CLIX 1.7.2e 'lipo'

Could something be wrong?

The freebie version of CLIX was updated 10 April 2006 to 1.7.2e 'lipo'.

Something might be wrong.

Version 1.7.2d, already industrial strength lean and mean, is 8 KB bigger. Perhaps something's missing.

Tests of the two versions show that performance wise they're identical, with a slight edge to the new 1.7.2e 'lipo'.

'Yes, we were worried about that', said Rixstep CFO Sydney Phillips. 'With other OS X packages threatening to burst broadband pipes at the seams, what would people say if they saw a popular download go size wise in the other direction? But so far the reaction has been unanimously positive.'

'CLIX 1.7.2e was nicknamed 'lipo' for obvious reasons', commented Rixstep CTO Rick Downes. 'We were able to eliminate a 'man in the middle' module. With less piping we could in addition speed up the performance of the app. It was wins all around.'

68 New Commands

The new release also comes with its expected enhancement to the startup command database.

'A lot of odds 'n' ends but also important security tools', advised Phillips. 'With the recent spate of exploits on the platform no amount of prevention is ill advised. We recommend performing the new security audits and fixes regularly, just to be safe. People have not been careful.'

CLIX started as a convenient way for network professionals to archive and run their most used command lines without the torture of typing them in all the time. It quickly became popular with the beige box and switcher crowds who wanted to learn more about the 'rock solid foundation of Unix'.

OS X Snake Oil Dear

'About the only people who reacted negatively were the snake oil salesmen', reflected Phillips. 'The ones who counted on newcomers not understanding their system and on not knowing everything was already there on their hard drives at no additional cost.'

'It's rather amazing, and we haven't run into a similar phenomenon on other platforms', she added, 'but a surprising contingent of the user base had absolutely no clue they could already perform all these tasks for free - and no other platform has seen such a blatant crass exploit of user ignorance. I'm proud we've helped to set that right.'

'Excepting the work of Bresink with his TinkerTool, there's not a one of them who've done any real programming anyway', added Downes. 'And the package uploads are amateurish with bogus files - even empty files - included, with debug builds bloating the packages - and as for performance they only invoke the same Unix command lines CLIX uses but take money for it. It's downright criminal - an engineering and ethics felony.'

OS X Snake Oil Insecure

'And not to forget the security risks', Phillips jumped in, referring to the revelation these snake oil products were broadcasting passphrases in clear text on the command line. 'That was unforgivable.'

'They even wrote to us and protested', she laughed. 'We were being unfair by publicising this news and condemning the practice. They were just poor amateur programmers and it was all Apple's fault. What else were they to do, they asked, short of writing real programs?'

'And that question answers itself.'

CLIX was voted the #1 power tool for OS X by iCreate Magazine.

CLIX in the ACP gallery »