Back in July I wrote a rather harsh review of an OS X application named iPiece. Shortly after that Joseph Wardell, the founder of Old Jewel Software, contacted me and asked if I could answer some questions regarding iPiece. I said sure, but he didn’t get back to me.
He didn’t get back to me because he was busy improving iPiece, somewhat based on my prior review. To be fair, I downloaded the new version (it’s at 1.1 now) and gave it a shot.
I was originally annoyed that you could only turn on magnification by double-clicking the menubar icon. No longer. You can assign a hotkey to toggle magnification. Good change.
I was originally annoyed that you couldn’t change the zoom level or the size of the zoom box without going to the preferences. No longer. You can assign hotkeys to both of these. Good change.
I was originally annoyed that the icon had too much transparant space. This hasn’t changed, but to be fair, people who routinely use this application aren’t going to be starting it up manually, they’ll have it run up when they login. And besides, who double-clicks application icons to start them these days? That’s what Quicksilver is for.
I have to change my initial rating of iPiece from a half star to four stars. I can see the utility of being able to see the rest of the screen when you only want to magnify a small section, something that OS X’s built-in zoom functionality doesn’t let you do. Although I probably won’t use it very often, neither will I delete it from my Applications folder. iPiece is no longer an iPiece of crap, it’s a Cool OS X App that does one thing and does it well. And kudos to Mr. Wardell for not flaming me out for my previous inflammatory review. :-)
iPiece is developed by Old Jewel Software. It is shareware, and a single-user licence costs $9.95. Four stars out of five.
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