Pricing

I migrated from Macbook White to 15″ unibody Macbook Pro and the first TimeMachine backup from the pro was painfully slow. It was a few kilobytes/sec and I had 27GB to backup!. The external harddisk was connected over firewire and the previous backups were always fast. I could browse the disk and also transfer files from it really fast, so I knew it was problem with TimeMachine.

According to some forums deleting the InProgress file inside TimeMachine folder helps [DON"T DO THIS]  but  that didn’t do the trick.Frustrated , I began searching again and landed up on this post, which identified Finder as the culprit. I looked at my “Application Monitor” and Finder was eating 60% of my CPU. I quit Finder to see Dropbox eating away another 30%. I quite that too for good measure and suddenly the backup speed went to 2MB/sec.

The reason I warned about not deleting the InProgress folder is because it landed me in a pile deep of shit. When you delete the folder it goes to the Trash but you will not be able to expunge it from there. Clearing Trash will hang. This is because of strong ACL protections on the files. There was no way I could turn off the ACL protection [fsaclctl is absent in Snow Leopard and the one I copied from Leopard seemed to work but it didn't. chmod -R -N also failed spectacularly] to trash the file or delete a new one which was created. I had to install Macdrive on windows and connect the drive to a windows machine to delete the folder. Even then  it was fraught with errors. 3 hours of my life I will never get back :(

Related posts:

1. Mac Chrome Gets A Bookmark Manager & Other Goodies
2. Macbook Trackpad Not Working – Battery May Be To Blame
3. Chrome For Mac: An Update

This is not about tech. But I believe everyone should see this very inspiring video

Chrome Engineer Mike Pinkerton has tweeted that he is working on Core Animation Support for Mac Chrome. This is a very important development in light of the information which Adobe has released about the upcoming Core Animation support in Flash for OS X. Core Animation support in Flash Player 10.1 brings some incredible performance improvements to Flash for Mac. According to Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch

In Flash Player 10.1 we are moving to CoreAnimation, which will further reduce CPU usage and we believe will get us to the point where Mac will be faster than Windows for graphics rendering. With Flash Player 10.1, we are optimizing video rendering further on the Mac and expect to reduce CPU usage by half, bringing Mac and Windows closer to parity for video.

Currently Safari is the only browser which supports Core Animation on Mac. For more details on Core Animation support for Flash, read this detailed blog post by Flash Engineer by Tinic Uro. One interesting tidbit is that the support for Core Animation was a joint effort between Apple and Adobe engineers.

Flash is the bane for those of us using Mac Chrome. The end may be in sight. According to the Adobe CTO

As I’ve been using the Chrome beta it appears to be throwing errors in hosting Flash content a few times a week now and if you are using this browser on the Mac you are likely also seeing this problem — Chrome is in *beta*. There are issues in the hosting code that is used to run Flash (and other plug-ins), and we are working directly with the Chrome team to help address these.

Related posts:

1. Dev Channel Updates, Mac Chrome gets Extension Support Again
2. Kill-Flash (FlashBlock) For Chrome
3. Chrome For Mac Beta

Sorry for the long hiatus!  I was neck in deep in professional and personal projects. One of the personal projects, ReviewGang (RG) is now ready and was launched yesterday.  Reviewgang offers  consolidated hindi movie reviews, helping you in deciding whether a movie is worth watching. Here is the pitch :)

Do you compulsively check reviews before watching a movie? Ever wished, there was one single place which provided you the information required to help you make an informed decision on what to watch and whether it is worth spending your money and time on?

ReviewGang aims to help you make that decision. We’ll give you all the low-down – Critic reviews and ratings, user reviews and ratings, videos and trailers – all in one place!!!

Do you have lot on your mind about how the latest movie could have been better? Or are you simply overjoyed that the movie you chose to see was worth every bit? Share your thoughts. Write in or post a link and we’ll make sure the rest hear about it.

So, what are you waiting for? Light… Camera… ReviewGang!!!

Shovebox for Mac, is an unobtrusive menubar app which acts a collection bin for snippets of text, webpages and iSight images. Evernote is the giant in this space but after using evernote for some time I realized that the effort required to use evernote effectively was more than what I was willing to spend. With evernote there was always a little hesitation before saving something and I would ask myself whether the effort would be worth it. I was too lazy :)

Shovebox enables my laziness. Saving items are so easy that I do not think twice about doing it. Saving a webpage is as simple as dragging the URL to the menubar icon. Shovebox saves webpages in an archive format with the styling and images intact. In browsers where it is not possible to drag the URL like Mac Chrome, you can copy the URL into clipboard and then use the import clipboard function.

Shovebox offers some basic organizing capabilities. Snippets can be placed into folders. Folders can be only one level deep so this works more like categories.  Labels are also limited. You can edit the names but you are limited to just 7. But I have no problems with that because I don’t feel the need to tag and label every piece of content.  Shovebox also comes with an integrated search which searches the entire contents of snippets and this is my preferred way to retrieve information.

The biggest downside of shovebox vis a vis evernote is that your data resides only in your computer. With evernote it gets synced to evernote servers and is accessible in multiple ways. But I’m willing to overlook that because shovebox takes the friction out of saving snippets of information and suites my work flow better. If you need the shovebox content to be synced to your iPhone, shovebox also comes in an iPhone avatar.

Related posts:

1. iStat Menus Review
2. iPhone: Simplenote Review
3. Google Chrome for Mac – A Review

Hot on the heels of iPad announcement, Google has released visual concepts of Chrome OS running on a tablet PC. During the mania around the iPad announcement, a few had noted the similarities between the iPad philosophy and Chrome OS. A limited platform aimed at simplifying the computing experience of the masses and positioned as a companion device to an existing laptop/desktop.

Unlike Apple, Google still hasn’t decided on the exact user interface for the Chrome OS Tablet. The possibilities are

• Keyboard interaction with the screen: anchored, split, attached to focus.
• Launchers as an overlay, providing touch or search as means to access web sites.
• Contextual actions triggered via dwell.
• Zooming UI for multiple tabs
• Tabs presented along the side of the screen (see Side tabs)
• Creating multiple browsers on screen using a launcher

Google has also released a video which shows the Chrome OS in action (via neowin). The video shows the OS running in a device much larger than a tablet – something like Microsoft surface

There are significant differences between iPad and Chrome OS. In fact the only similarity between them would be the  market they are trying to address. While iPad has the entire App Store ecosystem behind it, Chrome OS has only web applications to depend on. And a lot of these web applications will work perfectly fine on iPad too. Even a price advantage in Chrome Tablet’s favour is unlikely as iPad has been priced aggressively. So it seems Chrome OS is starting out with severe disadvantages. It will be interesting to see  how this plays out.

iTunes has been updated to 9.0.3. It is available through Software update and weighs in at 93.6 MB. Changelog as usual is brief

• iTunes no longer ignores your “Remember password for purchases” setting.
• Addresses problems with syncing some Smart Playlists and Podcasts with iPod.
• Resolves a problem recognizing when iPod is connected.
• Addresses issues that affect stability and performance.

Thank god that they fixed the password bug! It used to drive me nuts!

Related posts:

1. Mac Chrome Update Brings Stability

Google pushed out another dev channel update on Jan 29th with versions jumping from 4.x to 5.x. This update brings plugin stability, more accuracy in task manager and various performance and stability enhancements.

I have been using this version from the day it came out and the flash plugin has not crashed a single time. In the previous dev channel build flash plugin crashes were a common occurrence. The flash plugin performance is still dismal and the flash plugin can easily use 100% of one of my CPU cores. I hope chrome developers tackle this next.

With the version bump, Google may be signalling another beta release. Most of the high profile wish-list features for the mac chrome like Bookmarks manager, Task manager, Full Extension support have already been completed or are near completion. Chrome developers had promised a beta update some time back and my guess is that it should be right around the corner.

Related posts:

1. Chrome For Mac: An Update
2. Mac Chrome Gets Task Manager
3. Dev Channel Updates, Mac Chrome gets Extension Support Again

Gaia is an accidental winner for me. The primary focus of the app – “GPS”, does not hold attraction beyond curiosity for me. The killer feature of this application is the ability to download and store maps for offline use. I have been in several situations where access to maps offline would have come in handy.  Google maps is awesome but is useless without a data plan/wifi access. Gaia is the (partial) answer to my prayers.The maps provider Gaia uses pales in comparison to Google maps in detail, especially for international users. This is the biggest downside of Gaia.

When you open the app, it will will try to acquire your location through GPS. This can happen instantaneously or can take several minutes. On acquiring a GPS signal, you will be presented with  a busy screen and it can be intimidating :). The (i) button, below the lock icon, will explain the functions of each button. The primary function of this screen is to save a track. Upon pressing the (+) button, you will be asked to name the track, completing which the recording of the track begins. The recording can be paused/resumed and waypoints can be attached to the track  using the “flag” button.The saved tracks can be viewed later. You can also lock the screen using the lock button if you want to avoid accidental inputs.

The circle in the center, shows the map. Since I was not in a big city, the maps Gaia uses had just the major roads marked and hence the lack of detail in the map shown. Fear not, it is not always like that. On the right  you can see a pretty detailed map of Chennai India.

Map Download

The app doesn’t come with pre-loaded maps. You need to download the maps you need individually. So you will need a data connection/wifi to view the maps you haven’t downloaded and to download them. Upon pressing the download button, you will be presented with the screen above sans the selection.  switching on “High Detail” will make the app download tiles at every available detail. With it switched off, the app will download only minimal tiles and you won’t be able to zoom much. Selection is easy and requires the use of just one finger. You can also expand the viewing area by hiding the bottom and top menu bars. The space thus saved is substantial considering the iPhone’s small screen size.

Overall, Gaia is a decent app if you require offline maps and advanced GPS  functions like tracks, speeds etc. Since the maps are clearly inferior to Google Maps and dedicated navigation apps like TomTom Gaia cannot be the sole navigation app. But for those people who live in areas where the Gaia map coverage is good and need offline maps, this is a good buy.

Related posts:

1. iPhone: Simplenote Review
2. Shovebox Review
3. iStat Menus Review