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| SuperDuper! for Catalina |
As promised, at the bottom of this post is a link to our Catalina beta. A very dramatic announcement! (Also, see https://t.co/2mDlY6LUfu for details.) pic.twitter.com/AUFtTuesUh— Dave Nanian (@dnanian) October 18, 2019 This post is mostly a just-the-facts-ma'am discussion of changes in Catalina that have affected us and may affect you.… |
Dave Nanian |
10/18/19 |
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| Quickly Getting to the Point |
Hey folks. Sorry for the relative silence here. We've been working during the summer on a Catalina update, and unfortunately we're just not quite ready for a general update. But we're close! Catalina introduces some significant changes to the way a startup drive works, and while we've solved the various… |
Dave Nanian |
10/07/19 |
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| Unrelated Stuff I Like |
As we plug along with our Catalina changes, I thought I might write a quick post talking about some other stuff I'm enjoying right now. Because, hey, why not. Coffee Related Software Development and Coffee go together like Chocolate and My Mouth. And so, a lot of it is consumed… |
Dave Nanian |
08/09/19 |
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| Pictures at a Kernel Exhibition |
> Executive Summary: Internally, SuperDuper! can now make bootable copies of "live" Catalina volumes in all three released Beta versions of macOS 10.15. While much work still needs to be done to make things ready for external use, no obstacles are blocking us from pursuing at least one "definitely works"… |
Dave Nanian |
07/09/19 |
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| Up and down the coast |
Another June has come (and gone), and with it the promise of a new, improved version of macOS. In this case, macOS 10.15: Catalina. Sounds so refreshing, doesn't it? Cool breezes, beautiful sunsets, pristine beaches along an endless coast. But no matter what the imagery looks like, it's a time… |
Dave Nanian |
07/02/19 |
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| SuperDuper v3.2.5 Now Available! |
You'd think, given I've written everything here, I'd learn to pay attention to what I've said in the past. Let me explain. In v3.2.4, we started getting occasional reports of scheduled copies running more than once. Which seemed kind of crazy, because, well, our little time-based backup agent—sdbackupbytime—only runs once… |
Dave Nanian |
06/25/19 |
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| RIP Kenneth Nanian - 1928-2019 |
On March 7, 2019, I unfortunately lost my Dad (which is why support has been a bit slow recently). I thought I'd post my eulogy for him here, as delivered, should anyone care. He was a good man, and will be missed. Good morning, everyone. I’m David Nanian, up here… |
Dave Nanian |
03/13/19 |
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| A Full and Complete Accounting of the Benefits of the TouchBar |
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Dave Nanian |
01/19/19 |
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| …But Sometimes You Need UI |
As much as I want to keep SuperDuper!'s UI as spare as possible, there are times when there's no way around adding things. For years, I've been trying to come up with a clever, transparent way of dealing with missing drives. There's obvious tension between the reasons this can happen:… |
Dave Nanian |
11/12/18 |
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| The Best UI is No UI |
In v3.2.2 of SuperDuper!, I introduced the new Auto Wake feature. It's whole reason for being is to wake the computer when the time comes for a backup to run. Simple enough. No UI beyond the regular scheduling interface. The whole thing is managed for you. But What About...? I… |
Dave Nanian |
10/27/18 |
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| Waking the Neighbors |
I'm not going to say Disk Full errors never happen any more. But I am going to say that in the weeks since we released SuperDuper! 3.2, there's been a gigantic drop in their frequency. It's really awesome, both for users (who have fewer failed copies) and for me (since… |
Dave Nanian |
10/09/18 |
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| Smarty Pants |
Executive Summary SuperDuper 3.2 is now available. It includes Mojave support Native Notification Center support (in addition to the existing Growl support) [Better scheduling][scheduling] [A Finder extension to quickly run copies][finder extension] For the technical: [command-line support][command line] Various bug fixes and improvements And surprise! (I love surprises) -- Smart… |
Dave Nanian |
09/24/18 |
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| 3.2 B3: The Revenge! |
(OK, yeah, I should have used "The Revenge" for B4. Stop being such a stickler.) Announcing SuperDuper 3.2 B3: a cavalcade of unnoticeable changes! The march towards Mojave continues, and with the SAE (September Apple Event) happening today, I figured we'd release a beta with a bunch of polish that… |
Dave Nanian |
09/12/18 |
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| Backup on Connect, launchd and ThrottleInterval |
Warning: this is a technical post, put here in the hopes that it'll help someone else someday. We've had a problem over the years that our Backup on Connect LaunchAgent produces a ton of logging after a drive is attached and a copy is running. The logging looks something like:… |
Dave Nanian |
09/09/18 |
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| Technical Update! |
SuperDuper! 3.2 B1 was well received. We literally had no bugs reported against it, which was pretty gratifying. So, let's repeat that with SuperDuper! 3.2 B2! (There's a download link at the bottom of this post.) Remember - SuperDuper! 3.2 runs with macOS 10.10 and later, and has improvements for… |
Dave Nanian |
09/06/18 |
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| macOS Mojave: Opening New Vistas in Security for Mac Users |
Executive summary: sure, it's the Friday before Labor Day weekend, but there's a beta of SuperDuper for Mojave at the bottom of this (interesting?) post! It Gets Worse Back when OS X Lion (10.7) was released, the big marketing push was that iOS features were coming "Back to the Mac",… |
Dave Nanian |
08/31/18 |
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| iFixit Drive Replacement with SuperDuper! |
iFixIt recently released a video showing how to upgrade to an SSD using SuperDuper. Thanks, iFixIt! |
Dave Nanian |
08/19/18 |
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| Antivirus Shenanigans, Part 87655 |
This isn’t the first time Antivirus programs have caused problems for us, and it won’t be the last. But, if you’re using Sophos Antivirus and are seeing the error | 05:21:41 PM | Info | ......COMMAND => Blessing OS X System Folder | 05:21:41 PM | Error | umount(/private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n0000000000000/T/bless.5cmA): Resource… |
Dave Nanian |
08/19/18 |
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| Quick Mojave Public Beta 2 (DP3) Tip |
Hey, folks. As you may know, one of Mojave's focuses is stability and security. Part of that is denying applications, including those with 'root' privileges, the ability to access certain files on the drive. This started in High Sierra's SIP implementation, where certain system files were inaccessible. But Mojave extends… |
Dave Nanian |
07/08/18 |
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| On My Mark |
Executive Summary Changes in macOS 10.13.4's behavior caused some problems for scheduling, and for the final steps involved in preparing an earlier major OS version's copy for boot. The beta resolves these problems (among others), and adds the ability to multi-select schedules in the Scheduled Copies window and run them… |
Dave Nanian |
04/25/18 |
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| Practices Make Perfect (Backups) |
We've been getting a lot of questions lately about the APFS image bug (recently documented by Mike Bombich, author of CCC) where, when an image container can't grow, APFS doesn't reliably indicate an error, which can silently lose data. Worse still, double-checking the data seems to indicate it's OK—even a… |
Dave Nanian |
02/21/18 |
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| All Apologies |
Turns out, a few of you have drives that don't have low-level media IDs...something we thought all drives had. And they did, at least, all the drives we and the external testers tried did. Well, now we know...and, now we don't crash. Sorry about that. Fix now available in v3.1.4… |
Dave Nanian |
01/31/18 |
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| When I’m 64 |
Way back when, [not so long ago][cheat], we transitioned the main SuperDuper! application to 64-bit. As I said then, we were 95% 64-bit, and 5% 32-bit. Today, we're releasing SuperDuper! 3.13, which—after extensive testing—moves the copy engine to 64-bit as well. macOS 10.13.4 is going to start giving obnoxious warnings… |
Dave Nanian |
01/31/18 |
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| 12 Years a Bug |
Shipping software sucks. It's not that we don't want to put the software in the hands of our users. And it's not that we're not proud of the work. We do, and we are. What sucks is that you always ship with bugs. Always. Some of them you know about.… |
Dave Nanian |
01/12/18 |
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| Snapshot Surprise! |
We've got something under the tree for all of you, and you get to open your present early. Executive Summary SuperDuper! 3.1 is out, and now allows Time Machine-like restoration from bootable APFS copies. Wait, What?!?! Oh, decided to join us for the details? Welcome to an ocean of words:… |
Dave Nanian |
12/08/17 |
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| It’s Not a Turkey |
One of the weird parts of doing a public beta, as we did for 3.0, is that the release of the final version doesn't quite feel the same. So, even though it's only been two weeks since 3.0 came out...it feels like it was released months ago. The 3.0 release… |
Dave Nanian |
11/20/17 |
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| Bad Craziness, Good Release! |
The short version Blah-blah-blah what-the-heck-are-you-talking-about-Dave so many words oh, 3.0 is released? Got it. The wordy-but-interesting version Sometimes, on macOS, you run into behavior that really makes you go "huh". An example: as you likely know, you can create a disk image with Disk Utility and format it as APFS.… |
Dave Nanian |
11/08/17 |
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| The Beta 7 Spooktacular! |
Gee, do you think the original plan was to release this update on Halloween? Spoooooky! Poof! When “Erase, then copy” is selected, SuperDuper! has always endeavored to match the format of the source. That is, if the source is Mac OS Extended [HFS+] (Journaled), and the destination is Mac OS… |
Dave Nanian |
11/01/17 |
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| Workaround Turtle |
Any program of sufficient complexity ends up having to work around behaviors that are undesirable. That might be a usability issue caused by default framework behavior, due to the interaction model selected by the designer. Or it might be an OS issue that only shows up in some situations (the… |
Dave Nanian |
10/25/17 |
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| Fraternal Twins |
(I really wanted to embed the [teaser trailer for Peter Greenaway's A Zed and Two Noughts][zed teaser] above, but alas it's a tad NSFW. Really great movie, though.) Content warning: some strong language is used in this post. Not without reason. So, here's something that you might not expect me… |
Dave Nanian |
10/23/17 |
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| Automatic Transmission |
Good news: we've set things up on our update server so that the Beta version will now automatically tell you when there's a new beta ready, using our regular update mechanism. Here's how it works: You "opt-in" to the Beta by installing one of the beta releases from the blog.… |
Dave Nanian |
10/22/17 |
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| Forward Into the Past! |
Executive Summary Beta 5 is linked at the bottom of the post: we now copy Recovery volumes from both HFS+ and APFS sources to APFS, and "stash" recovery on HFS+ destinations for restoration to APFS if needed. Details, Details! Before the advent of APFS, volumes were rigid elements created by… |
Dave Nanian |
10/17/17 |
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| Relax, Have a Homebrew! |
Off-topic alert! Over the past few months, I've been enjoying brewing beer at home with a Pico Pro. No doubt purists scoff a bit at the automation involved during the mash and boil, but it's a relatively small part of the beer making process...and doing a true, temperature-controlled step mash… |
Dave Nanian |
10/16/17 |
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| So Many Rabbit Holes, So Little Time |
The past week's been spent delving into some pretty obscure problems. Special thanks, right at the top, to Jan, who spent a lot of time running special code that fixed some of this stuff. Owe you a beer, Jan. Also, Beta 4 is linked at the bottom of this post,… |
Dave Nanian |
10/13/17 |
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| It’s Awfully Quiet Out There |
Maybe This Was a Good Week to Stop Sniffing Glue! Support has returned to a normal post-major-OS-release level, mostly (there's still a lot), so I've got a little time to talk about one of the reported problems that was, I think, of general interest. Generally nerdy interest, that is. But… |
Dave Nanian |
10/07/17 |
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| Can You Dig It? |
A few days later, and we're back with another beta. But not with a lot more sleep, so I'm afraid we're going to have another relatively dry and factual post. With barely a parenthetical. No asides. Hardly any wind-up. Just the facts and nothing but. Pitched right down the middle.… |
Dave Nanian |
10/04/17 |
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| Murtaugh’s Lament |
It's been a bit less than a week since High Sierra's release, and we've been busily updating SuperDuper! v3.0 Beta 1 to Beta 2 (which, per the usual custom, is available at the end of this post). Our thanks to all the users who took the time to download the… |
Dave Nanian |
10/01/17 |
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| Cheat Sheet |
Told you it wouldn't be long until I posted again. Spoiler Alert We've finished up a bunch of internal testing over the past few weeks, and there's a beta of SuperDuper! for High Sierra and APFS linked at the bottom of this post. But it's so exciting, in a totally… |
Dave Nanian |
09/25/17 |
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| News on the March! |
It's inevitable—another year, another macOS version (I am still not used to typing "macOS"), and another build up to a significant SuperDuper! release. Sorry I haven't been blogging the whole way through, but it's been busy, and I just haven't had the time. As of this morning, we have a… |
Dave Nanian |
09/13/17 |
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| SuperDuper! v2.9 - anti-AntiVirus (+ macOS Sierra) |
Hi, everyone! I'm happy to say that we're releasing SuperDuper! v2.9 today, at long last. In fact, if you're reading this, it's out. Hooray! This new release has a large number of enhancements and bug fixes that improve SuperDuper!'s responsiveness and performance. Many of these are longstanding items that required… |
Dave Nanian |
08/31/16 |
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| The Traditional Post-Release Debrief |
November has rolled around, and that means it's been a month or so since SuperDuper! was released for El Capitan. Rather than go through a litany of how awesome we are (I hope that's obvious), I thought I'd take a moment to discuss the things we've screwed up, bugs we've… |
Dave Nanian |
11/02/15 |
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| Oh Capitan, My Capitan! |
It's not often that we get "official" final bits before Apple pushes the big red button that releases them to the public. I can't tell you how nice it is to be able to do the testing we need to do here before the email starts coming in, wondering when… |
Dave Nanian |
09/13/15 |
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| Oh yeah? Well, lock *this*! |
Public betas mean more storytelling on the blog. I feel a bit like we're developing in public—something I don't really like doing—but I hope it's interesting to those of you reading the blog and testing both El Capitan and these public SuperDuper releases. One at a time, please Ever since… |
Dave Nanian |
08/17/15 |
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| From Hell’s Heart I…Oh, Never Mind! |
If it's not one thing, it's nothing, at least this time. We'd developed the current Beta of SuperDuper using the most current Developer Beta versions, based on the feedback of various testers (and, of course, our own testing). As I mentioned in my last blog post, we'd researched the problem… |
Dave Nanian |
07/14/15 |
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| Uncovering our rootlessness |
Every new OS X release has its own special challenges, and OS X 10.11 - which I still have trouble referring to as "El Capitan" - is no different. And in our testing (which we commenced immediately upon availability of the developer preview), we found that we couldn't make a… |
Dave Nanian |
07/09/15 |
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| SuperDuper - Now with added Superness! |
Those of you who follow me on Twitter (I'm @dnanian) may have read that we were slightly surprised by Yosemite's release, which came out a week earlier than we expected. Fortunately, we were ready with a compatible, tested version—but it wasn't as optimized as we wanted it to be. Basically,… |
Dave Nanian |
11/19/14 |
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| Hit me two times |
Ever since the feature was introduced, we've had a small number of users report that Backup on Connect suddenly, with no "inciting event", stops working for them. I was never able to reproduce the problem, but had a way to get functionality back: basically, reinstalling. Which sucks, and I hated… |
Dave Nanian |
02/26/14 |
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| Take a breath |
Well, that took longer than we though it would, mostly because we wanted to make sure we got very broad external testing coverage before release (extremely important when we make changes to the copy engine), but I'm happy to say that SuperDuper! v2.7.2 is now available. To summarize the changes… |
Dave Nanian |
02/22/14 |
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| Paving the Road to Hell |
I think it was around Leopard's release--which seems like forever ago--that we ended up being later than expected with an update to SuperDuper. Since we've missed our internal target for release of 2.7.2, I thought I'd write a quick blog post to fill you in on what's going on, and… |
Dave Nanian |
12/08/13 |
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| Mavericks |
So, it's been a while! For the tl;dr crowd out there, SuperDuper! 2.7.1 backs up Mavericks just fine, so we've got you covered, day-and-date, with backups. In addition, I'm happy to announce that we will, have an even better Mavericks-compatible release 2.7.2 available shortly. For more patient readers, here's some… |
Dave Nanian |
10/22/13 |
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