macfidelity

Viele Mac-User schwören u.a. auf ihre Macs, das OS und die Programme da es als gesamtes recht stimmig rüberkommt. Ein Großteil der Programme hält sich mehr oder weniger an die UI-Guidelines und hilft somit letzlich dem User  sich schneller zurechtzufinden.

Was passiert wenn man sich nicht an solche Richtlinien hält sieht man hier:

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Apple did a great step introducing Time Machine as an easy backup-solution for everyone (with a Mac & Mac OS 10.5).

While its a great thing in general it has to be configured for some users regarding the scheduling.

Till now the only solution i knew was editing

com.apple.backupd-auto.plist

Inside this file you have to modify the following section / key:

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

Where 3600 represents 3600 seconds as backup interval.

Well for those unwilling to edit .plist files take a look at TimeMachineScheduler.

It can…..

Quote:

• Set the interval from 1 to 12 hours.
• Run the backup manually or automatically also at startup, login or when the daemon has been loaded.
• Display the status of the daemon, of the backup volume and if the backup is currently running.
• Automount, an option to mount and unmount the backup volume automatically (see known problems).
• Option to hide the backup volume (to take effect a Finder relaunch is required).

Links:

• TimeMachineScheduler Homepage
• Apple Time Machine

Just sorting my old reminder-mails and here the content hehe.

If you need to get work with launchd in Mac OS X check Apple’s documentation here.

Quote:

In Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger, Apple introduced a new system startup program called launchd. The launchd daemon takes over many tasks from cron, xinetd, mach_init, and init, which are UNIX programs that traditionally have handled system initialization, called systems scripts, run startup items, and generally prepared the system for the user. And they still exist on Mac OS X Tiger, but launchd has superseded them in many instances. These venerable programs are widely used by system administrators, open source developers, managers of web services, even consumers who want to use cron to manage iCal scheduling, and they can still be called with launchd.

The launchd daemon also provides a big performance boost to your system. At any given time, only those daemons that are actually used are launched; combined with the fact that daemons can shut themselves down and be relaunched as needed means that you can reduce the average memory footprint of the system.

This article gives a quick overview of why launchd was needed, what it does, and then focuses on how to migrate your configuration files from cron, xinetd, mach_init, or init to a system using launchd.

Since 10.4 i am using Lingon as frontend for launchd.

Links:

• Apple launchd Getting Started Doc
• Lingon Homepage

About Sandbox:

What does Sandbox have to offer you?

• An organized, full-featured GUI for editing Mac OS X’s access control lists.
• A software update system so you never have to come back to this page to check for updates (but you’re welcome to anyway).
• A simple, easy-to-use panel for enabling and disabling ACL functionality

Version 2.1 is not 10.5 compatible so you have to use the latest beta on Leopard.

Well that’s it basically … Sandbox looks great if you are forced to work with ACL’s in Mac OS X but still prefer a real graphical user interface (GUI).

Oh one last thing…. if you are new to this topic and you want to see ACL’s in Terminal.app use ls -le insteed of the usual ls -l

Links:

• Sandbox Homepage
• Sandbox Documentation
• Sandbox Screenshot 1
• Sandbox Screenshot 2
• Macupdate.com Mirror
• Wikipedia about ACL’s in general

Found that article about the Origin of the iChat UI at daringfireball.net

Quote:

I had lost this historical document for a long time, but finally found it the other day on an old backup CD. Itâ ‚¬ „¢s the original 1997 sketch I made of a chat user interface based on speech balloons.

Drawn in ClarisWorks, April 21, 1997. This was based on my experiences with MUDs and IRC, having a really hard time keeping track of many-way chats. I think the only IM app available then was ICQ, which I hadnâ ‚¬ „¢t heard of. (IIRC, AIM came out later that year, at least for non-AOL users.) This also predates Microsoft Comic Chat, which used speech balloons too, although in a very different UI: theirs was for novelty, mine was for usability.