Shirt Pocket Watch

I was reading Wil Shipley’s recent post about his horrible Comcast DVR experience, which has some kind of Microsoft DVR software on it, and it amazed me how lousy it was, compared to my Sony VGX-XL1 Media Center PC.

I know Microsoft is a big company, but it sounds like the DVR division (if, indeed, they provided the software he was using) not only hasn’t talked to the Media Center team, they haven’t even looked at Media Center. Because MCE doesn’t have any of these problems. (Which isn’t to say it’s perfect, but it’s positively shiny in comparison to what Wil describes.)

I’ve been avoiding anything but analog cable because of exactly this kind of issue—I just don’t want to be forced to take Comcast’s lousy box. The Vista version of MCE, with CableCard support, can’t come soon enough.

Well, today—March 16th, 2006—is Ketzl’s 9th birthday.

It’s a milestone I really never thought Ketzl would reach, but I suppose I shouldn’t be so pessimistic: I didn’t think she’d make it through to last spring, nor this calendar year, but she keeps surprising me.

Surprise is one of those things dogs deal with a lot better than we do. Dogs who lose limbs wake from their amputation, try to stand, look mildly surprised and then adjust. Just like that.

When she first got her wheelchair, Ketzl was a little surprised, but delighted that she could walk again, on her own. Seconds later, no surprise at all. It’s just one of those things.

The first time she fell over because her back and front legs were too weak to keep her upright: surprised. Seconds later, she looked at me in a way that clearly said “C’mon, Dave. You saw I was going to fall. Get with it!”

Me, I’m surprised every day I wake and she’s still there with us. But mostly, I’m surprised by how deeply I care.

Hey, very cool—macosxhints has Made SuperDuper! a pick of the week!

I’m usually a bit reluctant to recommend TV Shows, because you never know whether future episodes are going to meet the expectations set up by past ones. But, quite a few in, it really seems like AMC’s Hustle is a winner.

A terrifically fun British import, Hustle tells the story of a team of grifters, and a different con every week. Great cast, direction, writing—lots of fun all around. Check it out!

Shirt Pocket announces the immediate availability of SuperDuper! 2.1, the Intel Mac-compatible Universal version of SuperDuper.

Of course, we haven’t just recompiled for Intel—we’ve added new features, polished existing ones, reworked the documentation—all to improve the popular, Eddy Award winning disk copying utility for Mac OS X.

SuperDuper 2.1 adds all this to the impressive improvements of 2.0, including: the ability to easily schedule backups; additional imaging options; more control over shutdown; better AppleScript support; hundreds of UI improvements; and a completely rewritten, task-based User’s Guide.

SuperDuper 2.1 supports both Intel and Power PC Macs running Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, and is a free update for existing users. The unregistered version will perform full backups for free. Registration costs $27.95, and includes many additional timesaving features, including Smart Update for faster backups, Scheduling, and others.

More information, as well as a download link, can be found at http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper.

Thanks for waiting, everyone!

As you probably know from a previous post, we’re working on Universal versions of all of Shirt Pocket’s applications, including SuperDuper. (We’re in late-stage testing with SuperDuper, and it should be out reasonably soon.)

One thing we’ve been able to confirm: disk I/O on the Intel Macs is much faster than it is on the Power PC ones—seemingly about twice as fast.

In fact, SuperDuper builds about twice as fast on the MacBook as it does on a dual-2.5Ghz G5 desktop, and that’s primarily I/O related.

Sweet!