Can you spell cacophony?

No, not that sort of time machine (though I do happen to like the TARDIS, and the DeLorean and HG Wells’ as well, but that’s another conversation).

No, I’m talking about Time Machine, the backup-made-so-simple-any-idiot-can-do-it software that comes with Mac OS X (10.5 and above). I won’t bore you with the details of what it is and how it works, you could find that out for yourself if you are so inclined. Instead, I’ll share why I like it so much and few extra comments.

I’m not any idiot (as referred to above), but I am a particular kind of idiot. I know the importance of backups (having desperately needed one on a number of occasions) and usually manage to keep up a good routine. The key word there is “usually”. A backup that doesn’t happen every time it is supposed is only fractionally better than no backup at all.

Time Machine (when your Mac is attached to its backup drive) backs up every part of your system every hour. Without fail. When you combine that with a wireless network-connected Time Capsule you are on to a sure winner.

Here’s what I do: I have the Time Capsule at the hub of my network (connected to printers etc) and two Macs elsewhere in the house. They get their files backed up automatically to the 1TB hard drive. Right now the oldest backups on the drive are about 3 or 4 months old and these gradually get deleted as newer ones take up more space.

Once a month, I bring home another external USB drive (which lives in the safe at work). I attach it to one of the Macs and change the Time Machine preferences so the backup is made to the USB drive. Of course, the incremental backup takes a bit longer (not having been done for a month) but it is still relatively fast and very, very easy. Repeat the process on the other machine, switch the prefs back so that the Capsule is used again, take the drive back to work and we are done.

So what I have is a local network drive with almost complete backups on it and a spare backup off-site with backups no more than a month old. If we have a hard drive failure or a broken computer, then we restore from the local backup and lose nothing. If we get broken into or our house burns down and lose everything, then we’ve got years’ worth of data safe off site and we lose at most one month’s worth.

Yes, I could do this better. My data could be even more secure, but I think this method is an acceptable blend of security vs effort. And apart from my once-a-month secondary backup, it is as good as automatic.

So, I’ve just got two thoughts on Time Machine to leave you with:

1. This really is a killer app. Time Machine is a good enough reason on its own for you to get yourself a Mac. Seriously. I switched to Mac just before Leopard came out, but when I saw how Time Machine worked, I realised I would have swapped just for that. Setting up a computer for your parents or I-just-use-a-computer friends and co-workers? Get them to get a Mac and watch them never worry about backups.
2. Why on Earth has no one done anything this good for Windows or Linux? Time Machine is over 2 years old. It doesn’t usually take this long for the me-too programs to arrive. Does Apple hold some super-sensitive patent that is preventing anyone from doing it? Inquiring minds want to know.

And that’s it. Thanks Apple. Thanks Time Machine.

I bought myself a lovely MacBookPro a couple of months ago and got myself a .Mac (now MobileMe) subscription at the same time (taking advantage of the reduced price available with a new machine).

I particularly liked the idea of having my address book and calendars synchronised and online, able to be used with the web mail. All the other features (iDisk, keychain synch etc) were all “nice to haves” but not “need to haves”.

Unfortunately, the mail app failed me miserably. It was just a lot less usable than gmail. I gave it a really good try, I really did. I even hoped that the change from .mac to mobile me might improve things, but I was disappointed.

These are the things that I considered deal breakers:

• No filters: Even though the Mail interface is much like mail.app (which is great as an aside), it is missing some critical features. Filters being one of them. I like to have my email filtered into its folders (labels under gmail) automatically. To have that happen with mobileme mail, I need to leave my mac on and mail.app open. That’s just silly. With gmail, I don’t even need to set up the filters in mail.app, because they are filtered at the server level.
• No indication of unread messsages: You can’t just look at the folder list and see which folders have messages to read. I needed to click on each one to find my messages.
• No “all unread” option: Under gmail, I can search for “is: unread”. In mail.app, I have a smart mailbox set up. Nothing like that in the web mail.

Before I opened up my .mac account, I had attempted to set up mail.app with my gmail account with very little success. I had problems with the duplication of messages related to multiple labels (and the “all mail” label), I had major problems with Time Machine trying to back up 2GB every time I read a mail message and lots of little niggly things that didn’t “just work”. Those things didn’t happen with .mac, but I was willing to put up with them (or even just use webmail fulltime) to get the webmail I wanted.

Having said that, since I have swapped back to gmail, I have managed to work my way around those problems. Perhaps google have improved their IMAP implementation a bit since I last tried, but I am perfectly happy with my desktop and web mail now, thanks to Google Apps For Domains and Apple’s mail.app. It is just disappointing that Apple couldn’t get their webmail right.

Just recently, I have been having trouble getting my VMware machines to accept keyboard input.

The patterns:

1. Not a problem in unity mode. Which doesn’t help when you are trying to log in to the machine.
2. Happens to both my Boot Camp image and to true virtual machines. Also happens on XP images and my Ubuntu image.

Of course, [google][1] was my first port of call. Plenty of options, but none really matched my exact situation. The VMware forums had [a few][2] [solutions][3], but again the problems described were not the same as mine. Windows seemed to be the only culprit and normally just the Boot Camp partition.

[One thread][4] almost hit the nail on the head though. They talk there about some programs like SecureInput taking control of keyboard input and to not run them at the same time as Fusion. Didn’t seem to exactly match, so I gave up there and went looking further.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find anything useful. Some of the threads suggested rebooting and doing all sorts of basic stuff like that. Lacking any specific solutions, I tried that… Rebooted both the VMs and the host machine.

When I first came back in to my account, I ran Fusion and only Fusion. VM booted nicely and allowed keyboard input. Nice. Opened iTunes (as I am wont to do) and things were fine to start. Then I had an interesting thought…

I run the [last.fm][5] client and it is set to open after iTunes does. Unfortunately (and I’m not certain why) it doesn’t play nicely on the ISA-controlled network out at Wongutha. When it opens, it doesn’t log [into my account][6] automatically, but sits there with a login screen waiting for me to hit enter. So my brainwave suggested that I hit enter. I did, last.fm logs in and I get keyboard input back.

Nice.

I will be very surprised if anyone out there has the exact same circumstances I have, but if the big G sends you here, just try logging into your last.fm client. Or just turning it off. Worked for me!!

[1]: http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=Vag&q=vmware+fusion+no+keyboard+input+macbook+pro&btnG=Search&meta=
[2]: http://communities.vmware.com/message/797644#797644
[3]: http://communities.vmware.com/message/790567#790567
[4]: http://communities.vmware.com/thread/109851
[5]: http://last.fm
[6]: http://www.last.fm/user/wynter

I switched to a Mac late last year (traded a Powerbook for a Compaq Presario) and immediately started being jealous of all the owners of newer Macs with their intel chips. Specifially, I wanted VMware fusion so that I could run those select few windows apps I have yet to find reasonable mac substitutes for.

So when I bought a new MacBook Pro recently, I made sure I got a copy of Fusion at the same time. It works as advertised and has been very useful.

Unfortunately, I decided to use my Boot Camp partition as my Windows VM, which was a bad choice as far as convenience is concerned. It is not possible to “suspend” the VM, so starting up Fusion to quickly run Solitaire is not all that simple… It has to wait for Windows to boot.

Today I decided to start a new virtual machine, and it has made a great difference. After suspending the machine before closing Fusion, starting Solitaire from its dock icon takes less than 10 seconds. That’s not much more than a native app.

OK, here’s to the point of this post… I don’t use the dock much. According to all the help docs I could find, when a windows app is running in Unity mode, its icon shows up on the dock. Ctrl-click and then choose “keep in dock” and you have your shortcut. That’s great if you use the dock. I don’t as a rule. I use Quicksilver normally and sometimes just Finder.

So here is my solution:

1. Have a look in the Finder for your VM. Normally it will be in ~/Documents/Virtual Machines. Ctrl-Click and “show package contents”.
2. See there… a folder called Applications! As far as I can see, that contains links for all the programs you have previously run in Unity mode.
3. Go to Quicksilver preferences. Under catalogue, add your VM directory. In my case it was “~/Documents/Virtual Machines.localized/Windows XP Professional.vmwarevm”.
4. Wait for a rescan and away you go. (If an app isn’t in the catalogue, run it at least once manually: either from the VMware dock icon or menu bar).
6. Alternatively, you could just find the shortcut in the directory above and create an alias somewhere useful (eg Desktop).

I am looking forward to having much more convenient access to all my (fortunately few) indispensible Windows apps. (there’s a topic for another post)

I’ve just started using the rating facility in [iTunes][1].

Having only 5 stars to dish out makes it hard to differentiate levels of like or dislike when it comes to music, but I am going to have a go. And before you say it, yes I know you can give half stars or even percent ratings, but they are no good for smart playlists etc, so I won’t bother.

So here is my scheme (for my later reference as much as for yours):

* 0 stars – I haven’t got around to rating this one.
* 1 stars – I would have deleted this song from my library, but I want to keep it for completeness’ sake (eg as part of a soundtrack)
* 2 stars – I can handle listening to this song every now and then
* 3 stars – I like this song.
* 4 stars – I really like this song. It is perhaps one of my favourites from one of my favourite bands or just a standout song on its own.
* 5 stars – You should like this song, and I am willing to fight you to convince you of it. I could listen to this song over and over again all day.

PS I’m only using iTunes until [Amarok][2] releases its Mac OS X port, so perhaps I am wasting my time anyway!

[1]: http://www.apple.com/itunes/
[2]: http://amarok.kde.org/