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The Many-Choices-With-Tradeoffs Edition Saturday, January 15, 2022

Network Time Machine Backups: Moving On From The Time Capsule, by Ivan Drucker, TidBITS

The Time Capsule’s void has been filled by third-party NAS products, though I suspect many Mac users are generally unaware of this category of product. I have set up several NAS devices as Time Capsule replacements for clients, and while they do work, none are perfect, many are too complex or expensive, and some share problems (notably slow performance) with the Time Capsule while introducing a few of their own.

In this article, I will detail my quest to find or build a better Time Capsule, and to solicit the collective wisdom of the TidBITS community to further that quest. To the extent that I conclude anything, it is that when it comes to network backup for the Mac, there are many choices, each with tradeoffs, and you’ll need to decide what makes the most sense for your situation.

Apple Will Add Additional Payment Options For Dutch Dating Apps, by Mark Gurman, Bloomberg

Apple said late Friday it’s releasing a pair of what it calls entitlements that will allow developers to implement their own third-party payment services to pay for dating apps in the Netherlands.

[...]

“Because Apple will not be directly aware of purchases made using alternative methods, Apple will not be able to assist users with refunds, purchase history, subscription management, and other issues encountered when purchasing digital goods and services through these alternative purchasing methods,” the company said in a message to developers posted on its website.

Stuff

Arc Pulse Case Review: The Best Case For Those Who Prefer Naked iPhones, by Andrew O'Hara, AppleInsider

Users who say they hate iPhone cases usually sling around their iPhones naked or with an ultra-thin case at a minimum. Arc Pulse is different, leaving most of the phone exposed. Simultaneously, it offers more protection around the corners than even a thin case would.

Mactracker 7.11.1, by Agen Schmitz, TidBITS

After a bit of a layoff, Ian Page has released Mactracker 7.11 with detailed information about recent major Apple hardware updates and releases, including the new M1-based MacBook Pro, iPhone 13, and Apple Watch Series 7.

Develop

An Approach For Migrating From Objective-C To Swift, by Steve Barnegren

At my last job I worked on a fairly large iOS and tvOS app for nearly 4 years, during which time we transitioned almost the whole app to Swift. At least the first year was spent learning how not to do a language transition, during the second and third we figured things out and really hit our stride, and by the fourth we had something resembling a formalised approach.

I’ve realised that there’s a bunch of teams out there still maintaining Objective-C projects, and struggling to make much headway on a Swift transition. So in this post I’m going to tell you what I learned along the way.

New App Store Connect Experience To Be Rolled Out To All Developers Later This Month, by Filipe Espósito, 9to5Mac

The company has confirmed via the Apple Developer website that all developer accounts will be automatically upgraded with the new App Store Connect experience on January 25, 2022. Right now, if you want to try out the new experience, you need to manually opt in.

Developers Now Able To Submit Claims For $250 To $30,000 Payments From Apple In Lawsuit Settlement, by Juli Clover, MacRumors

Apple in August announced plans to pay $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit levied by U.S. developers, and as of today, the website that will allow developers to submit a claim for a payout has gone live.

Notes

My iPhone Needs A Jubilee Pudding Too, by Robert Shrimsley, Financial Times

The iPhone is after all the device which, while not the very first of the breed, kicked-off the smartphone revolution. This was the moment that led to the whole world getting neckache and ushered generations into surgical attachment to their phones. And we aren’t even being asked to dream up a special pudding to mark the event.

Bottom of the Page

I have three-and-a-half backups for my Mac. Technically, it's two-and-a-half, though.

One: Time-machine backup to a disk attached to my Mac.
Two: Super-Duper full disk backup to a disk attached to my Mac.
Three: BackBlaze cloud-based backup.
Three-and-a-half: 'Backup' of my Photos library to iCloud.

One problem: Both Time-machine and Super-Duper are backing up to different partions on the same disk. Technically, that should only count as one single backup. The consolation is if one of the software fails, I still have the other software working for me. I hope.

Once upon a time, I used to keep a backup disk in my office. I'll rotate the disks once a week. Of course, this habit stopped around March 2020.

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Thanks for reading.