Clipboard Enhancements

I used to be a PC guy. When I was young and foolish. I was under the mistaken assumption that PCs were superior for coding and development. I was obviously wrong. With the right tools, coding on any platform is essentially the same. When I started developing on a Mac I had no idea what applications were out there for programming but I knew the features and programs I used on PCs so I set out to find replacements for those favourites. One of the tools it took me the longest to replace was one I had that allowed me to view and use my clipboard history. Having access to things you copied earlier makes it quick and easy to replicate and modify text. Here is my review of some of the apps I found that do this. It is a mix of freeware and shareware software so take away from it what you will.

1. jumpcut - I've been using jumpcut forever. This app sits in your menubar and allows you access to a configurable amount of your clipboard history. It is free, stable and simple. It is supposed to have a bezel to paste from but it has never worked. From personal experience and my own comfort I recommend this app to anyone. I started this post because of jumpcut. [edit - I got the bezel to work. Just hit ctrl-option-v to bring up the bezel and use the arrow keys or numbers to select your clip.]
   
2. iClip - $29 - 30 uses - I really dislike the interface for this application. The website for it was pretty cool so I guess I was expecting more. It works and the visualization of your copied item is very nice. You can see at a glance whether your clipboard has files, images or text in it and you can go back in history. You can change the circles for the bins to squares and you can change the transparency of the border but it still looks gross. I don't think I'd be willing to shell out the cash for this just because of how ugly it is. The saving grace of this program is its keyboard shortcut configurability. I crave keyboard shortcuts so being able to configure them from in program is feature I really appreciate.
   
3. clips - 19.50 euros - 15 day trial - Wow. This program is really nicely done. It has full integration of several of Apple's core interface features and has an extensive clip saving / flagging / organizing options and can even tell you what program the copied item came from. Simple keyboard activation of the panel woked flawlessly. The options are incredible here as well. And the scattered view is sweet (with some physics here it would be a lot like Bumptop). Several quality (if not conflict aware) keyboard shortcuts here as well. At about the same price as iClip I might be more inclined to go with this app but it was a lot more than I was looking for. Try it out. It's a quality application. The only problem I noticed was that copies from Photoshop failed to work.
   
4. Savvy Clipboard - try n buy $12 to activate extended features - It works. Kinda fugly. Demo is very restictive so couldn't test with more than 7 clips. No photoshop again. All in all, nothing about this app made me want to use it. Sorry. This one is out.
   
5. Clipper - This app is a simple little menu bar icon that gives you a list of recently copied items. Large number of clipped items can be stored and displayed. Unfortunately I could not determine what the hotkey was to open said menu or if there even was one. For free, it does what it is supposed to do.
   
6. Clipboard Evolved - $15 x 1 license - 50% off per license x 30 licenses - This app was a bit too flashy for me. Useful dock mode worked as expected but overall this application didn't get me either.

That said I think I'll just be sticking with the time tested jumpcut unless I end up finding something better. Let me know if there are any other programs out there because I'd love to try 'em.