Browsing Time Machine backups

Image by antwanp via FlickrAlthough Time Machine is a fantastic consumer-targeted solution for backups whose simplicity is fantastic, it unfortunately has it's drawbacks. It saved me quite some time when my graphic card died but when I wanted to browse through my backups on another computer (in my case with Ubuntu 8.10), I was quite surprised over details of implementation.

It appers that although you can browse through your Users directory, you can't just dive into any subdirectory and copy the file you are looking for to your current computer.

What you have to do is this (thanks to Carson!):

You have to run command ls -l which returns something like this:

me@desktop:/media/disk/Backups.backupdb/Computer Name/Latest/Disk/Users/username$ ls -l

-r--r--r-- 9891110 root 10239884 0 2008-04-21 20:19 Applications
-r--r--r-- 9861491 root 10239885 0 2008-04-21 20:19 Desktop
-r--r--r-- 10192194 root 10239886 0 2008-04-21 20:19 Dev
-r--r--r-- 10197872 root 10239887 0 2008-04-21 20:19 Documents

Here you have to take notice of the number in italic formating (forget about the bold for now). This number normally represents the number of files in that directory but in case of Time Machine this number is a unique identifier. To really access your file, you have to go to the top level directory of you external hard drive and look for a directory .HFS+ Private Directory Data - note the . before the name because it is a hidden directory.

Then you can either run command ls in that directory (but it will take some time and you get a bunch of directories that tell you nothing of it's content) or you can just type cd dir_10192194 (in this case I decided to look into the latest content of directory Dev that is printed in bold font before) that correctly lists all files in it. Note that if you want to go to a subdirectory, you again have to repeat the process and reference it in .HFS+ Private Directory Data.

Therefore restoring to a Windows/Linux system is possible, it's just not something you really want to be doing (especially to restore a large number of files). For that I would probably write a Python script or a new bash command (cdtm as in change directory time machine) to ease the pain of constantly checking which directory you have to go into to find your files.

Which could be a nice little project after I get my Macbook Pro back...

When your Macbook Pro's graphic card dies

Image via WikipediaAs it was noted in major publications several times already, NVidia made quite a mistake when they produced N84/N86 graphic cards with faulty parts. So when I became an early adopter and bought myself a Macbook Pro in July of 2007, I was also given one of these graphic cards and until now it's performance was nothing but breath taking. Unfortunately it appers that my usage patterns (probably a bit above-average carrying around, but not everyday) have finally brought it to it's knees and on Friday evening it died.

Since in Slovenia we can't use Apple Care I was more than pleased when Apple announced that they will be extending the warranty for their graphic cards to two years - I was just a month or so over warranty.

With my mind at rest about possible costs of repair I decided it was time to see how can I make the newest backup of the data on the hard drive. Since I could clearly see that my MBP successfully log-ins and connect to my home WI-FI network (broadcasting ping helped with that - ping -b 192.168.1.255), my first thought was that I should use SSH to log into the computer and then begin the painful process of copying somewhere around 100GB of data over 802.11G WI-FI and to the USB hard drive. But this didn't work because I have closed port 22 for SSH. For a laptop, that seemed quite reasonable at the time.

After discussing options like taking disk out and use converter for SATA/IDE-to-USB to plug it into other computer, mounting my MBP as target disk on my friend's Mac, etc., I was finally struck with divine inspiration - "If it can connect to WI-FI then obviously everything starts as normal, therefore I can just use Time Machine". The second I thought about it I was thinking to myself "how couldn't I thought of that before"?

Few minutes on and Time Machine was happily making backups.

So remember kids: Use backup and use a backup solution that can do EVERYTHING on itself with no buttons like "Yes, make me a backup".

View PDFs on iPod Touch with FilemarkMaker

Image by riccardodivirgilio via FlickrAfter playing around with my iPod Touch for a few days (didn't jailbreaked it yet though) I quickly came to the idea of reading PDFs on it - and as simple as that may sounds, it turns out it's not. Although you can sync quite a few things with your Mac, you can't sync PDFs.

At first I tried by just importing PDFs to iTunes, but you still can't copy them over to the iPod. Then I tried to save and view PDF as an image but although I was using pretty decent images, iPod still shrinks them down to 640x480 or something which makes them unreadable.

Two ways that I found to actualy work were mailing PDFs to myself and reading them in the Mail application or using Filemark Maker. Mailing PDFs would be acceptable, but it still feels a bit awkward to me personaly and I decided that for the time being I will be using Filemark Maker.

Basicaly what Filemark Maker does is that it uses data: URI scheme to encode PDFs as URLs which you can bookmark and - after syncing your bookmarks with your iPod Touch - open and read as if they were located localy on file system.

It works well with small files and until you bookmark a couple of PDFs - after that I noticed a bit of a lag (about 5-10 seconds) when starting Safari for the first time since restarting iPod. I suspect it caches bookmarks afterwards and all works well.

I am still wondering however why Apple decided not to support syncing of PDFs or giving iPod Touch and iPhone users some other way of storing PDFs and other formats that Safari/Mail support...

Related articles

• Apple to Sell Movies on DVD Release Day, Confirmed [Breaking] [via Zemanta]
• Rumor: Apple Developing a New iTunes App for the iPhone [via Zemanta]
• Remote Buddy 1.10 offers iTunes streaming to iPhone / iPod touch [via Zemanta]

Tiger users still a majority

Source: FlickrI was more than a bit surprised yesterday when I first saw the statistics published by Omnigroup regarding their userbase and what kind of operationg system their users are using. Sure enough, this data is not a definite indicator and probably only Apple can give more accurate data, but its probably good enough that we can at least draw some conclusions from it.

Omnigroup develops whole bunch of different applications that are focused both on business users and on home users. I haven't been able to find any statistics about how large their userbase actualy is and will for the time being presume that their large array of products gives a rather good sample of users - if, however, anyone finds this jumping to conclusions too quick, feel free to enlighten me in the comments. ;-)

On the first sight of data I was almost a bit disappointed about the number of Leopard users. 32% of Leopard users seemed rather low for a system that was relesed at the end of October and had brought with it a number of interesting and exciting features. But then I gave the whole idea of 32% another thought - if one third of users on a particular platform upgraded in roughly six months to the flagship version of some companys operating system, that doesn't sound that bad. Since Microsoft released Windows Vista in a recent past it could even make a rather interesting comparison of the speed of adoption of a new platform.

It turns out that only 8.7% of Windows users had opened their hearts to Vista (either voluntarily or when they purchased their new computers). Since Vista was available in retail stores on 30. January of 2007 this means that it was present on a market for about 420 days, which in turn means that its approximate rate of adoption is about .02% of Windows users per day or about .6% per month. For Leopard, this rate is almost ten times higher - since its introduction on 30th October of 2007 it was present on a market for about 150 days and was adopted at an avarage rate of .2 %. per day or 6% per month.

Based on the data that I used this means that Mac users are migrating to newest platform at almost ten times the rate of Windows users. This puts Apple in rather favourable position compared to Microsoft. If Microsoft has to maintain compatibility for such a long time (if adoption rate would be constant this would mean Windows XP would still be in usage for about 10+ years after Vista was released - until 2017 or more) it means it can not implament new features at a pace Apple can - or at least it can not make them requirements at until a large majority of its users migrate to a new platform. Apple on the other hand can implament new features and declare the old ones as deprecated far more easily and more often.

(Luckily Microsoft doesn't wait for 10+ years for its users to upgrade - Windows XP will enjoy full support until 14th April of 2009, after which it will enter Extended Support that will last until 2014, although personally I think Microsoft will extend both full support and Extended Support.)

For developers this means that when Apple said Carbon would not enjoy 64-bit benefits that can be found in Leopard and encouraged developers to get their hands dirty with Cocoa, developers can sleep a bit easier knowing that their users will shortly follow the development cycle that Apple dictates. On the other hand developers that had huge code bases written with Carbon probably enjoyed a number of sleepless nights after first hearing Steve Jobs about implamenting 64-bit support only for Cocoa.

At the end it is only fair to write a honest disclaimer - both Omnigroup and W3Schools say that their data is not to be fully trusted, to which I can only add that you should trust my conclusions even less. I only did some quick math with basic data that both of these companies provide online in an effort to see how users of different platforms view flagship products of their beloved company and how this love is translated into purchase of new operating system or new computer. This data clearly misses all those users that had migrated either to OS X or to Windows from other platforms (and probably a bunch of other edge cases). Basically my analysis is just a quick look on a subject that is almost impossible to analyse with great certainty and should be treated in that manner.

Related articles

• Windows XP: Going, going ... gone? [via Zemanta]
• Prelim Vaio Update: Maybe Not So Sucky??? [via Zemanta]

iPhone SDK and Apple's deal to developers

Source: FlickrWhen Apple held their press event for the announcment of SDK previous thursday I was watching closely what will come out of it - after all, there was a whole bunch of rumors and predictions about the direction that Apple could take and how it can either win the hearts of developers or burn in hell with it's platform by it's side.

As far as I'm concerned I think Apple more or less won my heart. Although I already downloaded[1] the iPhone SDK and installed it, I haven't yet programmed anything with it - one notable obsticle is that I am far more into web development and have almost no experiance whatsoever with Objective-C. But as I spend more and more time reading about Objective-C and watching various iPhone Application Framework videos of what can be done (and how) I am becoming a bit more confident to say that Apple's aproach is the right one.

Not only does a developer get a stable enviorment that Apple itself used to develop it's mobile version of OS X and has a lot of similarities with desktop/server version of OS X (this is one of those things that any Mac developer will appreciate because they can start programming without having to re-examinate yet another platform), they also get access to huge userbase that is accustomed to using iTunes and ready to pay for things they like.

App Store, the store which Apple will use to distribute software among users and give them a one-click-away solution for purchasing all software ever developed for the platform is what in my opinion distinguishes Apple's platform from other already developed and marketed solutions. It will be installed on iPhone and integrated into iTunes and therefore have a tremendous userbase - and it's userbase is what gives Apple an edge over it's competition. It is consisted of people that pay for their music, are a bit more tech-savvy than avarage population and will therefore appreciate the ease of use and user experiance that Apple will give to them. And gladly pay for the software that will be useful to them.

Business model used also seem rather fair to developers - if you want to charge for your applications you get to share 30% of your income with Apple and remaining 70% gets into your pocket. I find it a bit less friendly if you are prepared to give your application away for free - you will still have to get yourself iPhone Developer Program account that will cost you $99 per year - but I do not mind paying up those 99 bucks if they provide good enough value with their offical support.

Another very pleasing sight is how other software companies began stepping up their efforts for an emerging platform - my biggest surprise was Sun's announcement that they will develop Java for iPhone. I understand how they can develop it with the technology provided but I am very interested knowing how they will bypass various legal issues. Not that I mind if Java is developed for iPhone - on the contrary, I will be more than pleased to use a whole bunch of already developed Java applications.

How will all this come together in reality is yet to be seen in July when Apple will relase final version of SDK and give users second version of it's iPhone software that will include support for applications from 3rd party developers. I will however try to get familiar with Objective-C and start playing with SDK soon - and hopefully there will be a follow-up to this blog post in near future that will discuss my experiences with development itself.

[1] you need to have Apple Developer Connection account in order to download the SDK - free account will do

Related articles

• Apple unveils details of development kit [via Zemanta]
• iPhone SDK gets real, available today [via Zemanta]
• Apple releases iPhone SDK, announces push e-mail, Exchange support [via Zemanta]

"Apple Cripples Non-Apple Software"

Source: FlickrIt didn't come as no suprise to me when I first saw this sensationalistic title appear on Slashdot two days ago. But it was sad to see how a wonderful piece of work like that produced by Vladimir Vukićević in his blog post got distorted and taken out of context (or at least part of it) for the purpose of the argument.

As Vladimir was looking how to give Firefox 3 for OS X some performance boost he did quite some research and testing to locate origins of bottlenecks that made OS X version of Firefox a black sheep in the past - at least compared to it's Windows and Linux siblings.

During his research he discovered that Apple was using some undocumented methods to give Safari some boost in performance. Not realy a very nice thing to do for sure, yet he still emphesized that there are other non-programaticall ways for gaining the same boost. But the news of Apple's Evil had already began to spread in the wild and blow out of proportion.

Personally I think Apple was right this time not to publish this part of API - David Hyatt himself said that this code was more of a hack and they themself are not happy with that part of WebKit's code. As any developer knows publishing hacks is never a realy good idea - even using hacks is not a good idea but sometimes due to time constraints or some other reason you just have to use them.

One one side, using them can get you in such an awkward position as Apple has arguably found itself in, yet publishing information about them is still wrong - you lose the ability to fix the problems and remove hacks in the next release and are faced with maintaining them for a forseable future. Unless, of course, you want to be hated by developers using your API for making such (dramatic) changed over night.

But one is still left wondering if there are some other hidden and undiscovered cookies in Apple's jar. They are, after all, only a company and even if most of it's empoyees are open-source minded, there probably hides a genious or two in the dark corners of Apple that thinks otherwise and could destroy Apple's reputation on this matter and create a picture of another company with Microsoftish malpractice.