Mac Pilot Reviews

Mac Pilot is a utility that allows Mac OS X users to enable and unlock over 225 hidden features and other advanced UNIX commands easily, beside optimize the Apple Mac OS X system. In short, Mac Pilot is the Swiss Army Knife that does all the user interface customization, combining with custom system tweaks and under the hood maintenance in a single convenient package.

Mac Pilot has, among others, the following features:

• Hide the Finder’s desktop
• Show invisible files
• Toggle Finder animations
• Disable certain Finder menus
• Lock your Dock!
• Enable Safari Debug menu
• Speed up Safari’s page loading
• Set Safari Cache limits
• Prefer plain text messages in Mail
• View complete hard drive information
• View complete network card information
• Broadband Optimizer
• COMPLETELY customize the Apple File Server – over 40 options!
• Customize the login window (messages, disable buttons, etc.)
• Change system startup mode (and disable RAM, enable debugging, etc.)
• Disable startup chime
• View, empty and delete logs
• Over 25 system tools including rebuilding the Launch Services Database
• Change default screenshot name, format, and save location

MacMod (link dead) gives the rating of 4 out of 5 to Mac Pilot and concludes that Mac Pilot’s abilities go on and on and the sheer number of things it’s capable of is a little overwhelming. While this is the greatest strength of Mac Pilot, it is also consequently it’s largest potential problem. While the authors did an excellent job of simplifying the plethora of options available on your Mac, it’s inevitable that such a vast array of possibilities will make the program somewhat unwieldy, despite (or because of) the convenient interface. The amount of features is simply overwhelming! This minor difficulty, inherent to the program, really keeps Mac Pilot from shining to perfection. Nevertheless, Mac Pilot’s goal is to liberate advanced settings from their obscure terminal commands and bringing them together in a single and easy to use utility; it achieved this goal with flying colors. Overall it certainly earns ‘Swiss Army Knife’ status and a place in everyone’s Utilities.