Sperensis Applications has released Minion for Mac OS X. It allows you to monitor long running tasks such as movie renders, file downloads, and file transfers.

Minion can also notify you when an application quits or becomes active, the CPU level changes, when a file appears or a pixel changes on the screen. Once a task is complete, the utility will notify you via SMS, email or on your Mac and iOS device.

All this allows for progress bars to be monitored in software and on websites. With a free companion app for iOS, users can view the history of completed tasks.

Minion requires OS X 10.8 or later and costs US$24. It's worldwide through the Mac App Store in the Utilities category. A seven-day free trial is available from Minion's website (http://www.minionapp.com).