Author Topic: Interesting OS-X utility: LaunchControl  (Read 3977 times)

elagache

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Interesting OS-X utility: LaunchControl
« on: January 26, 2014, 10:28:11 PM »
Dear WeatherCat OS-X tinkerers,

While trying to hunt down the odd source of my new MacBook Pro's excessive fan noise, I came across an unusual utility that I immediately took a liking to.  It is called LaunchControl and is basically a front-end to launchd the OS-X system to automatically start and stop utilities. 

http://www.soma-zone.com/LaunchControl/

Now messing around with your computers internal configuration is a great way to get yourself into deep trouble in hurry.  But just have I fired-up LaunchControl, I found two annoyances that I eagerly turned on.  I found the automatic update system that Google inflicted on my Mac to keep Chrome up to date, and I also found that Amazon had set up process to run their darn pesky cloud-player.  Since I don't use either, I promptly disabled both in less than a minute.

Without destroying your system, LaunchControl is very handy.  You can use it simply to see if everything is running as it should be. If you see a system daemon in red, that means something is probably wrong.  It turned out there was an OS-10.6 bug in the current version of LaunchControl that I helped the developer uncover.  As a result, the CrashReporter on my Mac had itself crashed.  Because of the display in LaunchControl, I realized I had no CrashReporter running.  Otherwise my computer could have been without this essential utility until my next reboot.  Particularly for those of us doing "sekret agent" stuff . . . , we need the CrashReporter running.  Even for the rest of us, if WeatherCat has a crash, not having the crash report basically means Stu won't be able to do any troubleshooting.

The fellow wants $10 for it.  At least for me it was money well spent.

Cheers, Edouard  [cheers1]

P.S. There should be a new version of LaunchControl next week with the fix for the OS-10.6 bug.