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I have been a major proponent of personal backups for a longtime. I have never discussed my backup strategy in detail (and will do that at some point), but I have recently been re-evaluating my backup system. I had heard about Crashplan before. It was one of the many places that offers offsite backups, but they also offer software that allows you backup to other computers, either local networked computers or remote ones. I never considered using this software to backup to my local Drobo though, until now.

Advantage of Crashplan

1. Network supported backups - Although Time Machine supports this with a hack, there is a reason it isn’t officially supported. It’s unreliable. I have done it with secondary computers but wouldn’t trust it full-time. Crashplan lets you go to any computer, NAS, etc. no matter what OS it’s running.
2. Space Savings - There are a number of ways CP saves space. It compresses files it backups. It does Delta Blocking so that only the actual bits of the files that changed are copied, instead the entire file each time. And it allows for quotas meaning that only a certain amount of space is used that you specify.
3. Real-time/Scheduling - If you spring for Crashplan+ ($60 license per machine), CP will backup files in real-time (as they change). Because of the aforementioned Delta Blocking this shouldn’t impact performance. Backups can be scheduled as well, another hack-only feature of Time Machine.
4. Smart Backups - Similar to #2, CP will only backup files that actually change, instead of just changes in date, etc.
5. Data Integrity – CP verifies that backups are working and valid. Time Machine won’t let you know that it’s borked until you try to restore files from it.

Advantages of Time Machine

1. Direct file access to backed up files - The best feature of TM is that you can access your backed up files from the Finder, which makes it easy to find a file or copy a file or do whatever.
2. Restore - If your hard drive crashes and you get a new one, you can boot to the Snow Leopard DVD and restore your machine from a Time Machine backup. This is at least a time saver, and at most reliable and fast way to get up and running.
3. Superior UI/Ease of Use – TM works out of the box on Snow Leopard. You turn it on and it goes. The UI is simple and easy to use. CP has a pretty complicated and almost confusing set of complex options and settings.
4. Cost – Time Machine is free with Leopard (10.5) and higher. And backs up every hour with no hacks. The free version of Crashplan will only backup once a day for free.
5. Apple Supported - It’s Apple supported, so you shouldn’t have issues with it being compatible or files not working.

To be, the three biggest advantages of Time Machine are cost, direct access to files and the ability to restore during a fresh install. With Crashplan, I would likely restore from a Carbon Copy Cloner image (which I take about once a month, but would start taking more frequently) and then use CP to restore other files. I am unsure exactly how this would work because I wonder if certain files would be locked when you are logged in. The UI for Crashplan is very complex, and browsing files to restore is not nearly as easy as Time Machine.

The ability to backed up to a networked drive means I can move my Drobo from MacBook Pro to my Airport Extreme Base Station and then be able to access my files when I am elsewhere in the house. It also means that all my machines can be backed up to one central place. Right now, my Mac mini backs up to it’s own external hard drive. The space savings means that I won’t need more space to do this. Better reliability and e-mail summaries is a big key. Regularly I right click the Time Machine icon in the menubar and find out that my backup hasn’t run in days. It would be nice to know this.

I have started using the free version of Crashplan on my main computer just to see how it works. It seems solid so far. I think I will likely use the two in parallel for a while until I get comfortable. But at the moment, all signs point to switching to Crashplan long term.

We saw Avatar in Real 3D a few weeks ago and I was less than impressed with the whole “3D” concept. It was the first 3D movie I had seen and so I really didn’t know exactly what to expect going in. I was thinking it was going to be more like the idea of stuff that looks like you can reach out and touch or things would look like they were coming through the screen at you.

But in the end, it really was more like there was more depth to the movie. It looked like there were multiple layers that moved independent of one another. I can’t even figure out how to describe this. Basically it allowed multiple things to be in focus that are at different distances and things seemed to move on different planes almost.

As a whole, however, it was just as distracting and headache-inducing as it was an enjoyable experience. It certainly wasn’t something that I feel like I have to have for future movies. It doesn’t seem like something that will suddenly make me want to see more movies. It was all sizzle and no steak.

Most people were underwhelmed by Apple’s announcement last week of the iPad, a new mobile computer device (I don’t think it’s a tablet, since what we know as a tablet computer usually requires writing or a penlike device as some sort of input). While I certainly agree that it’s basically a big iPhone, most people are missing the big picture impact of this device.

Go back to the early/mid 90s: all the movies we saw always showed us everyone in the future using small touchscreen computers. Prior to the iPhone, most touchscreens sucked. They were either inaccurate or very slow to respond. Have you ever used one of those touchscreens at like a grocery store when you check out? How many times has the place you touched on the screen either not worked or required you to click multiple times? I owned a Palm Treo 680 for a while. Either the buttons had to be really big or I couldn’t really be accurate without the stylus.

Along came the iPhone and suddenly you had the best touchscreen you had ever used. Three years to the month, Steve Jobs reveals an enlarged iPhone with an equally awesome performing touchscreen. From people who have used it, apparently it’s performance is off the charts as a whole. Its fast and speedy.

As a short term product, I am with everyone that the iPad isn’t going to turn the world upside down. Apple is saying that it belongs between the MacBook and the iPhone, and most people don’t need another device in that band. So most people won’t run out and buy one right away. But let me ask you this question, what do you use your computer for right now? 90% of what I do (at home) on my computer is browse the web, e-mail, watch video. Basically consume content and communicate. If you aren’t producing content, like video production, software development, etc., what can’t you do on the iPad that you can do on your laptop? I am fairly confident that my mom and sister could use the iPad for all their needs.

The reason the iPad is revolutionary is because five years from now, this will be what everyone will use it to do what they do now. Everyone will have a “futuristic” computer that is smaller than a piece of paper, weighs 2 pounds, works everywhere and does everything you need. The same way Steve Jobs changed the personal computer in the mid 80s, made digital music the standard in the 2000s with the iPod and iTunes and jumpstarted the smartphone market and took it to a new level with the iPhone, his final act will be changing the way communicate and consume content.

After I talked about things that changed over the last ten years, I thought I would through out a few predictions about the next 10 years.

Media Consumption

One of the major changes I expect is that the way that we consume movies and TV shows will change drastically. TV networks and cable companies are lagging behind the times and if they aren’t careful they will join the newspapers as the next ones out of business. They have yet to find a way to make DVRs work in their favor. I have been saying for a while that the solution is to make all episodes of shows available on-demand anytime for free. But the first viewing you have to watch commercials. This circumvents existing DVRs and makes sure that everyone watches commercials at least once. And if the show is available anytime, no one needs to “record” anything anymore.

Netflix and even Blockbuster have finally figured out that the answer is streaming any* movie you want on demand for a monthly fee. Apple lets you rent these and stream them a la carte. Cable companies already have allowed for on-demand movies either for free or for a fee. As more people invest in Home Theatre PCs (HTPC) or other set top boxes this will become even more commonplace.

Wireless Internet Everywhere

I also think that wireless internet is the future. The existing “pipes” the cable companies use for broadband probably can’t get a lot faster. And wireless broadband is catching up. 4G is around the corner and will get your wireless closer to what wired has. Imagine if you could bring your notebook anywhere and be using your own ISP.

Computers as we know them

My last prediction is what happens to what we now know as the personal computer. The last few years, hardware capabilities have far surpassed what is needed for the average user. Internet browsing, e-mail, SMS, playing music and video can all be done on an iPhone, which is the equivalent of 10 year old computer. More and more these mobile devices will replace people’s needs for an actual computer. I foresee docking your phone at home to in some respect and being able to use bigger screens and other input devices as needed.

*any doesn’t truly mean any yet, since there is a limited catalog available

I am 25 years old, when midnight struck on the year 2000, I was a junior in high school who didn’t even have their driver’s license yet. Over the last 10 years, I have seen the internet completely change our lives, and not just Facebook and Twitter, so much more.

Google Maps

I make jokes all the time that I don’t know how people lived without Google Maps. How did people figure out how to get from place to place? Or find an address they didn’t know? Or find the quickest route? Now obviously I know the answers to these questions, but no one does this anymore. You type two addresses into Google Maps and it’s all done for you. This has probably saved most people a lot of headaches and time.

Yelp, Google Maps and businesses’ websites

Ten years ago when you were looking for a hardware store you opened the Yellow Pages and looked in that section. When you were looking for a place to eat you did the same thing or called a friend. Now everyone uses the internet for this. Looking for a Home Depot, hit up their website and use the Store Locator. Want to find a Mexican restaurant nearby, go to Yelp and search. I don’t even own a phone book. I don’t think I have every used the Yellow Pages in my life. Any people of my generation probably never will again.

News sites and Twitter

I don’t know anyone my age who reads the newspaper. And unless there is a major event going on where live quality video is a must (9/11 for example), I don’t know anyone who watches CNN anymore. We know that most newspapers are either out of business or in dire straits. I read somewhere that CNN’s ratings were at an all-time low for the year. In the “ADD” society of today, newspapers and even evening news casts are just too slow to get us news. Twitter has turned in my source for breaking news (I heard about the Mumbai attacks and many celebrity deaths of ‘09 on there). CNN.com, Google News, Digg and ChicagoTribune.com have become my source for news throughout the day.

Reunions, Christmas cards and letters

Facebook has changed life for most people. It has allowed a lot of people to re-connect with high school friends and whatnot. But for people my age, it has made it completely unnecessary to attend a high school reunion. I can see pictures, find out about jobs and anything else I want about people I went to high school with. I don’t know anyone my age who writes letters anymore. Facebook messages and e-mails have rendered them obsolete. It’s cheaper, faster and easier to just shoot off an email. Christmas cards seem to be the exception to this rule so far. We still received a few this year but barring a personal note or “letter” they aren’t better than an e-mail that could allow me to catch up on what someone is up to.

Shopping and shipping

Online shopping has completely changed the game. I would be willing to guess that at least 75% of people with broadband internet did some holiday shopping online. You can cover a lot of different items in a lot less time than traveling around to stores. Generally the prices are better as well. Amazon.com seems to have become most people’s first stop when shopping for anything. If you pay for Amazon Prime (free 2-day shipping) you can basically get items in a day or two for no extra cost. Most of the time that’s an acceptable time to wait for something to save 10% or more. Going along with this is the way that online shopping has changed the shipping industry. I would have to guess that FedEx and UPS have seen a massive growth in business in the last ten years.

Full disclosure, I am friends with the developer of Howl.

I have been a Mac user for almost three and a half years now. One of the things I loved about OS X is the eye candy. In my opinion, the eye candy in OS X is unmatched. One of the great apps for eye candy is Growl. Growl is a notification system. It pops up a notification on your screen when compatible applications have something to report. If you have ever used Microsoft Outlook, it’s similar to the little window that pops up in the bottom right of your screen when you get a new e-mail. It doesn’t end with e-mail though. If you are using Adium you get IM notifications, sign on/off notices, etc. A lot of Twitter clients will do direct messages and even mentions.

To be honest, I had almost ceased using Growl a few months ago. I was using Mail.appetizer for my Mail notifications and there wasn’t any reason I had to keep using Growl. Then an e-mail from my hero and yours contacted me about his new application, Howl, which pushes Growl notifications to your iPhone as Push notifications. Now this wasn’t the first app in the App Store that did this, Prowl was the first. And too be honest I had a hard time finding usefulness to this. I auto-checked my e-mail and when I got a new message I just went and saw what it was. My iPhone twitter app already had Push.

Mostly out of loyalty to my friend, I gave it a chance. And let me say, I am hooked. The app adds a new “style” to Growl that lets you forward the notifications to an existing style while also getting Push. Plus it allows you to only Push notifications after your computer has been idle (the best feature IMO) so that when you are at your computer your phone isn’t going wild. I love knowing what my e-mails are before I get them (usually). And now if it’s not something I want to read I don’t even go to my e-mail. I have changed the frequency of checking to an hour and have considered making it manual. I have switched to an iPhone Twitter client that doesn’t use Push so Howl helps there. And with the prototype Facebook Notifications app for Mac, I get push notifications for Facebook now too. The best use was when I was waiting for a package this week and I got updates from the Delivery Status widget right to my phone.

This whole concept is great. In theory though, when more apps start using push this could be obsolete. But because Growl is compatible with so many more apps, there will always be something that would make Howl worth having.

I have used probably a dozen or so Twitter clients at some point. The number of clients is somewhat astounding. Most are free or at least have free versions. I bounce around between two computers at home, my MacBook Pro which is essentially a desktop hooked up to my 24 inch monitor and my MacBook which I primary use in bed, on the couch or on the go. When I am at my desk with a huge monitor I prefer a multi-column Twitter client that takes advantage of screen real estate. On my MacBook, I want something that doesn’t use as much screen space. So that means I have a wide range in Twitter clients.

1. Nambu – This is my favorite client of the moment. It is similar to TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop in the sense that it’s a multi-column client. The difference is that those are written in Adobe Air and this is a native Mac client. That gives it a more polished look and feel and better OS integration (it has dock badges and works with Growl). It saves your scrolling place so you can start where you left off and makes it easy to distinguish “new” and “old” tweets. My biggest gripe is that it’s unfinished. There are advertised features that have been “coming soon” for a while. It also isn’t compatible with Snow Leopard at the moment. The developers are promising to release v2.0 soon which will work under Snow Leopard.

2. Tweetie – I am slowly falling in love with this client. It’s now my primary client on my MacBook. There are just so many things it does right. I didn’t get on board with Tweetie on the iPhone because at the time I didn’t want to pay for a Twitter client and I didn’t like that it did retweets with “via” instead of RT. But both problems get rectified on the Mac (there is a free ad-supported version). I love the way Tweetie shows threads of tweets and previews shortened URLs before taking you there and pops up a window to show you a picture from known picture sites. It’s just so slick. You are locked into one window, which isn’t that big of a deal. You can create saved searches and break them out into new windows. At the moment, Tweetie is rising up the charts. And so far, the only issue I have with it in Snow Leopard is that dock badge doesn’t show message count at the moment.

3. Seesmic Desktop – Another app I only recently got into. I was frustrated with Nambu about a month ago since there hadn’t been any updates in so long and it seemed like it was dead. One of things I initially liked about Seesmic was the Facebook integration. It lets you see comments, “like” things and add comments which IIRC is more than TweetDeck could do. This kind of became irrelevant when I discovered Facebook for Adobe Air which I used then alongside Seesmic (and now use alongside Nambu). It is better looking than TweetDeck in my opinion. I like the “home” column that seems to capture everything. The main advantage over TweetDeck seems to be better Facebook integration which also allows you to add Facebook friends to groups with Twitter friends. It appears to work fine with Snow Leopard.

4.  TweetDeck – TweetDeck was the first multi-column client I used and I really liked a lot about it. The ease of moving columns (something Nambu lacks) is a really nice feature. The ability to see whats “popular” in an individual column is downright badass. But Facebook integration is pretty lacking. It doesn’t do anything but show statuses and doesn’t let you add FB friends to groups, meaning you are stuck with all your friends all the time. The inability to resize text and avatars leaves people with small screens a limited number of tweets. All in all it has more negatives than pluses in my opinion.

5. Twitterfon Pro – This is the only non-desktop client on the list. It should be higher because it might be my most used client. I finally broke down and bought the Pro version a few months ago. Its pretty snappy, it keeps new tweets in a different color which I like. It has ping.fm integration so I can post to FB and Twitter simultaneously. I like how easy it is to access trends. My biggest gripe is that it doesn’t save your scroll position when you exit. That is the key feature missing.

I realize that the Microsoft “Laptop Hunter” ads are not new. They have been on for a few months now. The basic premise, if you haven’t seen them, is that they “run into” some person who is looking for a laptop. They follow them around a store (I think it’s always Best Buy) and somone shows them a bunch of laptops, including Macs. They always talk about how the Mac is too expensive and end up buying some Dell or HP or whatever with “better” specs.

Let me first say that I am a big Apple guy. Everyone knows this and if you want to call me a “fanboy” so be it. I am definitely not in the “Apple can do no wrong” camp because I think there are plenty of things wrong with the iPhone. I do think their computers are too pricey and I wish they would make some of them easier to upgrade.

That being said, I think these commercials are genius on so many levels. First off, Microsoft doesn’t make computers, they make an operating system. So it’s kind of funny that they are making commercials about comparing hardware. But it’s a brilliant move to me. There is so much negative talk about Vista that Microsoft needed to try another approach. They never even talk about features of the operating system, just about the computers and price. Most people know that Macs are considerably more expensive than “PCs*.” So I don’t think that this is a huge revelation to most people. But I think most people didn’t know that computers with equal “numbers” (and by numbers I mean amount of RAM, hard drive size, processor speed, screen size) cost so much less. It’s a brilliant way to hit the masses of uninformed casual users who undoubtedly had been intrigued by Macs  due to the popularity of the iPhone.

But at the same time, everyone get’s hung up on these “numbers.” It surprises me because even computer-savvy people I know say the same thing. It would be like if Kia started having commercials where they should people at CarMax looking at Kias and Hondas and saying, “Well the Kia is four cylinder, gets about the same gas mileage, has four doors, a steering wheel, brakes AND it’s half the price!!” Most people know that those two cars are not created equal. You sacrifice things like build quality, reliability, longevity. The problem is that the average person doesn’t know this about computers.

The bottom line, Microsoft hit a home run with these commercials. Most people I know already play “the Mac is too expensive” card all the time. This just hits that theory out of the park. Now of course anyone who owns a Mac probably disagrees.

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*I say “PCs” because PC stands for personal computer and a Mac is still a personal computer, but whatever.

I really don’t understand why there is so much complaining around the web about the iPhone upgrade pricing. Apparently if you have an iPhone 3G you can’t just upgrade to the 3G S for $199. People are all up in arms about this. But I don’t understand why.

The iPhone 3G was subsidized by AT&T which is why it was $199 instead of $399. The deal with this is that AT&T picks up the difference (granted it’s not a full $200, but it’s something). AT&T can do this because over the two year contract you signed they will make up the money. But if in a year in you buy another subsidized phone, then AT&T probably hasn’t made back their money from the first phone. Hence the reason that they won’t give you the subsidized price but will let you get one at full price.

The thing is this is always how mobile phone companies have worked. If you sign a contract, you get a deal on a phone, and you can’t get another deal on a phone until your contract is up. Apparently a lot of people are crying foul because last year you could get the 3G at the subsidized price even if you already had the original iPhone. But the reason for that is simply because the first iPhone wasn’t subsidized, so AT&T wasn’t losing out on any money.

So why are people so pissed? This is how phone companies make money. I agree that it’s disapointing, but anyone who says they are pissing off their “loyal” customers make me laugh. If you were so loyal you would honor your contract. Most of the iPhone customers weren’t even customers 2 years ago.

</end rant>

Whenever someone tells me they are thinking about getting a Mac or, when they ask me what computer to buy and I say Mac, generally the response is “but they are so expensive!” Microsoft liked to hammer this point home recently in a series of TV ads. Can you buy a PC for cheaper than a Mac? Absolutely. But can you buy a new car for $6,000? Yes, but would you?

Recently I have been pounding it home to people that you get what you pay for. There is a reason those $400 notebooks at Best Buy are $400. My family has had first hand experience. My sister had a Dell in college that she constantly had problems with and after 4 years was basically unusable. My mom has a notebook (Toshiba maybe?) that was on the cheap side and has had a bunch of problems as well. Now, is this related to the person using it? Perhaps. I use my computers far more than they do, but maybe I take better care of them? I think that is negligible.

I recently stumbled upon this article that tries to “debunk” the Apple tax. They price out a comparable Dell (vs. a 24 inch iMac) and arrive at the conclusion that Dell is $1500 more. Now before your jaw drops, I think they cheated a bit. They spent $150 to upgrade to Vista Ultimate, $200 to get Photoshop (trying to say that iPhoto is a comparable product) and adding WiFi for $70 which most people buying desktops don’t need. The Dell also has 6 GB of RAM vs. 4 GB, 750 GB hard drive vs. 650 GB and a nicer video card. When it’s all said and done there is no way that it’s $1500 cheaper, but, it a minimum it’s a few hundred dollars more to get the Dell.

But if you want to make the argument of buying the $400 Dell notebook, I will make some other points for you. I bought the original MacBook the day it came out in May of 2006. I believe I paid $1099 for it before my company discount. It has been nearly three years and according to the fairly accurate Mac2Sell, my MacBook is worth $460. That is a lot of money 3 years later. I think you would struggle to get anything for a 3-year old $400 Dell notebook, if it’s even running. Then there is the Operating System. Apple is about to release their 3rd version of their OS since I bought that computer in 2006. Vista has since come out since then, but Windows 7 isn’t that close yet. Not to mention the fact that OS X costs $100 for a full version instead of $99 for a pain in the ass upgrade version.

When it’s all said and done, I understand that some people just flat out can’t afford a Mac, but anyone who can and still tries to play the “expensive” card is just uneducated.