Weekly Utilities Update: SuperCal, SwitchResX, Sophos, more...

Our Weekly Utilities Update report is a list of all the updates for many Mac utilities that have been released in the past week. While utilities can be any tool that helps you perform a routine task (including image manipulation and synchronization), our main focus in this column is to bring you those that help in troubleshooting Mac hardware and software problems.

This week, the Samba CIFS networking suite was updated, which fixes a few small bugs that would be primarily useful to IT and network administrators. For most home uses, I recommend letting Apple provide Samba updates since any errors in the configuration may result in broken windows networking.

iDefrag has also been updated (see this article for tips on defragmenting hard drives in OS X), which provides minor fixes to how volumes are listed and managed. Additionally, SwitchResX has been updated to fix a bug that caused the previous version to crash.

The main update that caught my eye was SuperCal screen calibration software. This program is an alternative to the built-in display color calibrator that is available in the System Preferences. I mentioned this utility in a recent article on display calibration, and recommend it for people who want a more thorough solution but who do not want to spend extra money on hardware display calibrators. This update enhances the program with a few pattern changes to better match intensity levels and set up for the calibration, and also adds features like being able to control the sliders with arrow keys. The program is now a universal binary, so it will run natively on Intel Macs.

Recently Updated Utilities:

1. Samba 3.4.4 - Implementation of CIFS/SMB networking.
2. InterMapper 5.2 - Monitors servers, networks & routers.
3. iDefrag 1.7.3 - Defragmentation & disk optimization.
4. A Better Finder Attributes 4.46 - Change EXIF timestamp, file dates and other attributes.
5. Klix 1.1 - Recover erased or corrupt pics from digital cameras.
6. SuperCal 1.2.0a51 - Display calibrator for LCD, CRT, plasma display, projector
7. CleanMyMac 1.7.4 - Clean up your Mac & free up hard drive space with a few clicks.
8. FoxTrot Personal Search 2.5.3 - Advanced find-by-content for your personal data.
9. JollysFastVNC 1.02 - Secure ARD and VNC client.
10. SwitchResX 4.1.1 - Custom resolutions, desktop icon position saving & more.
11. Sophos Anti-Virus 7.1.2 - Protects Macs against known and unknown threats.

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