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I’ve recently needed to once again copybackup movies on DVD. I’m no huge fan of transcoding, though the latest version of HandBrake performs a great job and is easy to use. Wherever possible, I like to have a direct copy of the source material and with DVD’s that is generally not an easy thing to achieve.Since my primary means of re-displaying the content is via Boxee on the Mini, there’s no reason to worry about writing actual DVD’s from the source. Copies on a hard disk work quite nicely, don’t scratch and much easier to find in a jungle of media…

On the Mac, I rely on FairMount, a utility that, like HandBrake, relies on the VLC media player to assist with the obvious problem of copy protection. Using FairMount is simple: install VLC, then the small FairMount application itself. Insert the source DVD into the optical drive – FairMount mounts the volume as though it were a standard DVD. The bagel schmears while the operation is in process.

The mounted volume is shown in the application for reference purposes, but can be found as a mounted disk image on the desktop itself.

Making a copy or duplicate of the DVD is as easy as dragging and dropping, or selecting Duplicate from the context menu in Mac OS X.

Clearly, the duplicate generally consumes more than 4.7GB – quite commonly, closer to 8GB are required. If needed, the content on the disk can be remastered to fit a standard 4.7GB DVD.

Or so I thought. As one of our favourite applications on the Mac, Photo Booth is often launched. A few days ago, Photo Booth showed little more than a black screen. Hugely disappointing, of course. The usual Windows fix of rebooting the machine made little difference. It was only on the reboot that I noticed the constant glow of the green iSight light – normally, that light is off until the camera is active.

My initial reaction was to believe the iSight had died a sudden, if peaceful death. Then I remembered hearing about a PRAM reset, an operation that clears the PRAM which stores certain system and device settings in a location that Mac OS X can access quickly. The PRAM reset is not complicated and requires a bit of dexterity with hands and fingers. Read about the procedure here.

With the PRAM reset performed and the machine running again, we were relieved to see Photo Booth operational.

If you have a misbehaving Mac, try this as your first remedial action. For misbehaving kids, there is, unfortunately, no PRAM reset. Yet…

On the Mac I use VMware Fusion to run various other operating systems and applications. The new release of VMware Fusion features many optimizations and some great features that integrate applications running on a foreign OS directly into the host environment. VMware achieves that with Unity and even provides a quick search  button from which applications can be found in a VM. In the past, I’ve used the VMware Converter to convert physical systems into virtual machines – it’s a great way to create an exact duplicate for reference purposes or hive off an SAP development system for use elsewhere, for example. A standard feature in the Fusion product is the ability to create a mirror image of a Windows system for use on the Mac. I unsuccessfully attempted to run this a number of times whilst G2S was still running the Windows 7 RC. The Migration Assistant is a small executable that is installed on the source machine – Bonjour is installed, and in true Mac fashion, the source is found by simply keying in the four digit value the Migration Assistant displays. On the RC installation, G2S would simply freeze and require a restart. No migration would take place. With the full install of Windows 7 Ultimate, I had absolutely no trouble. One requirement: after the installation of the Migration Assistant component for the PC, a reboot of the Windows machine seems to be necessary – I could not get the Migration Assistant to find the source machine, by Bonjour or IP address. After a reboot, the connection is instantaneous and the copy process begins.

For the 57GB or so of data to be migrated from G2S, about five hours was estimated. That’s over a wired connection. In practice, that estimate was too high. The operation completed after approximately three hour or so.

Startup of the VM on the iMac took a bit of time, especially since Windows needs to find a bunch of drivers and determine its new base of operations. After that, all functionality of the system together with all the data is available for use.

The VM will be a handy system to have access to when I’m out an about and have only the MacBook with me.

Apple Software Update is adequate to keep your Mac humming along with the very latest official software that your Mac arrived with. But over the course of any time period it is unlikely that your Mac will be filled with only Apple software. Keeping up to date with a variety of applications downloaded from who-knows-where can be a challenge. That’s where AppFresh comes in. It takes on the task of creating an inventory of all the applications you’ve installed on Mac OS X, then goes out into the wide Interweb to determine whether a newer version of any of those applications is available.

The great thing about AppFresh is that it checks the status of your Mac at any point in time, so no persistent databases are created that may ignore a very new piece of software you may have installed. It’s also a free application, and as a bonus, developed by Germans. Has to work well then, right

After it’s been installed, AppFresh checks what’s in the Applications folder and then goes out to check for updates to those applications.

A concise list of all updates found is displayed. Even better, clicking on an entry that links to an update causes that update to be downloaded and, at the user’s behest, automatically installed.

The automatic installation is a great feature, though I’ve turned it off for the following reason: certain updates require user intervention – entering a password, for example. In the case of the Drobo Dashboard, the Drobo needs to be ejected before an update can be applied. In this sense, AppFresh wrongly assumes the applicatin was updated properly. I’m assuming that no proper error codes are returned to indicate that the application update failed. Whatever the case, for a better overview and to possibly transfer updates to the Mini and the MacBook I simply have AppFresh download the latest updates to my Downloads folder from where I manually install them.

To show that this is not just about third-party applications, AppFresh also provides information on the latest Apple software updates and, of course, about itself. It’s a great utility that makes life a lot easier and makes worrying about finding all the necessary updates to applications a thing of the past. Further details for any software component are provided. Simply click on an application to see a description of the suggested upgrade and read comments posted by users.

Integration with i use this provides a backend from which the latest application updates are read and from where application ratings can be determined, based on user opinions. Registration on the i use this service is free and optional – not a bad service to have access to at all. It’s also available for Windows users.

For anyone who needs to maintain upgrades to various applications on the Mac, AppFresh is worth a look. Highly recommended.

The daily review of my RSS feeds indicated good news with regard to Snow Leopard support for the Fujitsu ScanSnap: a new driver has been made available and may be downloaded here for all models.The update was promised to be available by the end of November – an earlier release date is great news for those who have held off on the Snow Leopard upgrade to ensure their scanners will still function as intended.

I downloaded the update and did a final check for any new software updates for Leopard. With nothing new to install, I plugged the Snow Leopard Install DVD into the iMac’s optical drive and allowed the upgrade to 10.6 proceed. As a check before the upgrade, the internal hard drive had about 409GB free space remaining. Less than one hour later, the iMac had rebooted twice and Snow Leopard had been successfully installed. About 40GB of disk space had been freed up during the upgrade and a cursory check indicated that most everything seemed to be working. I shutdown the ScanSnap Manager and installed the update: I’m happy to report that the direct scanning function with the Save to File option works as it did before on Leopard.

Last task: to apply the combo update 10.6.2.

Update: since I use the S300M and am not fussed about any of the OCR features provided by FineReader, I neglected to indicate that full OCR support is still not available on Snow Leopard. If you require this, check this link to be notified once FineReader has been readied for Snow Leopard.

MacHeist bundles are a great way of getting a bunch of software at a greatly reduced price. Sure, the bundle contains only one or two applications that one would normally consider purchasing, but given the price of the bundle and the ability to unlock additional applications as more purchases take place it’s certainly an attractive proposition.

The MacHeist nanoBundle is a take on the same theme, except that all applications in the bundle are available without charge. As the number of downloads exceeds a certain threshold, one additional application will be made available.

Six applications are offered in the bundle. ShoveBox is similar to DropBox, but is geared towards capturing web snippets and notes and making them available to other connected systems, including the iPhone. WriteRoom is a bare-bones editor that blanks out everything on the screen with the exception of the text being processed. The application should assist writers with the task at hand without providing extraneous functions. Twitterrific probably needs no introduction. It’s a client for Twitter and is the one I currently use on the Mac. TinyGrab is a screen capture utility that is able to share a screen capture by email automatically. Hordes of Orcs is a tower defense game. Lastly, Mariner Write is the application that is waiting for sufficient downloads to be unlocked for everyone. Mariner Write is a word processor with an impressive number of features and the ability to open Microsoft Word documents.

As with any bundle, there are programs that interest me and those that don’t. In this case, getting a registered version of Twitterrific is worth the download alone. ShoveBox and TinyGrab are applications I’ll probably use and stick with, whilst the word processors and the game won’t get much airtime. In any case, a download of registered software that carries no charge is not to be scoffed at. Get the MacHeist nanoBundle quickly – only six more days to go!

Both the Mini and MacBook have been running Snow Leopard since its release date and without much trouble. I held out upgrading the iMac simply because I wanted to be sure that all my peripherals and software products would work. A good thing, too. After upgrading to Snow Leopard on the MacBook, I discovered that support for the excellent Fujitsu ScanSnap S300M was lacking. Nothing too serious, but the scan to folder functionality is exactly what I want to use and I had no intention of working around the current software release’s inability to do just that under Snow Leopard. The partial fix provided by Fujitsu is simply another workaround and is not able to match the functionality as it’s intended to exist.

Long story short: after waiting for an update on when the new driver and software bundle would be ready to support Snow Leopard, Fujitsu has finally indicated that the end of November has been targeted. That’s great news…

I’ll try the update on the MacBook first and then move to Snow Leopard on the iMac once I’m satisfied that the update solves the issue of being able to scan directly to a folder without manual intervention. Looks like the iMac is getting a Snow Leopard for Christmas…

Backing up data is one of those tedious tasks that simply have to get done. On Linux, I relied on a script containing rsync that was scheduled using cron. On Windows, I like to use robocopy, a very handy command-line utility that is still around (and even updated) in Windows 7. Robocopy functions very much like rsync, and it’s the kind of backup I feel most comfortable with: no dumping of precious files into bit buckets hampered by specific formats. Instead, the source is replicated to the target drive and, if necessary, deletions on either end are carried over (or not) to ensure the source and target stay the same. Even better, once the initial copy has taken place, subsequent synchronizations are incremental and finish up in a jiffy.

On the Mac, Time Machine is certainly worthwhile using and a great backup utility. Unfortunately, Time Machine isn’t all that easy to use with network attached storage, such as my set of Drobos. The Drobo is quite happy to be seen by Time Machine when connected to the Mac via the fast Firewire or slower USB 2.0 ports. Workarounds exist to make a Drobo connected to a DroboShare unit be seen by Time Machine – use of sparse bundle images or BackMyFruitUp. Neither of those options gives me any high degree of comfort, primarily due to the fact that they’re not officially supported. Data corruption isn’t high on my wish list…

Whilst I could easily have utilized the humble command line rsync command under Mac OS X, I  searched for something a bit more user friendly. I settled on ChronoSync. Simply put, ChronoSync does exactly what rsync and robocopy do; it synchronizes files by copying from a source to a target. But that’s really just a tiny part of its arsenal. For USD 40, ChronoSync performs file synchronization, archiving of file versions, creation of bootable backup disks and much more.

Best of all, there is no need to code command line scripts or employ cron for job scheduling: that’s built in and permits a slew of backups to be run at intervals that are suitable.

For the paranoid, there’s even an option to synchronize a file the moment it has been altered. With the aid of a tiny piece of AppleScript, I am notified of the successful completion of my ChronoSync backups via Growl, on to Prowl to the iPhone. Scripting support may be employed for a number of other reasons, such as to shut down a database prior to copying, for example. I generally synchronize entire directory trees without filtering out specific files, though ChronoSync includes support for complex filters for file selection during archival and synchronization operations. In fact, the options provided by ChronoSync are very extensive and should cater for almost any specialized requirement.

Though it may be considered expensive, ChronoSync works without fail and puts my mind at ease. What more would one want from a backup solution?

There’s a time-limited trial version available for download here and so far, I’ve had no issue with ChronoSync running under Snow Leopard.

The first task at hand after Friday’s brief intro to Snow Leopard at the local iStore was to shove the DVD into the drive of the MacBook and try out an upgrade.

I didn’t bother backing up any applications or settings. All my data is routinely shoved to the Drobo, so losing the recently installed Leopard OS should anything go awry was of little concern.

With the DVD in the drive, a simple click commenced the upgrade, with a single obligatory entry of the super user password the only other interaction. All in all the upgrade completed in roughly 40 minutes, with a reboot in between. Before the upgrade, the MacBook showed about 188GB of free space available on the hard drive. True to Apple’s word, the drive indicated more free space once the upgrade procedure had completed: about 209GB.

Startups and shutdowns of the machine are lightning-fast. With Leopard, booting took a bit of time with shutdowns reasonably speedy. With Snow Leopard, there’s a marked improvement. Other than that, there’s nothing to visually provide any clue that there’s a newer incarnation of the OS running. The desktop interface and interaction with elements on screen remains the same. Two changes I noticed almost immediately: take a snapshot of a section of the screen and the item is saved with a name other than the usual Picture 1 – that’s a welcome fix. Also, the slider in the status bar makes zooming in and out in the folder view quick and easy.

A new look to the menus when icons in the dock are clicked, plus the addition of stacks and Expose built into the dock.

It’s 64-bit enabled, but that’s really important only once the actual application one is using requires vast amounts of RAM. Applications need to be compiled for that. In fact, some 64-bit applications will run slower than 32-bit ones…

Exchange support is built in, but requires Exchange 2007 on the server. Useful once corporates take the plunge and upgrade to that…

Additional useful features include automatic determination of location using the SkyHook Wi-Fi positioning service. That automatically adjusts the current time zone and is useful to travelers. Text substitution is enabled in certain applications, such as Mail.app, permitting shortcut codes to be used which are automatically expanded to the intended text when entered in a supporting application. The text substitution feature is found in the System Preferences. QuickTime X is the new QuickTime player that now sports the ability to save content and includes some basic editing features. A right-click on the synchronization icon in the menu bar provides a more detailed overview of recent synchronization sessions.

Next up: ensuring that the most important applications I use are able to run on the new OS. Bento – check. Aperture requires an update, available from Apple. PhotoShop CS4 – check. ChronoSync – check. Fujitsu’s ScanSnap Manager is the only issue – an intermediate fix has been released, but a complete update to the software will be available only sometime later this year. Because of the issue with ScanSnap, I’m holding off on the upgrade to Snow Leopard on the iMac.

I took a similar approach to the upgrade with the Mac Mini, whose main task is to run Boxee, connected to the large LCD in the TV area. Inserted the disk and let her go.

After about an hour, the system had been upgraded with no apparent loss in functionality.

There’s no question that the upgrade to Snow Leopard is worthwhile. Expectations of a new look and feel will quickly result in disappointment. Speed improvements, minor enhancements to the user interface and experience and a reasonable saving in disk space are the main gains.

Caution should be exercised when critical applications could be affected by the upgrade. By now, more and more information is trickling through with regard to problems and potential solutions. With only the ScanSnap to worry about, the upgrade of the iMac promises to be similarly hassle-free once Fujitsu release an update to their software.

Though the weather is warming up nicely in South Africa, the Snow Leopard is nonetheless making an early appearance. Apple’s updated Mac OS X, that is.

No doubt those of you who receive marketing blurb from Core, the local Apple distributor, will also have seen an invitation to the Snow Leopard launch at your nearest iStore. The event takes place on Friday evening at 18:00. I’ll be at the Clearwater iStore.

A sneak peek at Mac OS X 10.6 is promised, as is a chance to get your mitts on a copy. Here’s hoping that the USD 29 price point will be maintained as promised…