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Designing a piece of art icon has some consequences. If you check Transmit icon there even if you don't use OS X, it will look familiar to you.

http://www.panic.com/transmit/

That thing is one of the most stolen icons of all time. They even put a page dedicated to "rip off"

http://www.panic.com/extras/ripoff/

Note many sites fixed their stolen icons after figuring it out. Yes, it is usually a burglar single webmaster to blame. I personally know one of them got fired who should knaw Panic Inc. and Transmit icon 6 months ago because of the site he "designs".

BTW if you don't use OS X, don't get tricked by how eye candy and easy looking those programs are. They are eye candy code wise too. It is not like "code must suck so they made it look beautiful". They are very advanced, elite coded modern applications which really fits good to year 2006 and the OS X they run on.

Candybar by Panic lets you keep give custom icons consistently to many applications.

Same list, with links:

10 - Transmission
9 - Potion Factory
8 - Podcast Maker
7 - Transmit
6 - Quinn
5 - AppZapper
4 - AcQuisition
3 - CoverFlow
2 - Newsfire
1 - Delicious Library

Very spiffy! Have you seen Panic Goods? Based on my experience there, I was expecting to drag things into and out of the cart just to get the Mac OS X-like puff-of-smoke animation. :)

Cabel (of the Mac software shop Panic) has put up a quicktime video of Half-Life 2 running on his Intel iMac. In two words, it looks friggin sweet:

http://cabel.name/

(With apologies to his hosting provider.)

Some group of thiefs stole iTunes interface and GUI. Making it opensource does not matter.

Apple actually bought the iTunes interface. Full details at http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/ . Good read for all developers.

Here is what Apple PAID FOR http://www.macupdate.com/screenshot.php?id=3714

Most "pirate enthusiasts" are people who do not have the means to purchase the software they want. These include children, students of any sort, the unemployed, and so on. Nobody loses revenue from these people, they don't have the money to buy the product.

I can recall some time ago that there was an argument that to combat piracy, software companies could lower the price tag, so the people who would normally pirate it could afford it. If you could make just as money by selling your product to more people at a lower price as you would selling it at a higher price and putting up with more piracy, then why not go with the former? As for the software producer, they would at least have a larger legitimate customer base that I'm sure helps with marketing the product even better.

Perhaps if they lower their prices just right (and I mean so low that it would seem ridiculous), they may suddenly tap into a large enough user base, and actually make more money than if they kept their prices high. I'm sure the "pirate enthusiasts" even have a price they are willing to pay. People actually would prefer to have legitimate copies that came with manuals and were guilt-free.

I think there is a much greater cost to piracy, though, for very small, independent software developers who are releasing shareware or other niche software.

I don't know if that low price idea I heard of took off as a trend, unless the shareware industry actually follows that philosophy. I personally buy heaps of shareware. On occasion, I don't even bother with trial periods and just buy fully registered copies. I also recall reading a comment someone posted online mentioning that in the old Apple II days, he would never pirate or let someone copy his collection of Beagle Brothers software. At that time, other companies were raising their prices and working copy protection schemes onto their disks. But Beagle Brothers kept their prices reasonable, and didn't use copy protection. It was a kind of "customer loyalty" thing, out of respect for them because they were really into programming and making it fun, rather than trying to make a profit.

While I agree, I'm going to add in a different point of view:

some kind of expensive research or expertise that is difficult to duplicate in a community project.

...or, something else that you don't necessarily get from a community project: mainly coherent, unified design. For example, Transmit and Unison: FTP and Usenet software for Mac OS, respectively. Now, most people would ask themselves, why create utiliities that do what so many utilities have already done? Well, Panic takes those utilities, and gives them a polish that you don't get from a committee. And people will pay for that. They've also made a concerted effort to make their products simply better enough than their free competition to make them worth paying for. Perhaps that was Mulberry's problem: it just wasn't better enough. I can see that being a problem with email clients: like another poster mentioned, there are some pretty damn good free email clients, on all the major platforms.

Granted, this may not be fair: maybe Mac users are more apt to pay for software like this than are Windows or Linux users (at least, that's what people have said in the past - is it true? Who knows.), and maybe Mac users care more about unified, well-thought-out design than their Windows/Linux counterparts, but Panic has stayed around, primarily because they innovate within their products, and not necessarily attempt to create new niches.

While I agree, I'm going to add in a different point of view:

some kind of expensive research or expertise that is difficult to duplicate in a community project.

...or, something else that you don't necessarily get from a community project: mainly coherent, unified design. For example, Transmit and Unison: FTP and Usenet software for Mac OS, respectively. Now, most people would ask themselves, why create utiliities that do what so many utilities have already done? Well, Panic takes those utilities, and gives them a polish that you don't get from a committee. And people will pay for that. They've also made a concerted effort to make their products simply better enough than their free competition to make them worth paying for. Perhaps that was Mulberry's problem: it just wasn't better enough. I can see that being a problem with email clients: like another poster mentioned, there are some pretty damn good free email clients, on all the major platforms.

Granted, this may not be fair: maybe Mac users are more apt to pay for software like this than are Windows or Linux users (at least, that's what people have said in the past - is it true? Who knows.), and maybe Mac users care more about unified, well-thought-out design than their Windows/Linux counterparts, but Panic has stayed around, primarily because they innovate within their products, and not necessarily attempt to create new niches.

Audion was released for free (it was for sale and apparently very well received in japan) after apple began development of iPod+iTunes, the software claims to be able to sync with an ipod even! (this may be out of date.) There are a ton of really creative skins and playlist support that is more like winamp. It burns, it rips, it has pluggins everything (including visualizers) . I was really excited to see this!

Visit:
http://www.panic.com/audion/
and use the liscense key they show you on the download page.

As a side note, this saved me a few times when iTunes was braindead about loading in multiple directories as playlists. Loading one album at a time when my collection has 100's?! And finally, making a playlist is not automatic, and neither is deleting one. It's really easy to have files in your library that aren't shown in any playlist, and there is no tell what playlists a song in the libaray belongs to! if you don't recall exactly what's in hundreds of different playlists then you can't really delete anything with impunity . God help you if you default and let it manage your files..! (beware of this feature!!) Large playlists don't survive their one-level heirarchy either, which is periously one-way.

Actually, since i just got a shot to learn the xml.minidom module from Python, i guess i could perform translations with this xml document (which the iTunes library is) and help with importing and exporting the music. The software is really not designed to handle intensive sequening of songs alot of folks now like to do with the iPod.

Why ya still reading, go get audion :) .j.

This seems to be a day of reminiscence for self... Before visiting Slashdot this morning to indulge in the history of the Pilot, I read a rather long piece on the legacy of Suck.com.

Perhaps now I should visit the True Story of Audion for a complete and well-rounded dose of nostalgia.

Interesting story about iTunes and another Mac MP3 player called Audion... The Story of Audion

The problem is, IIRC, that Creative applied for the patent in January 2001. The iPod wasn't even on the market until (I think) October 2001.

Yeah, but the patent isn't limited to the iPod or even personal music players, rather "portable devices". Audion 1.5 supported hierarchal menus like this way back in February 2000, 11 months before filing. Here's an excerpt from a commentary by the creator detailing the history of Audion:

Our frantic work on Audion had continued unabated since the release of 1.0. 1.0.1 was released a few weeks after 1.0, then, of course, came 1.2 in November. Finally, on February 22nd, 2000, we updated Audion to version 1.5. This version was a huge one for us with many firsts -- it added the much-requested hierarchical playlists, automatic playlist organization based on ID3 tags, the hilarious and surprisingly effective Karaoke mode, the Alarm Clock, a perennial dorm room favorite, and much more.

Combine Audion with any laptop and you've got the system that Creative patented. And since Audion was *requested* to make this adjustment, you know that it was present elsewhere meaning even more prior art.

For an example of drag and drop in use, check out Panic's website

quoting one of my earlier posts

The only instances when I've found translucency to be useful are:

1. When I'm stuck on my powerbook with a single, reletively small display, and I need to be able to see a webpage or source file when I'm coding and there isn't enough desktop realestate for all of the open windows.

2. When you want some kind of floating data. ie- uptime or load averages or whatever that are floating above everything or stuck on the desktop... like a screen tattoo (like that program stattoo by Panic

any other use (translucent menus, translucent window borders, translucent desktop rubberband select, etc) is just eyecandy. Which makes using the computer a little more fun... so long as it doesn't impede on your productivity... like when you try to run OSX on a 300mhz G3.

Depends on how many products you have.

This shopping cart, for example, works just fine without being able to bookmark individual product pages.

Sure, if I were Amazon.com with millions of products there'd be problems with a single page catalog, but most small e-businesses don't need a huge shopping cart.

The only instances when I've found translucency to be useful are:

1. When I'm stuck on my powerbook with 1 monitor and I need to be able to see a webpage or source file when I'm coding and there isn't enough desktop realestate for all of the open windows.

2. When you want some kind of floating data. ie- uptime or load averages or whatever that are floating above everything or stuck on the desktop... like a screen tattoo (like that program stattoo by Panic

any other use (translucent menus, translucent window borders, translucent desktop rubberband select, etc) is just eyecandy. Which makes using the computer a little more fun... so long as it doesn't impede on your productivity... like when you try to run OSX on a 300mhz G3.

Correct. It does not.

In fact, there's a serious lack of a decent alternative to iTunes for OS X: ie an regular good ol' winamp-like MP3 player,

"Audion 3: The ultimate Macintosh MP3 player / encoder". Probably the best of the bunch, and it was recently discontinued for OS X. Why? Various reasons, but mainly because an arguably superior product is now available for free. (Oh, us poor, poor consumers.)

and a lack of a decent alternative to Quicktime (VLC doesn't count, im talking things like Zoom Player).

Let me guess: VLC doesn't count because it's existence contradicts your argument. VLC is a fine program, with much broader format support, and terrific support for subtitles. Between that and Mplayer, I don't need to use Quicktime at all, nor do I need an [expletive] "pro" key to go full-screen.

On the Windows front, there's a whole wackload of alternatives for Windows Media Player that goes on and on and on.

Yeah, a bigger user base will do that for ya. Thanks, Captain Observo.

In that respect, there's no decent photo viewer other than iPhoto (Picasa is there for PC),

Come on, perform at least a cursory search before opening your mouth. Shoebox is an excellent program.

no decent consumer video editor other than iMovie (plenty for PC)

Depending on how you cut the difference between 'pro' and 'consumer', the numbers change. How about Hyperengine AV, and Avid Free DV? But more to the point:

and so on and so forth. No one has competed with Apple on this front. Why? Because it's their by default? Why isn't Apple getting sued?

Because, in case you're forgotten, the "sue your platform" tactic was already tried by Netscape, and THEY LOST. Even the much more sinister bundling and OEM contracts cases amounted to almost nothing in the end.

Suffice to say Microsoft is doing absolutely nothing to stop others from installing other browsers/media players or whatever people want.

I don't know about absolutely nothing, but at least they are now forbidden to enter into exclusive bundling contracts with OEMs with obvious intent to crush a competitor. That policy has changed, to eliminate the middleman. That policy now reads, "Just buy the competitor."

So Real Player has every opportunity to gather attention, and in fact their player used to be quite popular. Then it started to be spyware ridden, over-bloated interface and horribly slow player, and they lost it.

A perfect example of a media delivery middleman doing exactly the wrong thing: Making it harder for people to get what they're after, instead of easier. (That's why the Quicktime interface consists of: A row of navigation buttons, and a volume control. No hippy-dippy "skins" to apply, no grating 'bonus content' area, and the 'favorites' in a simple, detached, closable window that most people never see.)

If you're still wondering why Apple isn't being sued while Microsoft was, take note that you're comparing Apples to oranges. If you don't want iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, iChat, Mail, Safari, and Terminal on your machine, you can just drag them to the trash, and empty it. And third-party apps continue to work just fine. If you don't want Internet Explorer, WMP, or Outlook Express as part of Windows, you're facing a very different uphill battle. For a while, your 'best' solution was to download an

This evidence of intent to profit from infringement seems to be what lost the case for them.

While I'm no fan of adware, how is its use related to intent?

What about software that like BitTorrent has infringing and non-infringing uses, and is not promoted for its infringing uses, but is commercial and makes more money with more users and more users are attracted my more content (network effect).

Imagine an ad-supported version of Bits on Wheels or Transmit.

The opinion in some places is well-focussed on intent, but in others it drifts down a slippery slope to including any for-profit copy-enabling code.

a lenghty but nice story of that time and place...
http://www.panic.com/extras/audionstory/

Before I got an iPod, I almost never used iTunes. I used Audion for managing all of my MP3 playlists and so forth, and I loved the various skins and features that Audion offered. It was a pain in the butt to recreate all my playlists in iTunes, and I'm not complaining, but my point is to agree with the parent: There are many good MP3 programs out there .. iTunes is but one of them.

1. Justin Frankel writes WinAmp, a nice free little Windows mp3 player that helps set off the mp3 revolution. AOL eventually buys it for oodles of $$$ and after lots of drama loses much of the development team & lets WinAmp languish.
2. SoundJam was written for the Mac by Bill Kincaid & Jeff Robbin. You can find a bit of history on it here.
3. It's competitor on the Mac was Audion, their story here.
4. SoundJam was eventually licensed to distributor house Cassidy & Green & and becomes SoundJam MP.
5. MS keeps upgrading Media Center to show off MS technologies and compete with Apple's limited QuickTime Player application.
6. Real is doing the same, if less successfully.
7. Apple goes shopping for an mp3 player to jumpstart their internal development. As Audion was already in talks with AOL for a Mac counterpart to WinAmp they weren't attractive.
8. Apple buys SoundJam MP from Cassidy & Green, hires Jeff Robbin as a developer, and a few months later it's descendant iTunes is born (Wikipedia entry).
9. iTunes is brought to MacOS X.
10. Apple introduces the iPod as the portable compliment to iTunes - their close integration is considored a key factor in it's success.
11. iTunes is brought cross-platform by porting chunks of Apple's UI & taking advantage of the already existing QuickTime for Windows tools.
12. Cassidy & Green closes.
13. the iTunes Store is rolled out offering the ability to download music from 5 big companies.
14. Steve Jobs announces the next version of iTunes will support Podcasting (a 3rd party quickly adds this onto the Windows version.)
15. Rumor has it a future version of iTunes will support a store for video.

1. Justin Frankel writes WinAmp, a nice free little Windows mp3 player that helps set off the mp3 revolution. AOL eventually buys it for oodles of $$$ and after lots of drama loses much of the development team & lets WinAmp languish.
2. SoundJam was written for the Mac by Bill Kincaid & Jeff Robbin. You can find a bit of history on it here.
3. It's competitor on the Mac was Audion, their story here.
4. SoundJam was eventually licensed to distributor house Cassidy & Green & and becomes SoundJam MP.
5. MS keeps upgrading Media Center to show off MS technologies and compete with Apple's limited QuickTime Player application.
6. Real is doing the same, if less successfully.
7. Apple goes shopping for an mp3 player to jumpstart their internal development. As Audion was already in talks with AOL for a Mac counterpart to WinAmp they weren't attractive.
8. Apple buys SoundJam MP from Cassidy & Green, hires Jeff Robbin as a developer, and a few months later it's descendant iTunes is born (Wikipedia entry).
9. iTunes is brought to MacOS X.
10. Apple introduces the iPod as the portable compliment to iTunes - their close integration is considored a key factor in it's success.
11. iTunes is brought cross-platform by porting chunks of Apple's UI & taking advantage of the already existing QuickTime for Windows tools.
12. Cassidy & Green closes.
13. the iTunes Store is rolled out offering the ability to download music from 5 big companies.
14. Steve Jobs announces the next version of iTunes will support Podcasting (a 3rd party quickly adds this onto the Windows version.)
15. Rumor has it a future version of iTunes will support a store for video.

This is the problem with too many software projects. They feel that it is ok to overlook the kinks while complaining about Microsoft and other proprietary products. I feel the reason that MS is still able to get people to run out and buy their software is they do a great job of polishing it so at least it looks good enough to buy.

Now if more Open Source projects could learn to do that polish we would really get somewhere. The guys over at Panic (http://www.panic.com/) do a great job of polishing up their stuff before they push it out.

When Mozilla decided to polish up their product and enhance their branding and release Firefox there was an amazing increase in interest in their project. The software did not change a whole lot in the core functionality but it certainly felt like a better web browser.

I have to try Open Office again sometime. The last I tried it was clunky and slow. It would be nice to see that has changed.

I had to check your link to make sure it wasn't the newsreader Unison, which is also pretty nifty. Though I think someone needs to change their name to avoid the confusion . . . Who came first?

You must be thinking of the Apple Design Award. It's a "beautiful metal cube ... that glows when you touch it." Unfortunately they're generally not for sale.

http://www.mekentosj.com/goodies/cubism/

PIctures, including x-rays:
http://www.mekentosj.com/goodies/cubism/gallery.ht ml

This is obviously a rather well known thing but the ultimate form of advertising is word of mouth. Once you have the product, and a product that people will want, appreciate and purchase, they _will_ tell their friends.

There is one area you can go wrong though and that is by being impatient. Word of mouth will not bring about results immediately. Normal (read expensive) advertising will, but it is not guaranteed that your product is ready to be advertised. Word of mouth will only spread when the product is ready so while you are waiting you can tune and perfect your product and delivery methods.

Two quick examples are Google and Panic. Google of course appeared simply because people told each other. Phrases like "I will be right back, just Googling it" are what you want to hear. Panic, a Mac shareware house and a very successful one at that, have never advertised but their devoted fanbase is only too happy to advertise for them.

I'm not sure what your question really is (or even if you're just trolling), but if you don't like iTunes, there are alternatives:

- for Linux, there is gtkpod
- for Mac OS X, there is Audion
- for Windows, there is ephpod

If you just don't like the iPod, well there's too much choice to even start discuss it. Google will be your friend for that.

You can however, keep the upload bandwidth open.

I think upload speed should be limited a little. When I'm uploading with my otherwise excellent FTP programme on 256/64 ADSL, it monopolises the upload bandwidth to an extent that almost nothing else gets through on my computer or others, even HTTP requests. This is a pity because there's lots of spare download bandwidth.

You can read the complete story of iTunes, SoundJam and Audion here.

Yep, they got that one wrong. I don't know how--any idiot can tell you that SoundJam went through several full versions before being bought by Apple. For a truly facinating read on the history of SoundJam, Audion (its competitor) and iTunes, read this history of Audion

as and when it became the basis of iTunes, SoundJam has bcome a thing of the past, and so has C & G.

on the other hand, SoundJam's competitor, Audion, is still around, available for Mac OS Classic as well as Mac OS X for free:

http://www.panic.com/audion/

Here's a comparison chart (slightly biased, perhaps) of Audion vs. the early version of iTunes:

http://www.panic.com/audion/chart.html/

Regards,

Walter.

as and when it became the basis of iTunes, SoundJam has bcome a thing of the past, and so has C & G.

on the other hand, SoundJam's competitor, Audion, is still around, available for Mac OS Classic as well as Mac OS X for free:

http://www.panic.com/audion/

Here's a comparison chart (slightly biased, perhaps) of Audion vs. the early version of iTunes:

http://www.panic.com/audion/chart.html/

Regards,

Walter.

Transmit from the good people at Panic

Buy it and enjoy it.

Speaking of shareware, it's probably worth mentioning that right now, OS X has an incredible selection of shareware available.

Seriously, there are so many astoundingly good programs out there for free/cheap for solving all those pesky annoyances. Independent developers are pumping out titles rivaling the quality of software produced by big companies. It's really a testament to the APIs put out by Apple.

Just to name a few,
quicksilver - data access tool. one of the most innovative programs i've ever used.
CSSEdit - simplistic stylesheet creator/editor. allows idiots to produce valid CSS
Transmit - wonderful FTP client (my only gripe is that this should've been intergrated into the OS itself)
Acquisition - one of the best p2p clients known to man.
Adium X - the power of gaim + the beauty of OSX = priceless
BBEditBBEdit - so it's a bit more well-known than the others here, but is still a marvelous editor. a bit expensive and out of my budget. I use jEdit instead (which is cross-platform, BTW)

just to name a few..... (feel free to add more)

Get a Mac with Mac OS X, and use Panic's $12.95 Desktastic. It lets you draw directly on top of any window you want, including the desktop.

While it may not be quite as advanced, in particular with the corporate uses, Panic has a li'l app, also for OS X called desktastic which allows you to draw directly on the screen. Just as Pixar's tool, this features Wacom tablet support, variable line widths and an eraser function. The drawings can be saved for later use.

It's really quite a bit of fun! Not to mention available to Joe User.

While it may not be quite as advanced, in particular with the corporate uses, Panic has a li'l app, also for OS X called desktastic which allows you to draw directly on the screen. Just as Pixar's tool, this features Wacom tablet support, variable line widths and an eraser function. The drawings can be saved for later use.

It's really quite a bit of fun! Not to mention available to Joe User.

Slashdot recently had a story on Audion, which sounds like it might fit your needs. Its freely available from Panic here.

As a disclaimer, I don't use OSX, so I dunno how good this is, but it seems to be more robust than iTunes with some nice features.

This is probably why the iPod has been so successful. It doesn't have all the features you could hope for (FM tuner, voice recorder built in, Ogg Vorbis support, etc), but it does what it does so well that even technophobes can "get it."

Part of the Audion Story from Panic software details how iTunes didn't have all the features of Audion, but how they (Panic) had a breakthrough realization that they didn't NEED to have all these great features (that only few people would use) to make a great app.

Alex.

Hey, they aren't the Beagle Brothers.

Just a few days ago Slashdot posted a link to the saga of mp3 player Audion, by a small 2-man development shop. In the end, the program died, but the developers' story is really very inspiring.

Thrill to their tale of almost being bought out by AOL in 1999. Weep at their account of being told offf by Steve jobs at Macworld, as he developed a new program (itunes) that would eventually devour our heroes.

And yet, in the end, the developers' attitude and story inspired the heck out of me. Yes, one guy, working alone, with the right idea, at the right time, can make it big.

Don't blame big government for your fears. Just come up with something brilliant and take the plunge. And see what happens.

Just a few days ago Slashdot posted a link to the saga of mp3 player Audion, by a small 2-man development shop. In the end, the program died, but the developers' story is really very inspiring.

Thrill to their tale of almost being bought out by AOL in 1999. Weep at their account of being told offf by Steve jobs at Macworld, as he developed a new program (itunes) that would eventually devour our heroes.

And yet, in the end, the developers' attitude and story inspired the heck out of me. Yes, one guy, working alone, with the right idea, at the right time, can make it big.

Don't blame big government for your fears. Just come up with something brilliant and take the plunge. And see what happens.

Just a few days ago Slashdot posted a link to the saga of mp3 player Audion, by a small 2-man development shop. In the end, the program died, but the developers' story is really very inspiring.

Thrill to their tale of almost being bought out by AOL in 1999. Weep at their account of being told offf by Steve jobs at Macworld, as he developed a new program (itunes) that would eventually devour our heroes.

And yet, in the end, the developers' attitude and story inspired the heck out of me. Yes, one guy, working alone, with the right idea, at the right time, can make it big.

Don't blame big government for your fears. Just come up with something brilliant and take the plunge. And see what happens.

Just a few days ago Slashdot posted a link to the saga of mp3 player Audion, by a small 2-man development shop. In the end, the program died, but the developers' story is really very inspiring.

Thrill to their tale of almost being bought out by AOL in 1999. Weep at their account of being told offf by Steve jobs at Macworld, as he developed a new program (itunes) that would eventually devour our heroes.

And yet, in the end, the developers' attitude and story inspired the heck out of me. Yes, one guy, working alone, with the right idea, at the right time, can make it big.

Don't blame big government for your fears. Just come up with something brilliant and take the plunge. And see what happens.

Panic bite the big one...desperate...

Not only that, they now publish an amazing and award-winning application called Unison that is a graphical newsreader and works especially well for finding binaries. It's a pretty amazing application and something I doubt they regret developing. It must be great to not only get personal praise from Steve Jobs about their previous software, but to have him personally offer you a job, then decline and go on to write an even better app that gets two Apple Design Awards. They said no one should feel sorry for them, and they're right.

Not only that, they now publish an amazing and award-winning application called Unison that is a graphical newsreader and works especially well for finding binaries. It's a pretty amazing application and something I doubt they regret developing. It must be great to not only get personal praise from Steve Jobs about their previous software, but to have him personally offer you a job, then decline and go on to write an even better app that gets two Apple Design Awards. They said no one should feel sorry for them, and they're right.

their logo bears a striking resemblence to Vignette's

I find Stattoo [www.panic.com] to do much of what konfabulator wants to do (the displaying information bit), but much more elegantly. The rest of the stuff that konfabulator tries to do is covered by dashboard (mini-apps). The two together are an amazing combination. I couldn't use Konfabulator for more than a day without getting annoyed at it getting in the way and slowing things down, but this combination works wonders for me.