I don’t need super-nerdy monitoring software with complex terminology: I just want a simple app that checks on essential components of my Mac, remotely, in the background, reliably. Second, iStat 2 is beautiful server monitoring for mortals. I plan on using the mini a lot more for advanced tasks in the future, and iStat Server is the tool I’ll be keeping around. Firstly, it allows me to keep on eye on my Mac mini to see everything’s running smoothly. I don’t care about RAM and CPU monitoring on my iPhone, but I’m glad Bjango added a Network option. Similarly, the “Available Space” graph visualize a useful piece of information that would otherwise be buried in the Settings. You won’t be able to access History view on iOS, but I found the breakdown of battery time left depending on usage (3G, Talk, Video, etc) very handy. IStats provides detailed statistics for iOS devices as well. I like how on the iPad History is displayed through a sliding panel, rather than in a deeper view like on the iPhone. Even better, you can tap on the items displayed by iStat to get a History view that display stats over time for the past Hour, 24 Hour, 7 Days, 30 Days, 3 months, 6 months, and year. They are animated and they update in real time – this is useful to check upon a Mac when, such as in my case, the machine is processing heavy video files or streaming over the Internet. There are graphs for a variety of information such as CPU load and Network traffic. The server screen is where the good stuff happens. Servers with an open connection have a little Eject button next to their device icon, which is custom for every Mac and iOS device. You can access a server by tapping on it. iStat’s setup process is extremely simple and user-friendly. Once added, the first connection to a computer (whether local or not) will ask you for a confirmation PIN displayed by iStat Server on the desktop add it, and you’ll be set all future sessions. If your router supports UPnP, mapping should be done automatically by the iStat Server app running on your computer. You can search across them, or you can add a new one by hitting the + button and entering a Name, Address, and Port. The main screen of iStat 2 lists all your available devices. It has, however, a downside: iStat Menus can’t be accessed from other devices – and that’s why Bjango developed a server version, aptly named iStat Server, aimed at making your Mac available from iOS devices running iStat. It lives in my menubar, and it gives me detailed information about my Mac as well as other data such as time in other locations. In fact, I recommended the app both in 2010, 2011, and I’m still using it today. I’ve been using iStat Menus on my Mac for what seems like forever. I recoginize this doesn’t compare to using a mini as an Xcode build server, but it’s still something that I want to keep an eye on. Usually, it’s movie conversion through Handbrake or movie streaming through Plex Media Server. I do put my Mac mini through some more processor-intensive tasks every once in a while. Hazel is another invaluable utility when it comes to automating a remote Mac. All my Dropbox-based scripts for plain text and OmniFocus are created with the Mac mini in mind, because it’s always-on and lets me receive results in real time. I use my Mac mini primarily for media streaming through Plex and as a server for Mail, OmniFocus, Dropbox, and other services or apps that allow me to automate my workflow in the cloud. I don’t understand the teminology behind server management, and my limited skills go as far as restarting WebDAV and Apache. As documented elsewhere, I’m very happy with Macminicolo, their reliability, and the overall message of a Mac mini server always available in the cloud.īut I’m not a “server guy”. For iTunes, it means I’ve slowly uploaded my library to a Mac mini hosted on Macminicolo. It started with Rdio a year ago (now, I have a Family account and I’m not switching any time soon). For the past few months, however, I’ve been increasingly switching every part of my “entertainment workflow” from local to cloud-based. My MBA is the “work machine”, whereas the iMac has always been the media center of the house, as it’s connected to a couple of external drives with my iTunes library on it. I own a 13-inch MacBook Air and a 21.5-inch iMac. Bjango’s latest release, iStat 2, falls exactly under this category of apps: great-looking and efficient at the same time. I was already a big fan of Consume and Skala. They make the kind of simple, polished, and useful software that defines OS X as a platform with equal attention to beautiful pixels and powerful features.
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