Program of the Day: Cinch for the Mac
One of the most useful new interface features in Windows 7 is the Aero stuff. This includes the feature that lets you drag windows to the edges of the screen to make convenient stuff happen. Drag a window to the top edge of the screen and the window maximizes. Drag it back down and it restores to its original size. I find this very useful on laptops with limited screen real estate. I especially like dragging a window to the left of the screen and having it resize to take the left half of the screen. I then drag a second window to the right and it fills the right side, making the two windows perfectly aligned. I find these features so useful that I missed them when working on the Mac. I should have known that someone else would miss it too and the developer of Cinch for the Mac has produced a great utility to duplicate this ability.
Cinch works flawlessly on the Mac and works just as well as the Windows 7 counterpart. It even intelligently handles multiple monitors, by letting you still drag windows back and forth between the monitors at will. While Cinch is great on a laptop screen, I also find it very useful on my big 24-inch display. The ability to put two windows side-by-side on the big screen provides a very useful working environment, as witnessed in the screen image to the right.
Ummm… Free? The developer’s site says it’s $7.00 shareware….?
Yeah it does say $7. But it is a cool application. Thanks
I’ve been using it for few weeks and l sure don’t remember having to pay anything. Has anybody else installed this?
James – FWIW, I get a nag screen every so often on it asking me to pay the $7.
Cool app, I’ll probably splurge on it.
That’s odd, I never get a nag screen. Maybe I paid it up front and forgot about it? Stranger things have happened.
I, too, have had this for a while. It is one of those great mini applications that you never realized you needed until you’ve used it once or twice and realize how incredibly useful it is. James, you probably did pay the seven dollars upfront for it (grin). The developer is tweaking it for use with Windows 7 as Windows 7 has its own function like this. These two will conflict so he’s working it out now.
I changed the post to remove any mention of free. I must have paid for this way back when, but I sure don’t remember doing so.
I’m using Size Up from the same guys, it’s like Cinch but has more features (1/4 screen, etc). It’s 13 bucks but for my smaller screen devices it’s very useful.
I’m one of those folks who doesn’t complain about having to pay for something useful. It helps keep developers developing.
On another note I’ve been thinking of getting one of those usb monitors for my macbook (13″) but stumbled upon Screen Recycler (http://screenrecycler.com/home.html) which looks like a nice alternative (since I also carry my dell mini 10v with me). Limited testing shows that it might do the job.