2025-12-14 19:44:19
The difference between a backup service and a syncing service is subtle but important. iCloud keeps the same version of your documents and photos in the cloud and on each of your Mac and iOS devices depending on your settings. That's great until something goes wrong. If you delete a photo on your phone or a file gets corrupted, that change syncs everywhere. The damage spreads instantly because sync’s job is to mirror whatever state your device is in, good or bad.
A true backup service works the opposite way. It freezes copies of your data at different points in time and stores them safely elsewhere. If you delete a photo by accident or a file becomes corrupted, the backup stays untouched. You can roll back to yesterday, last week, or last month. That’s the whole point: preservation, not mirroring.
This is why iCloud isn’t a backup for your photos or files. It’s convenient for keeping devices in sync, but it won’t protect you from accidental deletions, corruption, or a bad software update. Backup keeps history; sync copies the present. The distinction shapes whether your data survives mistakes or vanishes with them.
Additionally, as recent news shows, administrative issues with an iCloud account can cut off your access with no warning and limited recourse. The best recourse is a regular backup of your data. Just using Time Machine won't accomplish this. Time Machine backs up what's on your hard drive only. If you've selected the option on your Mac to upload to the cloud to save disk space, you have little control over exactly where your files exist at any given moment. It gets confusing.
The solution is available in the Mac App Store for just $4.99. Parachute Backup, an app by independent developer Eric Mann, is a set-it-and-forget utility that performs true incremented backups to your own storage device or to another cloud provider. If you have a lot of data or a slow connection, the initial backup can be slow. After that, unless you've made huge data additions to iCloud, the backups are pretty speedy. If you prefer occasional manual backups instead of having the app run in the background on a schedule, that is also an option.
One last tip - You can find great deals on hard drives at places like Disk Deal. Buy a large, refurbished 3.5-inch internal drive with a warranty and get a case for it that offers Thunderbolt speed. When you set up the drive, create two partitions with Disk Utility. Use one of them for your Time Machine backups and the other for Parachute Backup.
2025-12-13 18:22:53
I've been on a small crusade for the past year to persuade people who have gone all in on the Apple ecosystem to diversify the back end of their digital lives. Anyone who scoffs at using third-party services for mail, contacts, messages, reminders, cloud storage, music, books, notes, etc. in the name of frugality or out of love for a corporation is putting themselves in a situation that is one step away from a nightmare should they lose access to their Apple ID. Most people think it could never happen to them, but they are wrong. It can happen to anyone.
There's a story making the rounds today about a man whose account was locked by Apple after he unwittingly bought and tried to use a compromised $500 Apple Gift Card from a major brick-and-mortar retailer. Some sort of automatic fraud prevention closed his Apple account, and no amount of phone calls to support and every other available means of contacting Apple has been able to remedy this disaster. This is no ordinary user. The victim in this case is the author of numerous books on Apple programming languages and the organizer of the largest Apple conference in his native country (Australia). His relationship with the company goes back decades.
He can no longer sync his devices. He can't access thousands of dollars in App Store purchases. He's locked out of terabytes of family photographs. He says, "My iPhone, iPad, Watch, and Macs cannot sync, update, or function properly. I have lost access to thousands of dollars in purchased software and media."
This is the exact reason why I chose to use different providers for as many services as possible. If I were in his shoes, I'd still lose a lot, but I wouldn't lose everything like he has. I wasn't aware until I looked into it that you can use many of Apple's apps without using iCloud as the back end. Mail, Calendar, Reminders, Contacts, and other features work just fine with other service providers.
My personal stack that works just fine on my Apple hardware includes:
Lest anyone accuse me of being some sort of Apple hater, let me assure you that I am not. I've held Apple certifications since Mac OS X 10.2 Tiger. I've been a Mac user since the 90s. I'm retired from a career in ed-tech that involved supporting tens of thousands of Macs. I've owned Mac laptops, desktops, iPods, iPhones, iPads, Apple TVs, Apple Watches, and Apple Base Stations. My Mac App Store lifetime purchases are over $6,000. My post-retirement hobby is running an Apple software blog. Don't @ me.
2025-12-12 19:59:37
As I enter my third year using Raycast, I'm still impressed with the sheer volume of use cases into which it fits. I’ve been using a keyboard driven application launcher since 2006. For the majority of that time, I was a devout Launchbar fan. installing it on Mac after Mac and dutifully paying for the infrequent upgrades. When I initially heard about Raycast, I wasn’t interested, but the uproar just kept getting louder. Tech bloggers and Reddit sang its praises and kept pointing out new features one after another. I finally relented and downloaded it. Having also tried Quicksilver back in the day and Alfred, I can honestly say that I was surprised at what I could do with Raycast.
Free extensions and built in Raycast features eliminated the need for a whole list of utilities I previously used.
The other side of Raycast's versatility is its ability to provide access to your application stack's functions without you having to open the app and navigate to the feature you want to use. Here are some examples:
2025-12-11 20:10:24
In 2025, the world takes more photos in a single day than it used to take in a decade. For most Mac users with an iPhone, this means an ever-increasing Photos library. If you also own a DSLR or use Adobe Lightroom or Capture One and use RAW in your editing process, you can end up with copies all over the place, especially if you make multiple backups. When you eventually get around to bringing order to the chaos, choosing a good duplicate finder is a must.
Some popular choices include:
The app I keep coming back to is PhotoSweeper by Overmacs, an app that's been under continuous development since 2011. Version 5 was released in the summer of 2025 and new features were added as recently as November. It's a $15 one-time purchase with free updates. A free trial is available, but the actual deletion of files is limited.
If you need a straightforward tool to streamline a large Mac photo library and are open to adjusting settings instead of relying solely on AI, PhotoSweeper gets the job done well. It doesn't aim to be a complete photo management suite like Luminar or Lightroom, focusing instead on its specific niche.
2025-12-11 06:40:00
So there I was, pedaling my bicycle as fast as I could down a long, straight stretch of road, feeling great. I'd just discovered the pleasures of riding a road bike, and I loved every minute that I could get away. Always a data geek, I tracked my mileage, average speed, heart rate, etc. It was a beautiful Indian summer Sunday afternoon in September. I was in my late 30s, still a baby. Out of nowhere, my chain came off right in the middle of the sprint I was timing. In true masculine fashion, I threw a fit, cursing and hitting the brakes as hard as I could. At this point, I found out that experienced riders don't do that because I flew right over the handlebars, landing on the pavement amid speeding cars. I momentarily lost consciousness, and when I regained my senses, I knew I'd screwed up badly. The pain in my shoulder was nauseating. I couldn't move my arm, and I had to just roll off the road onto the shoulder. I just lay there, hurting, unable to think clearly. Within seconds, it seemed, a man materialized beside me.
He was exceptionally calm. He didn't ask me if I was OK, since I clearly wasn't. It was obvious that he knew what he was doing. He made certain I could breathe, paused long enough to dial 911, and then started pulling stuff out of a medical bag (WTF?) to clean the extensive road rash I had. In a minute, he asked for my home phone number so he could call my wife to let her know I was going to be riding in an ambulance to the hospital. He told her he was an emergency room doctor who just happened to be right behind me when I crashed. He explained that he would stay with me until the medics arrived and that he would call ahead to make sure one of the doctors on duty would "take good care of me."
When he hung up, he asked me if I'd heard the conversation. I told him that I had and that I couldn't believe how lucky I was under the circumstances. He agreed. To keep my mind off the pain, he just kept chatting, telling me that because I was arriving by ambulance, I'd be treated immediately. He told me that I'd be getting the "good drugs" to take care of the pain. That sounded awesome.
I don't remember telling him goodbye. I certainly didn't ask him his name or find out anything about him. He briefed the EMTs when they arrived and stood there until the ambulance doors closed. The ER was indeed ready for me when the ambulance got there. They treated me like a VIP. I got some Dilaudid for the pain, and it was indeed the good stuff. They covered the road rash with Tegaderm and took x-rays, which revealed that I'd torn my collarbone away from my shoulder blade. That was going to require a couple of surgeries and lots of physical therapy. I had a concussion and was glad that I had a helmet on.
All of this happened almost 25 years ago. I've had plenty of other bike wrecks, but that remains the worst one. My daughter is a nurse, and she's like a magnet for car crashes, having stopped multiple times to render aid. She doesn't do it with a smile on her face, though; emergency medicine isn't her gig, and if anyone asks her if she's a doctor, her stock answer is "I'm a YMCA member."
The guy who helped me that day was an absolute angel. I have no idea what I would have done without him. I didn't even have a cell phone at the time. But he was there at a time when I couldn't have needed him any more badly. He helped me and then got in his car and completed his trip. I think of that day often, especially when the American medical system makes me mad, which happens regularly these days.
I've enjoyed the kindness of a lot of strangers over the years, particularly during the long hike my wife and I did for our honeymoon (2,186 miles) when we hitchhiked to a town in NJ in the rain and got a ride from the first car to pass. Another time, in Connecticut, a man gave us a $100 bill and told us to have a nice dinner at the restaurant atop Mt. Greylock, the highest mountain in Massachusetts. In Virginia, a moth flew into my wife's ear, and I mean all the way into her ear until it was bumping into her eardrum. We hiked several miles to the road and weren't there for a minute before a man stopped and took us to urgent care, 30 miles away.
When you get down in the dumps, I hope you have some memories like that to look back on, to restore your faith in humanity. There are a lot of really good people in the world.
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2025-12-11 02:43:15
"Sexual Healing" by Marvin Gaye
Share a song that feels like it has healing powers. Could there be any other answer? I mean it's right there in the title, right? Marvin Gaye was yet another iconic performer from the 60s who left this earth too soon, killed by his own father. Marvin Gaye was the Prince of Soul Music and one of the greatest singers of all time.
