 24h time format..it looks just like this

Michaelgtrusa said:

It tells me the wrong HD space.

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If you’re using Time Machine, and if your Time Machine drive isn’t connected, OS X 10.7 Lion creates local backups on your startup volume. The Finder doesn’t report this space as used, but Disk Utility and iStat Menus do. For more information, please read this article by Roberto Valerio.

That’s why the Finder and iStat Menus show a different value for drive free space.

Unless the discrepancy you're seeing is something else.

razmarino said:

cannot find an option to enable time separator in 24h time format..it looks just like this

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It's possible to type letters in between the tokens in the menubar clock and world clock editors. To add :, click on the place you'd like it, and type ":". You can also add spaces, where appropriate (before "PM" etc).

bobobenobi said:

Does this work for the menu that appears, for example, when you click "HDD"? If so, how?

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Nope, the theme setting only changes the menubar items.

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iStat Menus 4.02 is going well. As well as many other things, we have updated the calendar menubar icons and section headers to look a lot better.

Bjango said:

It's possible to type letters in between the tokens in the menubar clock and world clock editors. To add :, click on the place you'd like it, and type ":". You can also add spaces, where appropriate (before "PM" etc).

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Thank you, no more comments! Good luck in further development!

Bjango said:

Nope, the theme setting only changes the menubar items.

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Well, those are the graphs that I think are ugly. They looked nicer in the old version.

EDIT: I just noticed that the drop-down for CPU no longer lists each individual core. Please bring that back. Seeing the behavior of all sixteen of my system's SMT cores is most of the reason I bought your software in the first place.

bobobenobi said:

EDIT: I just noticed that the drop-down for CPU no longer lists each individual core. Please bring that back. Seeing the behavior of all sixteen of my system's SMT cores is most of the reason I bought your software in the first place.

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It's possible to see the CPU cores in the menubar (as one item, or all cores separate), and to see the cores in the dropdown, via a submenu.

I rather use my computer to fun stuff instead of looking at the statistics.
When I got iStat, I was looking at the all day, but currently I could't care less as I cannot influence the stats anyways. They should make a windows version because that where you would need this.

Bjango said:

It's possible to see the CPU cores in the menubar (as one item, or all cores separate), and to see the cores in the dropdown, via a submenu.

Image

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Can I have them consolidated in the menu but all visible in the drop down?

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JGRE said:

I rather use my computer to fun stuff instead of looking at the statistics.
When I got iStat, I was looking at the all day, but currently I could't care less as I cannot influence the stats anyways. They should make a windows version because that where you would need this.

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Some people use their computers as tools. Some of those people can influence their CPU stats quite easily.

bobobenobi said:

Can I have them consolidated in the menu but all visible in the drop down?

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Some people use their computers as tools. Some of those people can influence their CPU stats quite easily.

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I would venture a guess, that the ones who use their computers as tools, rarely if at all use istat for anything. They would simply do their work and move on, not messing about with istat nonesense.