I've been using EMC Retrospect for Macintosh, version 6.1 to back up our MacBook Pro and iMac. They're backed up to a RAID NAS. I've been happy with it, with these caveats: Its UI is un-Mac-like. It's single-threaded, and its control window is completely unresponsive when it's thinking real hard about something. Its file-analysis phase is slower … Continue reading I might try EMC Retrospect 8.0 for Macintosh →

A new version has been released.

Apple just released Safari 3.2.1. If you're wondering whether PithHelmet still crashes Safari after this upgrade, the answer is Yes, it does.

I've paid $20 in PithHelmet registration fees. On November 13, Apple released a Safari update. I waited a couple of days, and then upgraded. After a short time, I, like many others, discovered that PithHelmet crashed Safari 3.2. I e-mailed Mike Solomon twice last week, asking if he had an ETA for a PithHelmet update. … Continue reading PithHelmet support: Yoo hoo, anybody home? →

PithHelmet crashes Safari 3.2. Safari acted normally for a day or so after I upgraded to 3.2. Then, it started crashing within a couple of minutes of being launched. The crashes were always Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001) and Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS. Nothing else was acting up, so I didn't think it was a hardware problem. I tried … Continue reading PithHelmet crashes Safari 3.2 →

I've noticed something about my MacBook that's mildly cool.  When I put it to sleep, the LCD screen appears to be completely off when viewed in a normally-lit room.  But if I turn out the lights, I can see a faint, ghostly Apple logo displayed in the middle of the screen.  It's fuzzy, has a … Continue reading Ghostly Apple logo on my MacBook Pro screen →

A follow-up to my earlier post about problems with Memeo LifeAgent for Mac, and Memeo's sup-optimal customer support. Today, they finally responded in their support forum. A recap: They initially said they would fix the problem by the end of May.  They had no more response for five weeks, during which time two other users … Continue reading Memeo is clueless →

After my terrible experience with Memeo LifeAgent for Mac, I searched for a better backup application for my MacBook.  (By "better," I mean, "it's not a piece of crap, and it works.") After reading enough product descriptions to glaze my eyes over, I decided upon EMC Retrospect for Macintosh. At $119, it's pricey, compared to … Continue reading A Review of EMC Retrospect for Macintosh →

Shortly after I acquired my MacBook, I was disappointed to discover that Apple had designed lobotomized Time Machine so it wouldn't work with generic network storage — e.g., with a NAS. There's no good technical reason why Time Machine should require disks formatted in Apple's HPS+ file system.  The file system should be entirely abstracted. The only reason … Continue reading A Review of Memeo LifeAgent for Mac →