software

iTunes' iPhone backup is absolutely horrid. i've just about decided to completely replace it with rsync, so i figured i'd give it one last go. it's been 2 hours since i plugged my phone in and iTunes auto-synced. it's been over a week since my last rsync backup. how do they compare?

time

iTunes backup—crashed after 1.5 hours. resulted in corrupted backup, will not be able to restore from it.

rsync—5 minutes, 32 seconds.

connection

iTunes backup—plug in via dock connector/usb.

rsync—wi-fi.

speed

iTunes backup—USB 2.0 theoretical maximum: 480 Mbits/second. actual speed: approx 2.3 Mbits/sec.

rsync—actual transfer speed: 440 Mbits/sec.

data transferred

iTunes backup— ~16 Gb

rsync— ~155 Mb

data availability

iTunes backup—stored in a single compressed image. not available.

rsync—stored in a standard folder on my data drive. very available.

revision availability

iTunes backup—last backup. available only as a complete reimage, assuming the last backup didn't crash. if last backup crashed (about 66% probability, in my experience), not available at all. ever.

rsync—thanks to the magic of Time Machine, every single sync is backed up. every change. every revision. these backups can be restored piecemeal, as needed.

ease of restoration

iTunes backup—plug in phone. hope iTunes has a valid backup image. curse.

rsync—run the reverse rsync command, go about your merry way. can restore a single app or folder, or the entire iPhone.

triggers

iTunes backup—plug phone into computer, manual sync.

rsync—cron jobs, folder actions, bluetooth proximity, IP address availability, manual sync.

approx wait after plugging phone into computer before i can do anything with my phone other than looking a pretty "syncing" screen

iTunes backup—1.5 hours

rsync—0 seconds

final score

verdict?

wow.

i was chatting with my boss at Portero, and he found it amusing that the iPod app has such a prominent place on my iPhone. he said he'd rather have easy access to his calendar than his music. it's interesting to see how everyone arranges their apps to suit their own preferences. after playing with my phone a while, these are the apps that have made the cut and the ordering that works for me. i plan to write more on the apps later, so check back!

what does your phone look like?

the home screen

these are my go-to apps. they're generally grouped by row. notable players include transportation and task management apps.

more iPhone screenshots after the jump.

Every once in a while someone asks me what cool software they should install on their computer. Invariably, I say something like "check out the OS X tag on my blog."

Apparently I've been lying to everyone, because I looked at the software categories on my blog the other day and realized that I haven't been posting much there at all. So I decided to do something about it:

Introducing Technophobe, the future home of my tech rants and recommendations. I've started out with a really sweet Mac menu extra called Jumpcut.

More features, more reviews, more hotness coming soon. Check back for a regular dose of nifty applications. Subscribe to the site feeds. Enjoy :)

A few weeks ago i purchased the MacHeist II bundle, a program that hooks up mac users with great deals on software and earns money for charity in the process... This year they donated almost half a million dollars. I've got no beef with MacHeist. I do, however, have a problem with Yazsoft, the vendors of Speed Download, which was included in the MacHeist bundle.

You see, Speed Download, like most applications, automatically checks for updates. In fact, Speed Download installs them automatically as well. This worked out just fine until version 5.0 was released. Right on cue, Speed Download installed the update and popped up a notification that I should relaunch the application.

The difference between this and previous updates is that version 5.0 was not included in the license I purchased. Without warning, without confirmation, Speed Download "updated" itself to a 21 day trial version. I entered the registration information, which I purchased less than three weeks ago as part of MacHeist. But since this update was from version 4 to 5.0, my old license was no good.

i love firefox. really, i do. it can be speedy. it can be extensible. but apparently it can't be both at the same time... all my development plugins make it slow, and all my browsing plugins make it even slower.

how i fixed my my super slow firefox after the jump.

conversation snippet of the day:

some dude: "I hear you can get microsoft here for $70."

employee: "yes, we have student pricing on microsoft products. were you looking for microsoft office, or microsoft windows?"

dude: "i don't know... which one is better?"

i just finished a fresh windows xp sp2 install... now it's doing the 65 critical security updates that have been released since sp2.

wow.

my roommate just got a new laptop for his trip to Cambodia, and we were talking about what he needed to do to make windows xp usable. a few quick downloads and he's well on his way.

I find myself firmly in the camp of the Open Source Pragmatists. Richard Stallman and his cronies, the Idealists, strike me as somewhat crazy. Sure, they have lofty ideals. They have great ideas. But what good are lofty ideals when they alienate the user base? Windows users will not be willing to switch to free software unless it is comparable to their user experience. If the open source nVidia driver doesn't perform anywhere close to the closed source nVidia driver, using the binary might be an acceptable compromise of ideals. While the MP3 audio format is not a free standard, it is ubiquitous. Linux distributions such as Fedora which make it difficult to play MP3's serve to alienate the user and possibly cause them to seek other options. Sometimes it's best to sacrifice some of our ideals for the greater good.