MacBPM Counter and MacBPM Manager offer two different ways to find out the bpm rate of a song:

BPM Time-Recording (BPM Counter...)
The user has to enter the beats in time with the music for a certain period of time, while the computer is counting them. During this process, the program permanently determines the current bpm rate. The stabilization factor, which is expressed as a percentage, shows how much the last few calculated BPM rates differ from each other. The bigger the factor is, the smaller are the differences between the last bpm rates. However the stabilization factor does nothing say about the precision of the bpm rate at all, because only the last five bpm rates, which have been determined by the program, are taken into account for the calculation of this factor.

BPM Beat-Recording (Quick BPM Counter...)
In this mode, the user has to enter a certain number of beats. The program calculates the bpm rate using the number of beats and the time, which is used for entering these beats. Like in the time-recording mode, the program determines for each calculated bpm rate an own stabilization factor.

In the preferences dialog, the user can select, wether the beats are entered by mouse or by a key. The user can also define the period of time, a time-recording process takes, or he can enter the number of beats used in a beat-recording session.