This is a new, ongoing series in which I will be recommending a piece of Mac software that I either use regularly, enjoy, or otherwise think is good to know about. It’s called “Mac Software for Zach” because my roommate, Zach, jokingly said that I should do something like this to spread my knowledge of great Mac software. Joking or not, this sounded like a good plan to me, so here we go…

SuperDuper

This is probably the best backup/cloning utility on the market. It creates a full clone of your internal hard drive on an external USB or FireWire hard drive. The backup is then bootable and it’s incredibly easy to restore all your data with just a few mouse clicks. It’s available from Shirt Pocket Software for free, or for $28 you can upgrade to the full version to get more features.

When you back up with SuperDuper, what it does is essentially makes a carbon copy of your machine’s internal boot drive. This is better than just manually copying the files over in the Finder because it copies over everything (all your settings and everything, in addition to your files) and allows you to boot and run from the drive as if it were your internal. Copying all this over takes a lot of time, especially if you have an internal drive that is hundreds of gigabytes in size.

I have the full version because if you’re going to use this regularly, there is one feature in the full version that is hard to live without. That feature is called Smart Update.  So the first time you back up to a drive with SuperDuper it copies everything over. Then the next time if you use Smart Update, SuperDuper goes through and just updates whatever has changed from the last backup, saving a lot of time.

Although I have been using SuperDuper for quite some time now, I haven’t actually had to use it to restore my system yet. Until last night, that is. I was trying to do something on my machine and there was an error and it said the best way to fix it would be to reformat my boot drive (which includes clearing everything off it). Terrified as I pushed the button to reformat the drive, I essentially placed my life in SuperDuper’s hands.

It worked flawlessly.

I was amazed at how easy to was to restore from the backup. Although I’ve liked it for some time now, SuperDuper just went up a couple notches in my book with its sterling performance last night. It’s nice to know that if something ever does happen and I lose my internal drive, I have such a reliable recovery plan, made possible by SuperDuper.

Let me get this gripe about DropBox off my chest. First of all, let me say that I love, love, love DropBox. It’s an excellent online storage solution and I like it so much I’ve even upgraded my storage space. I’m currently using the desktop application on my Mac, which seamlessly installs a folder in your home directory that is actually your “DropBox” up in the cloud, and yet it acts just like a regular Finder folder. Any files copied in and out of the folder are automatically synced with what you have up in the cloud. It’s great.

So what’s my gripe about this? After I upgraded my storage capacity, I started to copy more and more files up there, and have greatly increased my disk usage from when I only had the 2GB free account. At the same time, I started noticing I had less and less hard drive space available on my computer’s hard drive. After looking into it, I realized that the DropBox application is keeping a local copy of everything I upload to my storage space. I was operating under the assumption that the files in the DropBox folder were actually aliases or references to the files that actually resided up in the cloud.

In order to save local hard drive space, I’m going to have to stop using the desktop application and only use the web app (hopefully through Fluid). This is annoying because I love the seamlessness with which the DropBox app works.

The ideal solution to this problem would be you could set in preferences whether or not you want DropBox to keep a local copy. If you have a huge hard drive this would probably be a great feature, but I don’t so it’s really unnecessary. In framing this problem, I think it’s also important to take into account how I use DropBox. I use it mainly as an archive and backup solution, and occasionally to transfer files to myself or other people or to make files available to myself remotely.

I took a quick look at the DropBox help resources and forum and it seems that this ability to choose whether or not to keep a local copy is a feature that other users have requested for future updates. Hopefully this gets implemented soon.

Fluid is my new favorite application. What does it do? It basically creates an application for your favorite web apps that you can run on your desktop, independent of your browser, protecting your browser from crashes, etc. On the Fluid website they describe it like this:

Are you a Gmail, Facebook, Campfire or Pandora fanatic? Do you have 20 or more browser tabs open at all times? Are you tired of some random site or Flash ad crashing your browser and causing you to lose your (say) Google Docs data in another tab?

If so, Site Specific Browsers (SSBs) provide a great solution for your WebApp woes. Using Fluid, you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite WebApps as a separate Cocoa desktop application. Fluid gives any WebApp a home on your Mac OS X desktop complete with Dock icon, standard menu bar, logical separation from your other web browsing activity, and many, many other goodies.

First off, I’ve created a SSB for SimpleNote (quite possibly the best iPhone app ever too, thank you John Gruber). There’s also a tweak to make the window nice and compact around the SimpleNote application window here (link via Shawn Blanc).

This has been fantastic. When you set it up with a web app, Fluid creates an application bundle as well, so it appears just like any other app in your Applications folder. It can also create a nice dock icon that blends right in with all your other apps.

Brilliant.

An excellent team-by-team guide to the competition.

Emmanuel Adebayor’s actions during Manchester City’s game with Arsenal last weekend in the English Premier League were despicable. On top of it, the fact that he still doesn’t see the why he might be suspended for it is truly bewildering. Soccer players are known for not being the brightest lights in the chandelier, but with this Adebayor sets himself apart as truly an idiot.

The celebration included Adebayor scoring against his former team on the opposite end of the field from the Arsenal fan section. After scoring on a diving header, he immediately picked himself up and ran, at a full sprint (probably faster than he had at any point during the game), all the way to the opposite end of the field to celebrate in front of the Arsenal fan section. It’s hard to imagine a more inflammatory action than this. Aside from causing a near riot of Arsenal fans surging towards the field,  numerous objects were thrown at Adebayor.

It’s too bad that none of the objects hit him in the face, because if they had, it certainly would have been richly deserved.

After the game, Adebayor issued a half-apology while being interviewed on TV. He said that he had gotten caught up in the moment and his emotions overtook him. What Adebayor did, however, was not in the heat of the moment, he clearly wanted to provoke, anger, and rub Arsenal fans’ faces in the dirt after he scored. It was not a matter of emotions overtaking him. It was certainly a premeditated celebration.

Adebayor has complained in the past that the Arsenal fans never loved him. Once again showing his lack of intelligence, as well as a failure to put two and two together, Adebayor apparently doesn’t realize that his actions during the summer before last season (as well as his frequent lackluster play last season, at least in comparison with the season before) made him a villain among Arsenal fans. During that summer, before resigning to staying at Arsenal, he made it abundantly clear that he wanted to leave and go to AC Milan or Barcelona or some other big European club. If you make it clear you don’t want to be there, the fans will certainly take note of this. And I think the fans have every right to be angry at Adebayor, if you don’t want to wear the shirt, we’re obviously not going to like you.

The Premier League’s chief executive, Richard Scudamore has denounced Adebayor’s actions as “tarnishing the sport’s image.” This is encouraging and I hope Adebayor gets a long ban for his ridiculous goal celebration, not to mention his stamp on Robin van Persie’s face.

In light of this incident, I have to do something that I hate doing, I have to hold up Cristiano Ronaldo as an example of showing class when returning to your former club. After scoring against the club that brought him up and nurtured him, Sporting Lisbon, Ronaldo was noticeably reserved and his celebration of the goal was clearly muted out of respect for his former club. If only Adebayor had the same respect for the club that made him the player he is today…

To quick paraphrases from Thomas Friedman’s book Hot, Flat, and Crowded:

Have you ever seen a revolution where nobody got hurt? What we’re having right now is not a green “revolution,” it’s a party.

And:

Chevron’s CEO, David O’Reilly again: “We need leaders who will stand up and say this is hard, this is big, and it [requires] massive amounts of investment.”

Very, very true, on both counts.

Apple has apparently released the source code to the new Grand Central Dispatch feature from Snow Leopard.

Check out the Grand Central Dispatch Technology Brief from Apple here (PDF download).

This is yet another thing to get my geek fix, along with John Siracusa’s phenomenal and painstaking Snow Leopard review over on Ars Technica.

Original link via Daring Fireball

This is great to see. Navigating the old structure had gotten annoying a long time ago.

via Daring Fireball