Category: Apps

My Backup Strategy (2018 Update)

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I last wrote about my backup strategy in July 2015, and a lot has changed, so I thought it was time to update things.

This is the part where I copy and paste from that 2015 blog post:

I shouldn’t have to preach the importance of a good backup system, but there are some key tenants that should be part of any approach:

  1. Be redundant. Having a single backup is good, but what happens if it gets killed by the same power outage that cooks your computer.
  2. Be easy to manage. Time Machine is popular because it’s easy to setup and doesn’t need on-going care. Anything past the built-in backup will take more work, but it’s good to minimize it.
  3. Be testable. Every once in a while, restore data from a backup to make sure everything’s going well. This doesn’t have to be some big, drawn out thing. For me, a small recovery can put my mind at ease every quarter or so.

My hardware setup is radically different from what it was in 2015. While I still have a Mac mini, it is now the server, hosting a Drobo 5D stuffed with 4 TB hard drives for a total of 17 TB or so of storage. Moving away from the Synology isn’t that juicy of a story. It had a hardware failure and I moved on.

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Beddit Launches New Sleep Monitor ⇢

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When Apple bought Beddit, I figured they were done for, but as Zac Hall reports, the company is very much alive:

The first revision to the Beddit Sleep Monitor since Apple bought the sleep tracking company includes a slight design change to the actual hardware, and the iOS app for managing the sleep monitor has a new version as well. All mentions of Android support are also removed from the Beddit website as far as we can tell.

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Corel Buying Parallels ⇢

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Corel — the makers of CorelDraw and WordPerfect, among other things — is purchasing Parallels, the virtualization company, according to Ingrid Lunden at TechCrunch:

Employees at Parallels were briefed on the acquisition Tuesday, one source said. Terms have not been disclosed, but we understand it is an all-cash deal.

The acquisition is expected to close in December, and the companies will make the news public then. From what we understand, Corel will keep Parallels as an independent product.

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Apple’s Forgotten iOS Apps ⇢

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Me, over on MacStories:

Apple has just about always offered iOS apps on the App Store, separate from what apps come bundled on its devices from the factory.

Sometimes, these apps get promoted to being part of the iOS image, like Podcasts and iBooks have. Once stuck hanging out on the App Store, they now ship on the iPhone and iPad by default.

A lot of other apps weren’t luck enough to get that lifeline, and have since been removed from the App Store. Let’s take a look at a few examples.

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Philips Hue App Adds Siri Shortcut Support ⇢

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John Voorhees, writing at MacStories:

The Hue app received a major update earlier this year, which significantly improved the creation of scenes. Users can pick from pre-built scenes created by designers to evoke a particular mood or create their own using photos or a color picker to control the color and brightness of a group of Hue bulbs.

With the new Siri Shortcut support, those scenes can be triggered using Siri and incorporated as actions in custom shortcuts using Apple’s Shortcuts app.

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