Size isn’t everything.

Most companies manage to go years — their entire existences even — without ever producing an utterly iconic product. Apple, however, have cranked them out with an almost indecent frequency; pretty much anything beginning with “i” has proven to be noteworthy, with the -Phone and -Pod being positively paradigm-shifting. 

And thus have Apple created a rod for their own corporate back. 

For most companies, it’s the absence of a market-defining product that represents business as usual. But for Apple, there’s a very real expectation that anything they create should be so utterly earth-shattering that even as-yet-undiscovered tribes in the highlands of Papua New Guinea will know about it within three, or at the very most four, days. 

Pity, then, the poor Mac mini, the red-headed stepchild of the Apple product range. When commentators gush over Apple’s creations, the mini sees very little love. Which is sad, really, because the mini’s a cracking little machine. I bought my mini a year or so ago; I put the rebate Apple sent me for buying two rather overpriced first-generation iPhones toward it, and set it to work in what would seem to me to be the obvious, but rather overlooked, role. 

The first thing I did with my new mini was install Mac OS X Server on it. Prior to that, my iMac had been doing double duty as my main “work” (I, at least, like to think of what I do as work; my lovely wife occasionally expresses doubts) computer and as my server; while OS X Server can be used as a regular desktop OS, I always had it in mind that a dedicated server would make more sense. Before the iMac, it was an old PowerBook on which my daughter played Club Penguin until she dropped it on the floor, forever crippling the T key and putting a significant dent in the side; and before that, an eMac of sainted memory. 

But, when, finally, last year I had a little discretionary tech cash, I invested in what Apple really ought to consider rebranding the iServe — the home-office answer to the XServe. It could be to the rack-mounted server behemoth what the iMac is to the Mac Pro — a bonsai server. 

My mini’s been running like a champ for well over a year now. It runs, as I’ve said, Leopard server, and it currently hosts eight or nine domains, dishing up websites and email with barely a second thought from me. Installation was a snap — it’s a Mac, after all, and, say what you will about Apple, at least they make the trains run on time. No, wait, that was Benito Mussolini. No, at least things work well together — there’s no denying that they’re among the great corporate control freaks of this world, but the payoff for us is that things work consistently. As long as your hardware meets the software’s basic requirements, you’re all set. 

And let’s not forget, the mini isn’t half as hobbled as folk like to paint it. Its big weakness, its lack of a decent graphics card, is absolutely no handicap to a server — my mini has no monitor (or keyboard, or mouse, or anything else, for that matter, except an ethernet cable to hook it into my office intranet) connected, and it’s not a machine I’ll be trying to run Doom on any time soon. It’s just the Anne Boleyn of my network, headlessly chugging away. 

My mini treats me just fine. I don’t use it as a work machine; instead, it doles out web pages (such as this one, or this one, or this one, or, indeed, the very page you’re reading right now), delivers emails, serves files and hosts FileMaker Pro databases around the InterWeb. It’s not perfect; I’m sure that one day, when my Internet Empire finally approaches SkyNet dimensions, it might be time to scale up to an actual, grown-up XServe, but I’m hoping that by then I’ll have a team of lackeys who’ll be making those decisions for me while I sip cocktails and enjoy the ministrations of teams of professional sycophants, and I’ll not have to become personally embroiled in such considerations. In the meantime, about the only thing I miss out on is the ability to monitor my server using the programme named, with all of Apple’s typical ingenuity and creativity, Server Monitor (you just know someone scored a corner office for coming up with that name. Not that I’m in any way resentful. Or bitter. No, not at all. Of course not. It just seems that way when I cry bitter tears of jealousy…). I don’t know what temperature my server’s cores are running at, but every time I open a new browser window, I see one of my hosted sites’ home pages, and I know that my trusted mini is serving still.

Tags: Apple, FileMaker Pro, Leopard, Mac, mini, OS X, OS X Server, web, website

Time to write about Time Machine

One of the most highly touted features of Mac OS X 1
0.5 Leopard was Time Machine, but when the OS was first offered, it was clear that Time Machine was an imperfect technology. Many users reported frustration, more than a little bit tinged with irony, when they discovered that hard discs connected to Airport base stations — seemingly an ideal solution — didn’t actually work with Time Machine. 

Apple’s solution was the Time Capsule. In a somewhat bitterly ironic echo of the irony of the problem we’ve just recalled, Time Capsule was, at its core, an Airport base station with a hard disc. But onward. I toyed with the idea of buying one, but was put off by the price tag. But then the lovely and talented Mrs. McCabe’s PowerMac G5 started to make somewhat disconcerting noises, and for a brief, slightly trouser-soiling moment, we thought her primary hard disc, the one with all her working files on, had finally decided to curl up its electronic toes. 

That’s when I nipped over to the Apple Store in Tampa, where I once wore the black T-shirt of the Mac Specialist, and bought a one-terabyte Time Capsule. And began to back up religiously. Or at least automatically. Both our Macs now back up every hour. And last September, I found myself writing this post to the Tidbits mailing list:

I feel moved to share a personal experience with the assembled masses. On Monday evening, as I sat at my computer — a first-generation Intel iMac — wrapping up the day’s work, I was dismayed to witness the latest in what was becoming a disturbingly frequent chain of kernel panics.

I pushed the restart button, and waited. My screens remained grey; instead of the satisfying whirrs and clicks of a well-running computer, I heard a quite disconcerting series of “tok” sounds coming from behind my main monitor.

But wait — what’s this? Why the utter absence of panic? Why the lack of dread, why no puckering, no clenching of the bowels? The answer is simple. I own — and use — a Time Machine.

I went down to CompUSA (the least pleasant aspect of the entire process) yesterday morning, and bought a new 500GB internal hard disc. I came home and stripped down my iMac, and slipped the bugger in. Restarted from my Leopard DVD, reformatted my new half-terabyte, and installed my system. Fired up Time Machine, and there it was — 167GB of data, just waiting to be restored. I restored. I’m happy.

I’ve helped clients who’ve lost data before. But I’ve never lost a hard disc myself. I can barely believe how glad I am that I have a Time Machine. One of the most valuable devices I’ve ever hooked up to my network, without a doubt — my rump was well and truly hauled out of the fire yesterday.

I have little or no doubt that there will be discussions shortly about the value of off-site backup, and I have even less doubt about the validity of such strategies. Right now, though, all I know is that my Time Machine is worth *every* penny….

I was already convinced of the value and utility of the thing, but that episode simply cemented my belief that it was a very valuable device. I’ve been finding again this week how useful it is. I have, as has been mentioned elsepost, that I have a multitude of hard discs attached to the iMac that is my main work computer. In an attempt to rationalise them and re-organise them a little, I started moving files earlier this week. Of course, fool that I am, I allowed myself to get distracted, and ended up deleting, of all things, all of the applications I’d downloaded for my iPhone. So when next I synced (sanc?) my phone, all of my apps promptly removed themselves. Oops. But no worry, for I have a Time Capsule. Ten minutes later, they were all back on my phone. 

I realise that this article must make me sound quite sadly and pathetically fanboyish, but so be it. I’ll be the first to admit that the Time Capsule is anything but perfect — for some reason, attempting to back up my Mac Mini server causes the little thing to crash and require a restart — but right now I’m of the opinion that it’s about the most critical component of my network.

Tags: Apple, Backup, Mac, Time Capsule, Time Machine

Taking stock

Since this blog is quite heavily slanted toward technology, I thought I’d get the ball rolling by making up an inventory, taking stock so to speak, of the gadgets that I use to help me run my life. 
My laptop
A MacBook Pro , of course. I’ve had it for about nearly two years now, which means it’s a relic, verging on a fossil, by computer standards, but it serves me well. It’s in great shape, despite having been toted around the world in a backpack, most recently to Australia and New Zealand.

My desktop computer

An iMac. It’s another old computer, this time nearly three years old. But it’s a trooper. It’s one of the original Intel iMacs, and it’s my main work machine. I’ve replaced the hard disk, after the old one went south (and how grateful was I that my Time Capsule
was there to save my hide?), and I’ve connected about half a dozen external hard discs, adding a couple of terabytes of additional storage, as well as a second DVD burner and — and this is my favourite bit — a second monitor.

My phone

And, not entirely shockingly, it’s an iPhone. I don’t know I should even bother writing anything here — there’s been plenty of electrons spilt over the last year and a half about the iPhone, much of it by more incisive and wittier writers than I. 

But I like my iPhone. It’s as cool and groovy a gadget as any I’ve owned. And while that’s a pretty obvious remark, it represents a huger leap up from its predecessor (in this case, a Motorola RAZR (what a vile and loathsome name that is)) than was the case with any other piece of kit I think I’ve ever had.

My server

A surprisingly tiny fellow, my Mac Mini, sitting on my desk between a semi-active Airport base station and a Seagate hard disc, is a low-profile workhorse. It’s connected to my network by ethernet, and to the wall by a power strip, but otherwise it’s all alone. No keyboard, no mouse, not even a monitor. But this headless server is the hub of my online empire, the nerve centre if you will (or, quite frankly, even if you won’t) of nearly everything I do online. It hosts this site, as well as my photography site, the blog that plots my escape plans and a side project that I might even get off the ground one day.

My software

Not technically gadgetry per se, but the programmes, systems and applications I run provide so much functionality that they might as well be. My computers, of course, run Mac OS X Leopard, with my server, obviously, operating under the server edition — a quite remarkably flexible and powerful piece of ‘ware, if you ask me. 

That’s the bulk of what I use on a daily basis. With these few devices, and the bits and bobs that I have plugged in or connected to them, I keep myself connected and run a couple of modestly successful businesses. Doesn’t take much, does it?

Tags: Apple, iMac, iPhone, Leopard, Mac, Mac Mini, MacBook Pro, Server