Fresh Apple: The Apple Blog (4 сообщения)

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The Apple Blog
The Apple Blog, published by and for the day-to-day Apple user, is a prominent source for news, reviews, walkthroughs, and real life application of all Apple products.
http://theappleblog.com
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Time Machine Scheduler
It’s fairly well accepted by most commenters at this point that Time Machine may be one of the biggest features to be part of Leopard. Even those users who managed their own backup solutions - and many still do, including myself - applaud it for making backups both easy and intuitive for the average end user. (I credit it for having dramatically reduced panicked phone calls from friends and family about missing files, and that alone made the effort of updating oh-so worth it.)

However, many of us would also like ways to change the frequency of its backups. By default, Time machine runs once an hour, saving a daily backup at the end of the day and a weekly backup at the end of the week. This behavior continues until the drive it was pointed to is full, at which point it begins to delete the oldest backups. Almost immediately, people wanted a way to change the frequency - even if, like me, half the reason was the annoyance of those bright-blue, flashy LED’s on the external hard drive as it spins up every hour in the middle of the night.

An earlier hint at Mac OSX Hints had users editing a .plist file to change the frequency of backups. This hack consisted of editing com.apple.backupd-auto.plist, specifically the following lines:

<key>StartInterval</key> <integer>3600</integer>

A change to that integer value - which is in seconds, by the way - and Time Machine would theoretically back up on your schedule, not Apple’s. However, that seems to cause more problems than it solved, in my experience. Specifically, now Time Machine backs up whenever it likes. (It seems to be about once a day, give or take an hour or so, not once every three hours, as I set it to be.) Upon inspection, it appears that the file’s permissions are broken. Repairing permissions in Disk Utility hangs, and attempting to manually do so, even on a duplicate, causes Finder to crash.
…Let’s just say that method is Not Recommended, then.

Alternatively, there is now this - Time Machine Scheduler. Time Machine Scheduler does not meddle with the .plist files - it simply runs its own daemon to create a backup. It can be set for any length of time between 1 and 12 hours, as well as optionally running a backup upon loading. You have the option of either installing Scheduler and its daemon, in which case you do not need to open TMS, or simply running it from the .app when you want to make a backup. It is also fully compatible with existing Time Machine backups - the preference pane will show that Time Machine is off, but it reads the TMS-created backup and date of last backup without trouble.

There is also the option to mount and unmount the Time Machine backup drive automatically, although I have not tested this. (I have a partitioned drive, and the other partitions are in frequent use, so I don’t bother.)

This method works very well for me, at a reliable three hours. It takes the same amount of time to run backups, as well as to load and unload the normal Time Machine interface, and, thank heavens, it actually does it every three hours. Why Apple didn’t include the option to change the backup frequency all along boggles me.

I will note that a third way to do this is to use Lingon to edit the plist files. I have not tried it, but I thought I would mention it, for those who might be interested. How about you? Have you tried Lingon? Time Machine Scheduler? Did the original .plisthack work for you?

(Time Machine Scheduler and Lingon are both free utilities, available at the links above.)

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2008/01/04/time-machine-scheduler/#comments
iWork hates Subversion
Or does Subversion hate iWork? I was just hit with the iWork/SVN bug that seems to be infamous among those using the two products concurrently. The problem, essentially, is the way that iWork—Pages, Numbers, and Keynote—and Subversion store their files.

It’s well-known that, for some time, Apple has chosen to package certain files as bundles; they appear in the Finder as single files, but from the Terminal and the file system proper, they are directories. Subversion (SVN, the popular version control system), like CVS (Concurrent Versioning System—another, earlier versioning system), stores its state files containing information about the current revision, the main repository, and so forth, within special directories inside each directory under Subversion control.

I have been using SVN to manage revisions of my writing—a prudent thing, you might agree, as it is both easier and more robust than the “track changes” feature of Pages (or Microsoft Word, for that matter). However, the problem lies in those .svn subdirectories that are part of every directory under Subversion control.

When Pages (or Numbers or Keynote) saves a file, it appears to do so by completely overwriting what is already present: the .svn directory is erased in the process. Attempting to commit those changes to the central repository for safekeeping illustrates the problem:

Files (directories? bundles?) are therefore left high and dry, and the entire point of revision control becomes moot. Since iWork does not support built-in revision control (unlike Microsoft Office), utilities such as CVS or SVN would be the next best option—if they weren’t cut down by the file bundle notion.

Ideally, Apple would decide whether file bundles—files such as applications, plugins, and iWork files—were actually files or directories and treat them as one or the other in all cases. It seems that file bundles are here to stay in their present state, at least for the foreseeable future, however.

While there are several workarounds [1][2], perhaps the most logical solution is to migrate from Subversion to a different revision control system that does not suffer this problem, such as Mercurial, Git, or GNU arch. None of these three keeps local state information within subdirectories of the working copy.

It is unknown whether other bundle-type files are susceptible to SVN and CVS impotence.

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2008/01/04/iwork-hates-subversion/#comments
Rogue Amoeba's Live Disc
Rogue Amoeba - makers of some stellar audio software - are gearing up for another Macworld Expo in San Francisco, and have added a new twist to the goodies they’ll be offering. In years past they (like many attending developers) have handed out CDs loaded with their many ‘wares for Expo-goers to try out. The big problem has always been that by the time software is printed to disc and delivered to the Expo, it’s likely that updates have already been made to the software. It’s not the end of the world by any means, but presents a speed bump for those ready to try out the fun new applications.

Enter ‘Live Disc’, Rogue Amoeba’s cool new innovation that [sort of] eliminates the possibility of delivering discs with out-of-date code. They give you the full story on their blog, but here’s the gist of it:

Live Disc presents a window much like a customized Finder window, with application icons that you can drag for copying or double-click for launching. The magic is, if a newer copy exists on our web server, it will copy or launch that version instead, seamlessly.

This a very cool idea - one I’d love to hear your take on if you pick one up at The Big Show in a couple weeks. The really neat part is that this solution was one that was conceived just to show off their real products! It’s not far-fetched that they could package this into an application of it’s own, and all as a byproduct of their main focus. Great work guys! It’s stuff like this that makes me excited to play on a Mac everyday.

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2008/01/03/rogue-amoebas-live-disc/#comments
TM Themes - A new repository of TextMate themes

I’ve been a hardcore TextMate user for over a year now and really can’t function without it. It’s an app we’ve covered a number of times.

One thing I really love about TextMate is how extendible/customizable it’s themes are. I’m a visual coder and having a theme that I can customize to my coding style really speeds up development for me.

The Macromates website has a pretty extensive theme gallery with downloads of dozens of themes but other than that, there isn’t much else out there in terms of “repositories” for themes.

Today a new site dedicated specifically to TextMate themes launched, called TM Themes.

Right now the collection is quite slim but once that is expanded it should be much easier to find themes you like. There’s a rating and comment feature built in also to help you narrow down the good from the bad.

Be sure to check out the site and upload any custom themes you’ve created!

Комментарии к сообщению:
http://theappleblog.com/2008/01/02/tm-themes-a-new-repository-of-textmate-themes/#comments