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nowalmartI wanted to write about some OS X software that I use and really like. They fill a need, they work, and they work well. While I use some programs like Eudora and Adium daily, I think most people know about those programs. These programs tend to be a little more obscure. Note that several are OSS programs. Without further ado, and in no particular order:
1) Fugu for all of your SFTP, SCP and SSH needs. I have been using this program for many years now and I have never had a single problem with it.
2) Bonjour Browser makes it easy to see what devices and services are available on your network via Bonjour. Not the most exciting application in the world, but it does its job and has been *extremely* handy more than once.
3) SharePoints really made setting up a SMB server on my Macintosh very easy. Not exactly a program everyone and their mother needs, but if you need it, download it, install it, and be up and running in just a couple of minutes.
4) GraphicConverter is something that has been in my toolbox for as long as I can remember. I paid the simple shareware fee and have gotten about a hundred times the value out of it. Between being able to browse folders, batch converting, image manipulation, and the ability to open pretty much every single image format I can imagine, GraphicConverter can do it all. It is to graphics what BBEdit is to text.
5) PictureSync is a program I just downloaded the other day to help me upload some pictures to SnapFish to have printed out. I have to hand it to any program that is Growl-enabled (more on that in a minute). The program made it incredibly simple to upload to SnapFish and Flickr.
6) Growl is a program that most people will be surprised I like. I am not a big fan of almost any programs that change the UI of my computer. Growl's notification system, though, I feel fills a need in the OS - notification without being overly-intrusive. Sure, it a program has a serious error it should put up a dialog box and bounce its icon. If the program has a need to inform me of something but does not require my immediate attention, Growl fits the need perfectly.
7) MT-Newswatcher sits on my hard drive largely unused anymore, which I am somewhat ashamed of. I used to follow Usenet religiously several times a day. I simply no longer have the time anymore. When I was using Usenet more often, MT-Newswatcher fit the bill perfectly.
Now that I am talking about OS X applications, I would like to complain about a program (an Apple developed program at that!) that seems to break several UI rules. The program I am talking about is Backup, a program that comes bundled with .Mac. I started using Backup when I was provided with a work-supplied .Mac account. I had not found a decent backup utility for OS X. Backup fits the bill fairly well with an ANNOYINGLY HUGE user-interface problem.
A backup program should work in the background, in my opinion. I should only need to see the program when I want to change settings involving one of my backup plans, or when I am restoring something from a backup. I want my backups to run when I am less likely to be using my machine, so I generally set my backups to run at 3am or 4am.
Most of you know that I keep my computer in my bedroom. This is not something I am ever happy about, but it is a fact of life for almost every apartment I have ever had. With the exception of one apartment I had for a period of exactly one year, I have had a computer in my bedroom since 1986. To help programs that are not Growl-enabled communicate with me when they are in the background, I had "Announce when alerts are displayed" checked. This would use the OS's text-to-speech capabilities to read me the text of the alert.
Turns out, though, that for some reason Backup.app feels it necessary to put up an alert when it is time to do a backup! The computer sees this alert, and reads the alert to me. At 4am. In my bedroom. Why? Why does Backup.app need to tell me that it is doing its job? Tell me when something goes wrong, not when something it should be doing in the background anyway occurs!
Because of this I had to turn off the speaking alerts.
Not only that, Backup.app, though, somehow magically breaks everything about Apple's HCI guidelines and somehow magically turns on the display on my iMac when it is time to do a backup. I am not talking about waking the computer from sleep, I am just talking about the display. What in the world could Backup need with the display turned on? Just upload the files I want to my iDisk, and then copy stuff to my external backup drive!
Because of these two issues, I have had to change the time when Backup.app does its daily backups. It is during the day now, when I am more likely to be in front of the computer. Backup.app still feels the need to alert me that it is about to do a backup.
Who in the world is responsible for this complete lack of good UI?
/rant
1) Fugu for all of your SFTP, SCP and SSH needs. I have been using this program for many years now and I have never had a single problem with it.
2) Bonjour Browser makes it easy to see what devices and services are available on your network via Bonjour. Not the most exciting application in the world, but it does its job and has been *extremely* handy more than once.
3) SharePoints really made setting up a SMB server on my Macintosh very easy. Not exactly a program everyone and their mother needs, but if you need it, download it, install it, and be up and running in just a couple of minutes.
4) GraphicConverter is something that has been in my toolbox for as long as I can remember. I paid the simple shareware fee and have gotten about a hundred times the value out of it. Between being able to browse folders, batch converting, image manipulation, and the ability to open pretty much every single image format I can imagine, GraphicConverter can do it all. It is to graphics what BBEdit is to text.
5) PictureSync is a program I just downloaded the other day to help me upload some pictures to SnapFish to have printed out. I have to hand it to any program that is Growl-enabled (more on that in a minute). The program made it incredibly simple to upload to SnapFish and Flickr.
6) Growl is a program that most people will be surprised I like. I am not a big fan of almost any programs that change the UI of my computer. Growl's notification system, though, I feel fills a need in the OS - notification without being overly-intrusive. Sure, it a program has a serious error it should put up a dialog box and bounce its icon. If the program has a need to inform me of something but does not require my immediate attention, Growl fits the need perfectly.
7) MT-Newswatcher sits on my hard drive largely unused anymore, which I am somewhat ashamed of. I used to follow Usenet religiously several times a day. I simply no longer have the time anymore. When I was using Usenet more often, MT-Newswatcher fit the bill perfectly.
Now that I am talking about OS X applications, I would like to complain about a program (an Apple developed program at that!) that seems to break several UI rules. The program I am talking about is Backup, a program that comes bundled with .Mac. I started using Backup when I was provided with a work-supplied .Mac account. I had not found a decent backup utility for OS X. Backup fits the bill fairly well with an ANNOYINGLY HUGE user-interface problem.
A backup program should work in the background, in my opinion. I should only need to see the program when I want to change settings involving one of my backup plans, or when I am restoring something from a backup. I want my backups to run when I am less likely to be using my machine, so I generally set my backups to run at 3am or 4am.
Most of you know that I keep my computer in my bedroom. This is not something I am ever happy about, but it is a fact of life for almost every apartment I have ever had. With the exception of one apartment I had for a period of exactly one year, I have had a computer in my bedroom since 1986. To help programs that are not Growl-enabled communicate with me when they are in the background, I had "Announce when alerts are displayed" checked. This would use the OS's text-to-speech capabilities to read me the text of the alert.
Turns out, though, that for some reason Backup.app feels it necessary to put up an alert when it is time to do a backup! The computer sees this alert, and reads the alert to me. At 4am. In my bedroom. Why? Why does Backup.app need to tell me that it is doing its job? Tell me when something goes wrong, not when something it should be doing in the background anyway occurs!
Because of this I had to turn off the speaking alerts.
Not only that, Backup.app, though, somehow magically breaks everything about Apple's HCI guidelines and somehow magically turns on the display on my iMac when it is time to do a backup. I am not talking about waking the computer from sleep, I am just talking about the display. What in the world could Backup need with the display turned on? Just upload the files I want to my iDisk, and then copy stuff to my external backup drive!
Because of these two issues, I have had to change the time when Backup.app does its daily backups. It is during the day now, when I am more likely to be in front of the computer. Backup.app still feels the need to alert me that it is about to do a backup.
Who in the world is responsible for this complete lack of good UI?
/rant
no subject
Date: 2006-11-14 12:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-14 01:29 am (UTC)1) No incremental backups. Backups end up taking forever and a day as a result. Not bad if I am doing them at 3am, I realize, but...
2) No partial backups. I am quite cool with basically just backing up my home folder. This more a size issue on my backup drive, and minor I realize. I have the space, but I am using the backup drive to store other things, as well.
3) While using CCC a couple of times I ran into the "forever stall". CCC just stopped responding after an hour or so.
...on to the more serious concerns...
4) No date-specific recovery. By this I mean you cannot say "I want my iTunes Music folder to look the same as it did last Tuesday when I backed up, and not like last night, the most recent backup I did". This means practicing more paranoid scheduling (to avoid over-writing a good backup with a bad backup). Backups are useless if you do not notice a problem until after you have overwritten all backups with the problem.
5) Admittedly I did not put all of my command-line knowledge to the test, but I could not get the "scheduled backup" feature to ever work with CCC. Even worse, it accepted my schedule and never alerted me to the fact that it was not backing up per the schedule!
CCC definitely has its uses (and almost could have made my list of "just works apps" for those particular uses), but I suppose I will just continue to use Backup.app until Leopard (which I suppose I will have to buy now) brings Time Machine (http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/timemachine.html).
no subject
Date: 2006-11-14 06:00 pm (UTC)1) Incremental backups (it can just "sync" two folders")
2) Partial backups - see above
3) Never had it punk out, even when moving 200+ GB of information between drives
4) Unsure of this one. I don't employ this myself, as I keep more than two copies of anything THAT important around (having 4 hard drives totally 1.75 TB will let you do that.)