Each day this week we have revealed a new feature for iStat menus 1.2 on our blog. We still have 1 feature to reveal tomorrow but just for MacTalk users we are revealing the complete list right now.

Feature 1
First new feature is an enhancement to the Date & Time menu extra. In previous versions the customizability of the clock has been fairly limited but thats about to change big time.
iStat menus 1.2 will introduce a new clock format selector which will give you complete control over the clock display aswell as the ability to add custom characters such as separators, commas etc.



Feature 2
Next up is a user requested addition to the Network menu extra. You will now be able to view bandwidth graphs for each interface in the dropdown. These are perfect if you want to save space in the menubar by using the text only mode or a small graph. The graphs are nice and wide (58px wider then the widest menubar graph) so you can get a good overview of what's been going on.



Feature 3
Feature 3 is 4 parts. The first 2 are both related to S.M.A.R.T. temperature monitoring. You can now select a S.M.A.R.T temperature sensor as the primary sensor which is used in the menubar display. You can also choose which S.M.A.R.T. sensors are shown in the dropdown.

iStat menus 1.2 will also add support for temperature sensors in G4 powerbooks that previously would be stuck on the same value constantly.
We also have improved support for the latest iMacs and support for around 10 new temperature sensors on Intel based Xserves

Feature 4
Next up is a new feature for the Drives menu extra. We have added an option to show a disk activity graph in the dropdown so you can monitor your disk performance.



Feature 5
Feature 5 is a big interface change for the Date & Time extra. The dropdown is currently limited to the normal OS X aqua interface but as of version 1.2 you will be able to use our 'Blaqua' skin that is used in the other menu extras.
Please note this feature will require OS X 10.5.



Feature 6
The final feature is one that we have had alot of requests for. The cpu menu extra can now display the top 5 processes



There are lots of other new features and changes in store for 1.2 aswell. This is just a selection of some of the big ones.

I've been reading these on your blog. Good times ahead for the iStat Menus users. Nice work!

And here I am thinking the app is perfect, tsk on me

feature 5 just popped up on the blog and then flicked back here and feature 6 is there, the calendar looks good... very nice...

along way to go until its even close

I'm trying not to read too much into it, but it sounds like skinning or themes might be a part of Leopard?

without saying too much.. we could have done it in 10.4 but we decided not to because of 1 limitation in 10.4. Nothing to do with skinning or themes

I feel that the improved Date & Time feature (#1) still appears rather clunky;
the clunkiness is not your fault - trying to specify complex things with GUI elements, alone, is a huge challenge.

May I suggest that you also accept a string via a textbox, so that we could enter our preferred Date & Time format, and then your code could pass that to the standard strftime() library function for formatting?

You can but we are fairly happy with our solution so we wont be offering a textbox at this stage.

That's reasonable and fully your decision, but please don't claim "which will give you complete control over the clock display". I'd like to see a timezone value, for us frequent US travellers.

for now you will just have to change the system timezone which is what we use

Not wishing to nag, but I'd love to display the timezone, not set it.
Even a .plist property would help the initiated, and protect the GUI-afflicted

Ok thats fine then. I can add timezone display options.
Ill add the offset ("+1000") and the timezone name ("Australia/Hobart")

sweet...

Have you had much feedback on iStat Menus from people with iMac G5's? I found the app really good, but it seemed to be causing my machine some havoc. EyeTV locking up, turbo 264 crashing.. and general lethergy.. Once I uninstalled iStat Menus the machine went back to normal.. Thoughts?