If there ever was a product page that made me lust more than the app, it would be Kaleidoscope. The moment I saw it, I knew I would download the app no matter what its functionality.
Turns out, Kaleidoscope is quite a useful one at that. A file comparison utility for the Mac that supports variety of image and text formats, including subversion support for other clients. The scope of Kaleidoscope is too wide to be discussed here. So the website is mind numbingly gorgeous, but what about the app?
Not too shabby. Brilliant—beautiful, in fact. It might even be better looking than the website. I now pray that my workflow requires more file comparisons, because I so want to use this every morning that I wake up. Three cheers to Sofa: one for making such a gorgeous website, second for not selling out to the iPad hype, and third, for making an otherwise boring job something pleasurable to look at. Seriously, go download it.
6 Comments
It is beautiful, but it bills itself for use with source code and as such really falls short by not letting take any action by **merging** the files you’re comparing.
Uh, don’t these guys realize the history of this product name?
http://kaleidoscope.net/What_is_Kaleidoscope.html
Must be newbies to the platform.
@Erik, The developers of the original Kaleidoscope are listed in the About panel of the app.
Sigh, this is again an example of ‘form over function’. Sure, it looks nice and all
but in the end it just does not deliver. How can one claim to be ‘world’s most advanced file comparison application’ but not have folder comparison and export of reports? (Araxis Merge does)
I don’t understand how this doesn’t support merging. It’s worthless hyperbole to say “world’s most advanced file comparison application” when it lacks this feature, while FileMerge, Changes, and Araxis Merge all support merging.
This is related to major weakness in Versions.app too– it lacks support for Subversion merges, which is a different concept, I know, but definitely related. Perhaps the people at Sofa never have to merge anything, which would be baffling to me. I’m saddened that Kaleidoscope got all this effort despite the glaring “merge support” hole in Versions.app and all of their assurances that they are working on it.
And the saddest thing of all is that both of these apps are *beautiful*. Unfortunately I just can’t justify buying them until they’re *useful*.
http://www.mediafire.com/?4yjumyezhmy