XMenu: Apple Menu Nostalgia Cure

One of the biggest shocks when OS X came out was the lack of an Apple Menu. The Apple Menu had been the center point of working with the Mac for many, many users. It served as a launcher and file browser and a great host of other things. But all this went away with OS X, and there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fortunately, the dock and the "launcher" application were quick to step in and fill the gap. Now, the Apple menu is a very dusted and rarely visited place for me. The only time I ever go there is to change the 'Location'. XMenu is a program that aims to bring back the OS X Apple menu of old. It is not, however, a 'haxie' and it will not change the default Apple menu in any way. Instead it will add one or more menus at the left of the screen.

The Apple Menu of old?
Well... yes and no. XMenu does let you make a customized Apple Menu, exactly the way you were used to, by dropping files, folders and aliases into a 'Apple Menu Folder'. However, it is not exactly necessary to do so.

By default, after installation the program only has the Application menu visible. This menu will display the contents of the Applications folder on your system drive. Obviously, the contents are permanently refreshed and any application present in the folder will also appear in the menu.

But there are other menus that you can enable, with just the click of a button, without having to resort to gathering of files and aliases.

Developer Applications is another preset menu that you can enable. Since most people will have no items in the folder scanned by this menu you can use it for a secondary application menu or just about whatever tickles your fancy.

Home is a menu that holds all the contents of your user folder. This is useful for computers with many users, or for those users who keep everything in their home for easy backup. Best thing this menu offers is easy access to the desktop and the Public Folder.

The last preset is the Documents Menu, once again, ideal for those who make frequent use of the Documents folder. Also useful for those who are confronted with stubborn applications that will drop valuable information in the Documents Folder or refuse to look for it elsewhere.

The real deal
Beside the presets, which are all good and well, you can also have a true blue, just like in the old days, Apple Menu.

When you first launch XMenu, it will create an 'XMenu' folder in the Library within your user home. Now just pretend that instead of XMenu, this folder was called 'Apple Menu Items'. You know the rest, put what you need in there, leave spaces in front of names in order to create a sorting method and add folders with dashes in the name to act as separators.

Setting the settings
Unlike the original Apple Menu, this one has a number of options and settings you can change to make it better match your needs.

The preferences are very discretely located. Just hold down the Command key and click any of the Xmenus and you will see the program's control menu. From here you can open up the Preferences.

Inside the preferences you can enable or disable the various preset menus and make a number of changes, both aesthetic and functional. Of the more useful ones, you can turn on generic icons to speed up loading times for the menus; change the size of the icons showed in the menus to decrease the amount of screen real estate they need, and even turn them off altogether. Although very Windows-like, the option to place folders before or after files proves to be very welcome in the context of hierarchical menus, cutting down hugely on how much your mouse travels on the vertical axis.

The Good
Brings back the Apple Menu of old, complete with some new options that are sure to help you streamline the way you work with the menu itself.

The Bad
It's a shame that of the five possible menus, only one can be customized to suit exactly your needs. Also it would be nice if you were able to set the preferences for each menu separately.

The Truth
A nice little program that will bring back a bit of the good old days to the desktops of those that craved it. Yes the placement for it is all wrong, but you know for a fact that it doesn't touch the system at all in order to work.

Here are some screenshots, click to enlarge: