Tags 2, from Case Apps, is a lightweight tagging and tag browsing tool for the Mac that is clean, fast and elegant — and so unobtrusive that you could conceivably use it almost every day for half a year before remembering to write about it… Plus, if you ever encountered the software in its previous version, forget everything you thought you knew about it: Tags 2 is way better (not to mention better-looking) than the original.

The latest version of Ironic Software’s Leap helps tagging live up to its hype as a solution for making sense of your collection of digital data, whatever it might be: combine OpenMeta-based tagging with the Mac’s built-in Spotlight, and you may have all you need to keep track of it all.

The version control system known as Subversion brings great power, and with great power comes great hassle and complexity and annoyance. At least, that’s been my experience — but no longer. Thanks to the imaginatively-named Versions, Mac users have a graphical Subversion client that does things ‘the Mac way’: Subversion just works.

DEVONthink 2.0 has now been in public beta for several months, with the final release right around the corner. The new version brings a host of feature enhancements and interface and usability improvements. But while this superstar of Mac OS X information management is more capable than ever before, advances in tagging technology and search in the underlying operating system itself threaten to shrink the potential market for this software down to just those who are truly taking advantage of the software’s sophisticated AI core.

With a new ‘projects’ capability, text completion, non-modal find and a persistent scratchpad, the latest release of BBEdit — at version 9.0.2 as of this writing in December 2008 — provides new tools that allow it to move farther into the space occupied by full-fledged coding environments, without losing the simplicity that makes it a good fit for much smaller scale tasks. See our previous reviews of BBEdit 8.5 and of BBEdit 8.0 for more on this very capable software package, or read on to learn more about the upgrade.

Having evaluated literally dozens of different project time tracking applications, I’m convinced that for my purposes as an individual practitioner and consultant, OfficeTime is exactly the right one for me.

As a Universal binary, the Microsoft Office suite now runs natively on Intel Macs, offering a big step up in performance for those on Intel-based machines. Visually elegant interface changes appear throughout the suite, and new or intermediate users will now find it easier than ever to discover and apply the software’s capabilities. The competitive landscape has shifted significantly since Office 2004, however, and some users in small mental health practices may find Microsoft Office less indispensable than it once was.