Fortunately on the OS X side, software developer metaquark has released an application by the name of AppFresh which aims to fill the gap of the need for a central application updater.

Currently, AppFresh is available as a Development Preview, so it is recommended that you back up all of your applications before using AppFresh if you intend to use the built-in update installer. If you’d rather stay on the safe side, AppFresh can still be used to check for and download updates excluding the automatic update installer process.

AppFresh also includes integration of iusethis.com. This allows AppFresh to also check for updates to applications that are not natively supported but are listed in the iusethis database. It also allows you to easily add new apps to your iusethis profile without having to search for each app beforehand.

Another interesting feature is the ability to take a “snapshot” of an application, which captures the current version of the application along with the application data and preferences. It’s basically Time Machine for your apps.

More information can be found at the AppFresh website.

I quickly find that I am not the only one with this problem. The problem happens if you have a large amount of fonts installed on Windows. After hours of digging through comments on blogs of people having the same problem with no solution, I decided to try my hand at fixing it myself. Eventually I found a way to fix the issue, so here’s how to do it.

First, navigate to the following directory. You should see a file named Fonts.plist, though it may not exist in every case.

• C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari (Windows XP)
• C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\Safari (Windows Vista)

Download this Fonts.plist and replace your old one with the one you just downloaded. Now, open the Properties for the Fonts.plist file and set it to “Read-only”.

If some fonts still don’t show up correctly, open your Fonts.plist in Wordpad (uncheck Read-only in the properties first) and edit the locations of the fonts to match the location of the fonts on your computer. Make sure to set the file to “Read-only” when you’re finished editing, otherwise Safari will overwrite it the next time you launch it.

If you followed this tutorial closely and edited everything correctly, Safari should look something like this.

If you’re still having problems with fonts showing, navigate to C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources and make sure there are two fonts files named Lucida Grande.ttf and Lucida Grande Bold.ttf. If they do not exist, download this ZIP of the fonts and place them in the Safari.resources directory.

Update (06/14/2007):
If you have updated Safari to version 3.0.1 you may need to replace your Fonts.plist file again and set it to read-only.

Update (06/22/2007):
Apple has just released Safari version 3.0.2 which fixes the font issues. Please make sure the read-only option on your Fonts.plist file is unset. Go download the new version!