Mhackintosh blog

I tried Martian Slingshot to synchronize 2 folders between my desktop hackintosh and my MacBook Pro, I began with my main shared folder, my 160GB+ picture folder and subfolders. Seems to work flawlessly, even if interface was not as cute as I expected.

But I quickly discovered that SlingShot launch repetitively gnutar (each minute with synchronization from my MacBook Pro), with a good amount of memory and a real CPU-hog, using 100% of one core (mono-threaded tool! again!) on my computers for long time, and slowing them down with many hard-drive access (temporary files).

Sorry, but I expect a synchronization tool to work flawlessly, to be able to work under the skin (launched in background), that SlingShot doesn’t enable, and moreover, I expect it to be respectful of my computer resources while I use it, to let me do MY work instead monopolizing more than 50% of the resources of my Core2 Duo laptop!

So SlingShot, that is a commercial application is really not for me. I will continue to look for a simple application, elegant, fast, running in background, to synchronize my work between my Mac OS X computers at home…

I have a desktop quad-core packed of memory (8GB) and hard-drivesss (2×1TB for system in RAID-0, 2TB for video and another external 1TB for TimeMachine, and a second external 2TB for Videos). I also have a MacBook Pro 17″ with 500GB hard-drive, that is enough for my usage (Music, Photos, LAMP development, CUDA & OpenCL development), backuped on my TimeCapsule. And I began to use both for my work.

Now I need a complete solution to be able to sync them, sync my iTunes songs and playlist, sync my new photos and my Adobe Lightroom libraries and photo-processing, as well as my work documents. Work projects are “naturally” synchronized using my own Subversion server, or the SVN servers of the companies I work for. Nothing to worry!

I have a Dropbox account to synchronize some of my work, and shared documents with my co-workers, the easy way. It is text document, so with a free account that offers 2GB of backup and sharing space, it’s largely enough for that purpose.

But for my Music and Photos, I need approximately 250GB, and there’s many reasons I could not use DropBox or another internet-backup software:

1. they don’t offer plans for this storage capacity (and it’s growing with photo shoot sessions and new Music!)
2. if they will it will cost me an arm (probably around $300/Year, $900/3Years and hard-drive for 500GB is under $100 in USB2)
3. to backup 250GB using my Cable connection with 100KB/s (1Mb/s) upload link will take me ONE FULL MONTH with my computer on
4. my cable provider (Videotron) will charge me for each GB transferred after the first 50, it will cost me more than a MacPro to backup and sync!
5. To backup a photo session before editing and removing unwanted pictures (says around 8GB) will take me one full day! Stupid!

So what I need is not an Internet-based backup and file syncing, they offers too little storage space, my cable link is too slow, my provider too expensive, and it would be totally impossible to use it effectively!

What I need is a folder synchronization, using my home wifi network (AirPort), between my 2 Macs, at 100Mb/s (10MB/s) that is 100X faster than my Internet connection, free, that work flawlessly in the background. And if possible, handle my iTunes playlist synchronization too, because Music is a great part of my life!

I took time to find and check, and found 2 utilities, one that you might consider if you have backup needs (I don’t, I use TimeMachine and TimeCapsule to backup and have versioning), it’s ChronoSync ($40), targeted to power-user, with a cool (but 10$) ChronoAgent to ease backup & sync remotely without an Administrator account.

But the one that seems targeted for me is Martian SlingShot, simpler to use, designed to publish content from one Mac to many others, and moreover to automagically sync content between 2 or more Mac, even with iTunes integration

I am doing a test run of this cool application and begin to love it. Will probably buy the Martian SlingShot application, you just pay once whatever the number of Mac you own, it’s great. And perhaps send them some ribs for their barbecue!

Online AppleStore is closed, new MacBook Pro are expected with Core i5 Mobile and Core i7 Mobile CPU (Dual-core with 4 threads), and I am hodling my breath

Finally it’s Aperture X 3 that is announced, only compatible with Intel CPU, leaving users of PowerMac & PowerBook in the dust (but it’s time guys!), and Apple recommend Core2 DUO CPU For Aperture 3. What? Mac Pro with Xeon are not recommended??? Nor Core i5 or Core i5 iMac?

PS: The French website MacBidouille report that an internal source inside Apple expect the new MacBook Pro lineup to be presented next tuesday… I have one week to resell my “old” MacBook Pro 17″ 2×2.8Ghz