How you tell you’re dealing with Apple utility software
Posted on July 4, 2008
Filed Under Macintosh | 11 Comments
It’s simple with minimal preference settings.
It’s beautiful.
It makes a gorgeous demo for Steve Jobs during a Keynote. He only asks it to do the one thing it does well, and he uses dummy data on pristine machines to do it.
It’s buggy and brain dead until version 3 or 4.
I have a 3-way backup strategy and the only part that drives me nuts is Apple Time Machine.
Thoughts on today’s nearly-everyone-but-SteveNote
Posted on June 9, 2008
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Over an hour of demos?!?! Seriously?!?
I find it hard to believe that what we saw/heard was what was planned. Can you imagine?
Steve: “Okay, folks, I only have 2 things to announce this time and a lot of time to kill. So instead of my standing up there turning the reality distortion field to full blast, showing off the fact that I am one the world’s best public speakers and can make those apps look great, we’re going to have speaker after speaker come up on that stage and show their own apps. Dry, stiff and boring, please. Let’s not coach them much. The more nervous they are, the better. That way, by the time I get up there it won’t matter what I say…those Mac fans’ll be so glad to see me they’ll cheer their heads off.”
Something felt “off” about this keynote, and way too long demos wasn’t all of it.
The energy wasn’t there.
Isn’t it strange that they brought the Apple Store down this morning, only to update it with products you can’t buy. When the iPhone was first introduced, Jobs made it clear that you couldn’t buy it online because they were still waiting for FCC approvals. I wonder if it’s a similar situation now. Why else wouldn’t Apple open the iPhone to preorders since they have no other iPhones to sell? Rumor has it that the new iPhones have to be purchased and activated in-store, so that may be part of it.
And I never like when companies introduce new products by telling you what sucks about the product it replaces. Like the “new” headphone jack. It should have been flush to begin with…that’s not a feature! Tell me why I want one of these over the new BlackBerry Bold I have my eye on. Because today, Mr. Jobs, you didn’t convince me.
Apple Plays a Little Dirty with 10.5.3
Posted on May 28, 2008
Filed Under Macintosh | 6 Comments
How does Apple get away with these things when no one else can?
When you update to Mac OS X 10.5.3, if you own an iPhone you can now sync your Google contacts to Address Book:
If, like me, you don’t own an iPhone:
What would folks say if Microsoft had features in Windows that didn’t require a PDA or phone, but only worked if the OS could tell that the user was using a Windows Mobile device? Wouldn’t go over too well is my guess. This is no different.
If I can sync Address Book with Yahoo, I should be able to sync it with Google regardless of whether or not I own an iPhone.
Leopard backup strategy
Posted on May 18, 2008
Filed Under Macintosh | 3 Comments
Now that I’m on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, it was time to review my backup strategy to make sure that the data I care about is best protected. My only computer is a MacBook Pro that travels around with me a lot. At any moment I can drop it, spill something on it, lose it, have it stolen or the drive could just decide it’s had enough of me.
So yes, I get a little crazy about backups. My backup strategy can’t be anything I need to think about after initial setup. I know the day I’ll forget to do it will be the day I need it. Thankfully, now that all my email is Google I don’t have to worry about backing up that data. I know it’s possible that Google can lose it all, but I’m going to consider that scenario unlikely enough that I’m not going to worry about it.
Here’s what I’m doing:
I have a 300 GB external Firewire drive (not portable) that I used to help my move from Tiger to Leopard a couple of weeks ago.
I partitioned that drive into 2 partitions, making sure to select the option which makes the partitions bootable.
One partition is 120 GB and I’ve dedicated that to SuperDuper. I have that great utility making a bootable clone of my hard drive every morning at around 2 am. It’s with the SmartUpdate setting that only updates what has changed so the backups are quick. You can’t do this with the free version, but it’s worth the $30. Why 120 GB? Because that’s the size of my internal drive (capacity of around 111 GB). Don’t need to give it more than that.
The other slightly larger partition is for Time Machine. Handy if I ever accidentally delete a file or for those times I make changes and wish I had the older version. Time Machine is better than no backup at all, but I can’t see using it as the only backup solution. It’ll be great for quick fixes.
I know I could have kept Time Machine and SuperDuper on the same, unpartitioned drive but I’ve heard too many horror stories about Time Machine wrecking drives. As a matter of fact, Eric had to reformat his Time Machine drive last night after it was causing kernel panics and other crashes on his MacBook. Disk Utility saw problems but couldn’t repair them, so he had to start over. If Time Machine has similar issues attached to my computer, I don’t want it to bring my SuperDuper clone down with it.
I just have to remember to plug in the drive every night.
But the whole external drive can go south. Or I might need a critical file when I’m not home to get it off the external drive. So on top of Time Machine and SuperDuper, I use JungleDisk to copy my documents directory to my Amazon S3 storage space. JungleDisk is just the easy front-end which mounts that storage as a drive. It also allows me to schedule backups so that directory is copied regularly as long as I have a ‘net connection. I don’t understand all the geeky bits of S3, but JungleDisk is very easy to use and configure. My Amazon bills have been averaging around $3 per month for 14 GB of data give or take.
Finally, there’s the outstanding 1Password application which not only securely manages my password and sensitive data when I’m using my own computer, it also syncs on demand with their secure website. Worst comes to worst I can retrieve all that information from anywhere.
I think I have my bases covered.
Finally upgraded to Leopard
Posted on May 5, 2008
Filed Under Macintosh | 2 Comments
I know, I know…a little late to the party.
It’s been about 7 months since Mac OS X 10.5 was released. More than enough time for all the apps I use to update to Leopard-happy versions. More than enough time for Apple to fix the big bugs. And more than enough time for the early adopters to document everything that could possibly go wrong for those of us who decided to sit back and wait a while.
Last night, I took the leap to the bigger cat on my MacBook Pro. Why now? Well, for starters I’m now not running anything that doesn’t say it’s Leopard/10.5 compatible. And I was starting to notice developer interest in 10.4 waning. I may be imagining this, but there comes a time with the small Mac developers who make the best Mac goodies where supporting the older OS becomes something they have to do and nothing more. New versions only run on the new OS, and updates start to include features that only work on the new OS. I’m not naming names, but my sense is that time had come.
After reading site after site debating the best way to upgrade, I decided on the easy-but-time-consuming path of:
- Clone entire hard drive to external disk (in my case a 250MB Firewire drive) using SuperDuper (time: 3 hours)
- Erase and Install upgrade to Leopard (time: about an hour)
- Migration Assistant to move all applications and files back to drive (time: approximately 4 hours…I let that part run overnight)
When I woke up this morning, the migration was complete and I was able to start right into OS X 10.5.1 with no problem. Another hour or so dealing with upgrades to 10.5.2 and its associated upgrades and I think I’m done.
Even though the total upgrade took over 8 hours, 95% of that didn’t involve me doing anything. So I think that’s the path I’ll take in the future.
Quick thoughts:
- I knew Spotlight was faster in Leopard. Wow! That’s like saying a bullet train is faster than a bicycle. It’s actually usable now.
- I like that Software Update now does the restart then it installs files. I’ve learned over the years not to open/move files around when Software Update is installing. This now makes the related problems a non-issue for users who don’t realize the trouble that may happen if you write data to the drive in the middle of a major install.
- I was having wireless issues before the upgrade. My Mac wasn’t recognizing my home router as a preferred location, requiring me to manually select it each time. Even then, it would take a few tries before I could log on. Since upgrading to Leopard, my network is recognized immediately. Not sure if that’s directly related to Leopard or just that a nice, clean install was necessary.
- I love Quick Look. I’ve already installed a few third-party plug-ins, such as one to view CS3 files , Zip file contents and contents of folders without opening them. In fact, if it wasn’t for all the speedy Finder searches I’ve been doing today, Quick Look and the changes in Preview, I would almost forget I was running a different operating system. I live most of my working life in Firefox these days.
Issues:
- The only application that appears to have not cleanly survived migration is VMWare Fusion. On first launch I got a cryptic “Failed to connect to peer process” error. A quick Google found a thread related to the problem. An uninstall and reinstall of Fusion cleared it right up. This is why I wait months to upgrade.
- This is nothing, really, but I prefer the deeper red for the close button in a Tiger window to the candy-red in Leopard. Every time I go to close a window, the color change is a little jarring.
- Since I originally installed Office 2008 in Tiger, I’m having some trouble getting Quick Look to work on .docx/.xlsx files. I’ve downloaded the Office.qlgenerator file and placed it in Library/QuickLook as I think I’m supposed to do, but it’s still not working. Not a big deal. I’ll track that one down eventually (hopefully without needing to reinstall Office) unless someone has any ideas?
- When I restart in Leopard, I had about 2 GB less disk space and it seems that the new OS is eating more RAM than Tiger did. But it’s eating it quietly, as I don’t feel as much of a drag when I’m hitting the disk for memory as I did before.
