Anyone still use pre-installed third party apps?

[crammedberry]

Just wondering how many folks still use the pre-installed third party apps that came with your machine. For a few years I forgot they were even in the system specific disks since I just used the main OS disks to install the OS and get on with it.

I have the system specific disks for an iBook but couldn't get most of the software to install on my other iBook since the original one broke. I managed to bypass apple's restore installer and install the software directly by showing hidden files/folders.

One of the reasons I wanted to install this was to use the World Book Encyclopedia that came with most macs back in the day. I also managed to install Otto matic, which was a pretty neat game that I realized was still being sold today! It's still nice to reminisce.

If anyone still uses World Book, do you know how you can get it to update the articles to keep it current? I know this was possible a few years back but whenever I try to update them now the app just crashes. Just having a current encyclopedia would make this old iBook very valuable to me if that were possible.

 

[Anonymous Freak]

I still play Big Bang Board Games that came with an iBook forever ago.

 

[crammedberry]

When is your iBook from? I remember those games but for some reason they aren't in the installation media for my G3 so I must know them from somewhere else. I'm thinking maybe they were also included in the Intel Macs later on?

 

[bobesch]

I'm happy to have found OmniOutliner on the PowerBookG4 install-disk. There had been a lot of other stuff - all could be installed separately without reinstalling OSX.
Old CanoScanLide 80/90 flat-bed scanners also offer nice foto-editing and OCR-software with their scanners (but drivers are pre Leopard-OSX)

 

[crammedberry]

I'm happy to have found OmniOutliner on the PowerBookG4 install-disk. There had been a lot of other stuff - all could be installed separately without reinstalling OSX.
Old CanoScanLide 80/90 flat-bed scanners also offer nice foto-editing and OCR-software with their scanners (but drivers are pre Leopard-OSX)

Do you know any good PPC era OCR software? I was looking around for something like that but modern software is quite pricey. Think Adobe pricey. If there is PPC era OCR software that's now considered abandonware though I'd definitely check it out.

 

[bobesch]

Do you know any good PPC era OCR software? I was looking around for something like that but modern software is quite pricey. Think Adobe pricey. If there is PPC era OCR software that's now considered abandonware though I'd definitely check it out.

You may look for a CanoScanLide with included install-discs for mac to get the bundled OCR-software.
CanoScanLide 80/90 offer software/drivers for MacOS9 and OSX up to Tiger.
Thise scanners go as cheap as 10€ or less here.
Personally I use DEVONthink Office Pro, which is expensive but worth the money!
You first scan into PDF and afterwards let DEVONthink change them into searchable PDFs as a batch-task running in the background. So OCR doesn't block the scanner after each scanned page/PDF as it happens with OCR that is related to the scanner software.
In combination with a Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500m (which also includes Abbyy OCR an drivers for Leopard) I used/use DEVONthink to convert all my medical journals into an archive of searchable PDFs...

 

[crammedberry]

Personally I use DEVONthink Office Pro, which is expensive but worth the money!
You first scan into PDF and afterwards let DEVONthink change them into searchable PDFs as a batch-task running in the background. So OCR doesn't block the scanner after each scanned page/PDF as it happens with OCR that is related to the scanner software.
In combination with a Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500m (which also includes Abbyy OCR an drivers for Leopard) I used/use DEVONthink to convert all my medical journals into an archive of searchable PDFs...

I looked at DEVOnthink, it seems like they offer student/educator discounts which may be nice. Last year they were offering 40% to students though, too bad I didn't know about it then as it would have been a great deal. I was actually looking for OCR software for my scientific journals so it would make it easier on me to just search through them all at once as opposed to going through each one every time I need something.

 

[bobesch]

I looked at DEVOnthink, it seems like they offer student/educator discounts which may be nice. Last year they were offering 40% to students though, too bad I didn't know about it then as it would have been a great deal. I was actually looking for OCR software for my scientific journals so it would make it easier on me to just search through them all at once as opposed to going through each one every time I need something.

Ha, if you should have the opportunity to get a copy for students at 40% it's a no brainer.
The included OCR to make PDFs searchable runs really smooth and results are reliable.
Scan to non-searchable PDF is still fast on PowerPCs - to make them searchable is the bottleneck and can be run e.g. overnight.
I mainly use my ScanSnap1500, which "eats" a 50p-journal within 3-5 minutes, but I don't use the AbbyyExpress-option which is bundled to the scanner, 'cause it will take another 10 minutes to create a fully searchable PDF before the next scanning may be initiated. Instead scanning to DEVONthink will direct the PDF to DEVONthink's batch-OCR procedure that runs in the background and allows you to continue scanning immediately. This is my MBPi7 scenario.
For PPC I'd run the Scan2PDF routine (either with FujitsuScanSnap or CanoScanLide-Flatbed), finish all scanning, drag the PDFs to the DEVONthink Inbox and start batch conversion to searchable PDF at any convenient time, best overnight, and you'll have your searchable documents ready at breakfast.
You may also make DEVONthink a database server to view and search with any network connected browser.
The developers offer the App for Tiger, Leopard, Lion and current OS X releases.
It's good fun to use the prog.

 

[crammedberry]

Ha, if you should have the opportunity to get a copy for students at 40% it's a no brainer.
The included OCR to make PDFs searchable runs really smooth and results are reliable.
Scan to non-searchable PDF is still fast on PowerPCs - to make them searchable is the bottleneck and can be run e.g. overnight.
I mainly use my ScanSnap1500, which "eats" a 50p-journal within 3-5 minutes, but I don't use the AbbyyExpress-option which is bundled to the scanner, 'cause it will take another 10 minutes to create a fully searchable PDF before the next scanning may be initiated. Instead scanning to DEVONthink will direct the PDF to DEVONthink's batch-OCR procedure that runs in the background and allows you to continue scanning immediately. This is my MBPi7 scenario.
For PPC I'd run the Scan2PDF routine (either with FujitsuScanSnap or CanoScanLide-Flatbed), finish all scanning, drag the PDFs to the DEVONthink Inbox and start batch conversion to searchable PDF at any convenient time, best overnight, and you'll have your searchable documents ready at breakfast.
You may also make DEVONthink a database server to view and search with any network connected browser.
The developers offer the App for Tiger, Leopard, Lion and current OS X releases.
It's good fun to use the prog.

Yes it sounds like it's pretty useful. I'll keep an eye out for another student sale as it is a little pricey on its own. I am still a student after all, haha. But for what I've been wanting to do it seems perfect. Most of the modern journals give you a PDF option and it's great as they are already searchable but the old ones are just scanned copies and that's what I'm planning on using it for. Though using it as a database seems nice, I didn't know about that feature so it's looking even better the more I learn about it. Thanks for the tip!

 

[Anonymous Freak]

When is your iBook from?

I don't recall which machine it was from. I've sold all my iBooks since; I just have the copies I put on my PowerBook G4.

 

[bobesch]

I've mentioned OmniOutliner as pre-installed 3rd-party-app. Certainly a brilliant app, but I'm not sure, if the current OSX is still "in-sync" with the old version.
Working on different platforms I startet to looking for the "lowest common denominator" for a lot of my work since many of my favorite progs proved to be a dead end road, and after the app was abandoned all my data were difficult to recover.
Concerning Tasks "TaskPaper1.0" is a simple but powerful Outliner-application which runs on both PPC and intel-Macs. Version 1.0 is free now. Sync with iOS works with Dropbox or maybe webDAV (a lot of more active synching necessary).
Have fun!