OS X Picks Migration

Finally finished migrating all OS X Picks software reviews from the main Chimoosoft site to the Cocoa Musings blog. This should provide an easier way for people to post comments about the reviews and perhaps make them easier to find as well. If you notice any broken links, let me know.

Objective-C

I came across an interesting article today called "Inside the Objective-C Runtime" (see also part two). This article does a decent job explaining some of the benefits of Objective-C with Cocoa programming on OS X as compared with other object oriented languages. The article is a little dated (six years old), but most of the information is still relevant.

This led to a search for more articles touting the benefits of Objective-C. In "Objective-C: Dynamite!," the author begins with a relevant quote which should resonate with most Objective-C programmers:

"Objective-C is the result of adding object facilities to C with the goal of making programmers more productive. The result differs greatly from C++, which adds objects to C without making computers less efficient: quite a different goal." [PC Week, November 3, 1997]

Later on, for the humorously inclined:

"If a person on the street asks you for a flump, and you don't know how to respond, do you exit with a core dump?"

.Mac iDisk Woes & Warning

I use Apple's .Mac iDisk syncing feature to store some commonly accessed files locally and have them automatically sent to Apple's servers as a backup. Today, on a whim, I decided it was time to change my password and did so through the .Mac web interface. I then tried to access my iDisk in the Finder, and of course, the password was wrong so the access was denied. I opened the .Mac System Preference pane where it showed me an error message stating that my password was invalid, so I clicked the "Sign Out" button and then signed back in with the new password.

A naïve user wouldn't expect this to cause any problems, however signing out appears to have deleted the locally cached copy of my iDisk! It also forced me to reset all of my .Mac settings including which items are synced, and then re-downloaded the entire iDisk contents to the local disk. All I can say, is it's a good thing the iDisk had just finished it's last automatic sync before I changed my password, otherwise I could easily lost a lot of data! It would have been nice to have some sort of a warning when signing out of .Mac that the local iDisk contents would be lost.

So consider this as a warning to others; be careful how you go about changing your password and make sure to sync your iDisk first if you use syncing at all. For those of you that just access your iDisk over the network and don't sync to the local disk, this shouldn't be an issue.

Addendum: Turns out that the previous local iDisk was saved to my desktop as "Previous local iDisk for username.sparsebundle." This removes the previously mentioned concerns about data loss, but it still would have been a hassle to merge the freshly re-downloaded iDisk and the old one had they been different.

Techno Speak

"When the client process sends a message to the NSDistantObject object, the proxy captures the Objective-C message in the form of an NSInvocation object and forwards it to its NSConnection object. The NSConnection object encodes the NSInvocation into an NSPortMessage object, using an NSPortCoder object, and passes it to an NSPort object connected to an NSPort object in the server process. The client’s port sends the encoded data to the server’s port which decodes the data back into an NSPortMessage object. The port message is then sent to the NSConnection object which converts it into an NSInvocation object, using an NSPortCoder object. The invocation is finally dispatched as an Objective-C message sent to the vended object. Any return value from the object is passed back through the connection and returned transparently to the client process."

Yikes, that's really something, isn't it?

http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/DistrObjects/index.html

Online Photo Backups

Common wisdom these days states that a file doesn't truly exist unless it exists in at least two places (one of which is off-site). Of all the files people back up, photographs may be the most important. For many people, they're high on the list of items they wouldn't want to lose in the event of an unforeseen disaster.

Several different online options exist which can be used for backing up photos; some are designed with photos in mind, and some are simply for generic file storage. I have chosen a few of the more common ones and written up a brief comparison of them below (in random order). Each option looks at the cost for backing up 30 GB of photos; this size was chosen to reveal price differences as your photo library grows.

Flickr

One of the most popular options, and also the cheapest. The Flickr Pro account starts at $2.08/month and provides you with unlimited storage, unlimited uploads, and unlimited bandwidth. The only serious drawback to Flickr is the lack of RAW file support (JPEG only). Additionally, the associated hassle and organizational issues that go along with having your backups stored in the same place as the photographs you'd like to share with everyone else. When backing up, remember to mark the photos as private, sort them into a different Set/Collection, etc.

Pro:

• Cheap ($2.08/month = infinite GB)
• Unlimited storage
• Aperture plugin
• iPhoto plugin
• Automator plugin
• Broadly supported due to popularity

Con:

• No RAW support
• 10 MB file size limit
• Organizational issues with other sharable photos
• Designed for sharing rather than backing up

Picasa

Google's Picasa service is a direct competitor to Flickr, but lacks an unlimited storage option and costs more money per month. For $1.67/month you get 10 GB; for $6.25/month, 40 GB, for $20.83/month, 150 GB, and for $41.67, 500 GB! I can't see any direct benefit of Picasa over Flickr for the task of backing up photos, although for sharing photos with friends, viewing on the iPhone, etc., it may have some benefits.

Pro:

• Large capacities available
• iPhoto plugin

Con:

• No RAW support
• Somewhat expensive ($6.25/month = 40GB)
• Organizational issues with other sharable photos
• Designed for sharing rather than backing up

Photo Shelter Personal Archive

Photo Shelter is actually designed for backing up photos in a permanent, redundant archive. For $9.99/month, you get 10 GB of storage, $29.99/month gets 35 GB, and $49.99/month 100 GB. Photo Shelter allows you to upload almost any format (including RAW), and the only real drawback I can see is that it's extremely expensive for the average user. This site is targeted more at professional photographers and those with money to burn - if you have the cash, this may well be the best option.

Pro:

• RAW support
• Aperture plugin
• Large capacities available
• Designed with backups in mind

Con:

• Expensive ($29.99/month = 35 GB)

.Mac iDisk

Apple's popular .Mac service comes with online file storage as well as e-mail, backups, and syncing between multiple computers. The cheapest plan starts at $8.33/month, and provides 10 GB of storage. For $12.49/month you get 20 GB of storage, and for $16.66/month, 30 GB. The iDisk has the benefit of always being a single click away in your Finder sidebar and hence is fairly easy to backup photos to - just drag and drop or export directly from Aperture or iPhoto. Any file format (including RAW) is acceptable since it's simply an online disk. The main drawbacks of .Mac are that you can't view the photos online, and the extremely high expense - this is the second most expensive option considered. Yes, it's true that you can create a Web Gallery or website with photos to share, but the first option uses lower quality files (not good for backups), and the second option makes them available to everyone by default.

Pro:

• RAW support
• Finder file copy
• Direct export to folder from iPhoto/Aperture
• Multipurpose generic storage space
• Designed with backups in mind

Con:

• Expensive ($16.66/month = 30 GB)
• Limited data storage capacity (30 GB)

Amazon S3

One advantage of Amazon's S3 service is that they charge you based on exactly how much data you store - if you only have 2 GB of data to store it will cost you significantly less than if you have 30. S3 provides 10 GB for $1.50 a month, 20 GB for $3 a month, and 30 GB for $4.50/month. As stated above, you can scale this to whatever storage size you need (a big advantage) although it becomes expensive when you get up to 70 or 80 GB. As with .Mac, absolutely any file format (including RAW) can be uploaded since it's simply online file storage. Amazon does charge a $.10 per GB upload fee unlike the other services, but since you're using this for backup, the one time fee shouldn't affect you too much. The main drawback of this service is the lack of convenience, and the price if you need a large capacity.

Pro:

• RAW support
• Multipurpose generic storage space
• Large capacities available
• Don't pay for capacity you're not using

Con:

• Somewhat expensive ($4.50/month + $3.00 upload = 30 GB)
• Have to use a third party tool to upload

Conclusion

Not surprisingly, Flickr offers the best value - for a whopping $2.08/month, you can have unlimited photo storage. The major drawback is the lack of RAW support, but for the price it's probably still the best choice. For someone like me with about 60 GB of photos to backup, Flickr is still $2.08/month, whereas Picasa would cost me $20.83/month, Photo Shelter would be $49.99/month, S3 would be $6 upload plus $9/month, and .Mac doesn't even appear to allow that much data storage, maxing out at 30 GB. If I had money to burn, I'd lean towards Photo Shelter since it's geared directly towards backup and archiving use. As it is, Flickr remains the best option for me, but your mileage may vary as they say.

Comments/corrections with your preferred online backup solution are encouraged.