MacLoad 1.4

MacLoad is a program that displays in a histogram the load being placed on your Macintosh by the programs running on it. The original intent was to mimic the look of the X Window System program "xload" in the Un*x world.

You can download MacLoad to your Macintosh.

Current features

MacLoad allows you to configure the colors and other visual attributes of the histogram, but other than that, it's pretty simple. The latest version (1.4) is dated September 1, 1992, though, so perhaps it's in need of an update. But it still works fine!

Possible future features

The following additional features may someday be added to MacLoad:

Network load averages -- MacLoad could install a "rup" server and also request performance information from other machines via "rup."
Use a VBL task to calculate the load. This would make the load number reported less dependent on the user holding down the mouse, but is that really more accurate? How much goes on while the user delays the human interface part of the operating system? Should we make that judgement?
Probably others that I'm forgetting at the moment...

MacLoad is now ancient software

As noted above, MacLoad hasn't been touched since 1992. Since then, the Mac platform has gone through two processor architecture migrations, and, more significantly, a major operating system architecture replacement. MacLoad is no longer relevant. I recommend you check out the excellent iStat Menus by Bjango. It's what I use, now.

MacLoad was written by Geoff Adams.

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