Last post, I mentioned that we were bitten by a bug that showed up during late-in-the-game testing that didn't make a lot of sense, and was quite nasty in certain complex situations. This bug caused the "release process" to grind to a halt.
Well, I'm happy to say that, as of about two minutes ago, I've managed to figure out what's going on.
Basically, a folder can become "magic" in some situations, and even when the conditions that made it "magic" are reversed, the "magic" sticks around when it shouldn't. Unfortunately, this "magic" acted as a sort of "protective spell" on the folder, and was preventing us from doing anything.
Unfortunately, there's no 'external' visibility for when the "magic" sticks around, so we were seeing something that basically didn't make any sense. On top of that, it's new behavior in Leopard, which is why we've never seen it before. Fortunately, thanks to Amit Singh's recently-updated-for-Leopard hfsdebug (thanks, Amit -- love the book, too), I was able to drop down into the guts of HFS+ and determine what's happening.
Now that the problem's understood, we can implement an effective workaround. The workaround will mean that in some situations it'll re-copy a bit more than it should when Smart Updating. But, at least the result produced will be correct: and the workaround will break the spell, and remove the "magic".
Which is—let me tell you—a relief. (For those of you out there who have hit this kind of WTF-roadblock, where you have no idea what's wrong and thus can't even estimate how long it's going to take to figure it out and fix it, you know what I mean.) And for any Apple engineers reading, the (incorrect) behavior is described in rdar://5687977.
So, anyway, now that that data-integrity-related bug is getting wrapped up, we're back to putting together a final test build (should be in the next day or two), a bit of time to let our test group run their scenarios, etc.
So, barring another similar issue (please, no) showing up during testing, as I indicated in the comments of the previous post, it should be a week or so...
14 Jan 2008 at 10:11 pm | #
Great news indeed
14 Jan 2008 at 10:19 pm | #
Superb news! Congrats on rooting out the nasty bug. I have done a lot of scientific programming (mostly in Fortran) and these things can make one insane.
14 Jan 2008 at 10:21 pm | #
Magic.!.!.
.....Sorry guys, couldn’t resist it 
14 Jan 2008 at 10:22 pm | #
Thanks for the update- makes waiting a bit more bearable.
I’m thankful I didn’t have to debug it!
14 Jan 2008 at 10:22 pm | #
Don’t forget the Jazz-Hands, Bob!
14 Jan 2008 at 10:38 pm | #
Jazz Hands...The yell you let out when you found the problem was heard on this side of the pond.
One double Glenmorangie being drunk to your health sir.
.........or maybe two?
14 Jan 2008 at 11:28 pm | #
Great job. I’d rather have my data “re-copy a bit more than it should” than not copying. That’s the right design choice in my book. Take your time and get it done right, but don’t take too long.
15 Jan 2008 at 12:17 am | #
Thanks for the update Dave. And thanks for making SuperDuper such an awesome product. Your hard work shows. I look forward to 2.5.
15 Jan 2008 at 12:17 am | #
Just out of curiosity (honestly, I love this product and am willing to wait for it!) what made this take so much longer than the Leopard version of Carbon Copy Cloner, which I have happily been using in Leopard while waiting for a compatible version of SD?
15 Jan 2008 at 12:35 am | #
I’m soooooo ready for the new duper, well done folks take all the time you need, but hopefully not that long. Superduper saved my ass during my leopard install, and I’m looking forward to having it working again.
MAGIC!
15 Jan 2008 at 01:01 am | #
Wow. Only 3 months, a 4th of a year. Bang up job guys!
Unbelievable.
15 Jan 2008 at 01:18 am | #
w00t! i can backup my computer in one nice little image, and I dont need to dedicate an entire drive to it
15 Jan 2008 at 01:35 am | #
Congrats on your bug-finding-and-working-around!
I don’t like the wait more than anybody else, but I HUGELY appreciate that when SD is released I’ll be able to really trust that it’ll do exactly what it’s meant to do. I’ve already come across a “Huh, why didn’t Time Machine back that up? Now I need it!” myself, so I’m greatly looking forward to having a SD clone of my drive as well as the Time Machine incrementals - I’ll feel much safer.
Knowing that I can really trust a backup product to backup everything exactly as it’s meant to is worth waiting a LOT more than this for, so don’t stress too much OK? We know the value of getting it right.
Ricky Buchanan
15 Jan 2008 at 03:34 am | #
Dave, I can certainly relate to the ‘WTF block’ you described.. being a website developer, I come across those sometimes, too. Great to hear it’s understood now. I’m sure we are all keeping our fingers crossed for you not to run in to anything like that again
Best of luck.
BTW, I noticed quite a few people in earlier posts stating they would happily pay again for this new version. I’m one of those, who feel that a large piece of work should not have to go without some kind of reward. I think you said earlier that that would not be necessary. Maybe it’s a good idea for you to choose a charity that means something to you, and offer the possibility of donating to that charity.
15 Jan 2008 at 04:25 am | #
Nice one - whilst it is *so* frustrating to get these problems - it’s even more satsifying to have solved them! :o)
Can’t wait for the release.
15 Jan 2008 at 07:00 am | #
@Jensen: CCC doesn’t handle everything Leopard serves up.
@everyone else: thanks!
15 Jan 2008 at 07:03 am | #
I appreciate the attention and dedication to releasing software of top quality. As an end user, I most often don’t want to feel like a beta tester, especially when I need software to be reliable. SuperDuper 2.1.4 has been SuperReliable, and has saved my data on 2 occasions. I look forward to the new release whenever it meets your high standards.
15 Jan 2008 at 09:31 am | #
Nice job, looking forward to get the new version. And for the delay: better safe than sorry! Now I can upgrade to a version I know will work.
15 Jan 2008 at 09:56 am | #
Dave, good job. Thanks for being persistent with putting out what is REQUIRED to be a rock-solid product. And I do understand your situation. Compiler bug anyone? (Back in the ‘80s when compilers weren’t as mature.)
15 Jan 2008 at 10:06 am | #
@Keith: oh, definitely, compiler bugs! Used to use Computer Innovations C86 way-back-in-the-day, and the original C++ compilers, and Wizard C/C++ (which became Turbo C)—and compiler/optimizer bugs were quite common, and very frustrating.
These days, though, I’m happy to say I can’t think of the last time I hit a compiler bug. That, at least, is a good feeling.
15 Jan 2008 at 11:40 am | #
Sounds good about finding the bug. OK with me to test with 10.5.2 before release. ralph
15 Jan 2008 at 12:59 pm | #
Anyone watching the Keynote? Time Capsule...a wireless backup appliance...a full AirPort Extreme Base Station with an integral hard drive.
15 Jan 2008 at 01:03 pm | #
Dave, Great job!
Are you saying a week or so from today the 15th or is the “or so. . . “ the continuation from last thursday?
Thanks again.
15 Jan 2008 at 02:18 pm | #
Hurrah! It would be nice to see the build in the two days rather than the week or so…
15 Jan 2008 at 02:37 pm | #
Yes-- also curious how/if SuperDuper! might support Time Capsule in the future!
15 Jan 2008 at 03:03 pm | #
@Brian/LSF: from today. No way can we do a safe test cycle in two days. Sorry.
15 Jan 2008 at 03:04 pm | #
@transparent: I have absolutely no idea, since I’ve just heard about it today, and it’s not shipping. If it acts as a NAS device, we’d support it the same way we support other NAS devices.
15 Jan 2008 at 03:52 pm | #
Will Super Duper ever gain the ability to create bootable copies over the network and not just images?
Thanks
15 Jan 2008 at 03:54 pm | #
Not in the short term, no: we’d need an “agent” running on the far side, because you can’t write directly to a network drive and preserve permissions/ownership/etc as needed to boot.
15 Jan 2008 at 05:37 pm | #
Happy to wait—the only thing keeping me from going Leopard (besides Adobe playing catch-up with Acrobat) is making sure SuperDuper is there with me. I’d rather have it working out the gate, even if it is a bit late.
15 Jan 2008 at 05:39 pm | #
"Wow. Only 3 months, a 4th of a year. Bang up job guys!”
and still counting.....
I’m just grateful, that you guys are doing such a thorough job with the SD! update and.......my computer hasn’t crashed needing a restore from my last backup which was over 3 months ago.
15 Jan 2008 at 05:50 pm | #
Dave:
You can’t imagine how happy I am to hear that you’ve solved this nasty bug. I *think* this is the same bug that I’ve reported repeatedly to both Apple and to Mike Bombich (ccc 3.0.1) that makes hash of my Mac Pro (Fall 2006) on cloning under Leopard. It (ccc) changes permissions on the /Users/ folder turning them all over to the system and making them read-only after the backup. I’ve had to go to other solutions waiting for either Apple or Mike to figure out what was wrong. Your bug and workaround sound like the same problem - maybe not - and I’m elated that I’ll soon have SuperDuper to test under Leopard. I *love* SuperDuper, have paid for multiple copies, and will happily pay again for a working version under Leopard. No matter how great Apple makes Time Machine, it just doesn’t work for me.
Here’s to hoping that you’ve solved those gnarly bugs!
15 Jan 2008 at 06:18 pm | #
@mrfearless47: no, I don’t think this is the same problem at all… but there are, and have always been, a lot of complexity in getting this stuff right, and they probably have just missed something in an edge case.
All this testing we’re doing is trying to minimize exactly this kind of thing. Of course, it doesn’t mean we won’t miss something as well… but we’re trying not to.
15 Jan 2008 at 10:14 pm | #
Dave, like many I’ve been waiting for the SD 2.5. I’m confident it will be worth the wait. My current copy of SD saved me several times during the Tiger era and it took me back to Tiger after my initial Leopard install was a flop. Thanks for the persistence. I intend to pay for the update.
16 Jan 2008 at 01:03 am | #
Glad to hear you got it figured out! We’ve all been eagerly awaiting this Leopard-compatible release. I too wonder why Carbon Copy Cloner works with Leopard already, but while it’s a nice free program I doubt they have the same accuracy as SuperDuper… which is a huge reason why I bought SD!. It’s worth it to have peace-of-mind… and it has saved my bacon a few times, too.
16 Jan 2008 at 04:24 am | #
"a week or so”, I officially hate this phrase.
16 Jan 2008 at 10:00 am | #
Me too, Jasper… but it’s the best I can do right now. Would you prefer no estimate at all? I can certainly do that.
16 Jan 2008 at 10:53 am | #
Will we be able to use SD with 10.5.1 for one day or have we to wait another 3 months after the release of 10.5.2?
16 Jan 2008 at 11:14 am | #
Fantastic work folks. Looking forward to the end Release.
16 Jan 2008 at 11:15 am | #
Since 10.5.2 isn’t out yet, Helge, I can’t comment on it. But, I think you’ll know from our history from 10.2 up until 10.4.11, we’ve worked fine with updates that don’t make significant changes to the file system, something that was done in Leopard. It’s unlikely similar types of changes would be made in a minor point update.
16 Jan 2008 at 12:10 pm | #
Brilliant, brilliant! Good luck! I will be crossing my fingers!
16 Jan 2008 at 01:14 pm | #
Dave has declared no update charge. Michael has mentioned a charity. Dave’s been involved with Tufts University’s vet school. The closest I can get to the fund he once suggested is this but I remember there being something more specific.
16 Jan 2008 at 01:26 pm | #
"any Apple engineers reading this...” You think Apple engineers read this?
Nicely done sir!
16 Jan 2008 at 04:25 pm | #
Since everyone seems to expect an exact date for the release, I was wondering if you could mention when exactly, the new Duke Nukem will be released. (I couldn’t resist.)
I’m looking forward to SD’s Leopard compatibility.
Keep up the good work!
16 Jan 2008 at 07:34 pm | #
SuperDuper must get its heroism from you guys, Have you considered film rights? I could make a proposal but first I need a snappy title. Leopard Tamer? Nah Best wishes
16 Jan 2008 at 11:22 pm | #
To all the impatient ones, I have to say, “There is never the time to do it the first time, but there is always time to fix it”. This is a phrase which always held true in construction. There would be unbelievable screaming about a project’s timeline, but whenever something was screwed-up, there was always the time to repair the problem. The golden rule being “Measure twice and cut once”. I believe this is what Dave is doing, and I’m more than willing to wait for a product he is satisfied with.
Dave, you have my confidence.
17 Jan 2008 at 10:08 am | #
Once SD 2.5 is released, I hear Apple’s going to reshoot the Time Machine commercial with the lineup of Mac Guys so that there’s a single Dave Narnian mixed in with all the Justin Longs. (I got this rumor from myself, so I doubt it’s true.)
Anyway, Dave, will SuperDuper 2.5 work with Time Capsule, do you think?
17 Jan 2008 at 10:17 am | #
Love the tone of your blog. Desperation meets inspiration with some refreshing straight talk. Made me laugh.
Looking forward to the update.
17 Jan 2008 at 10:33 am | #
@Hal: from early reports (I don’t have one), Time Capsule is just a NAS drive, similar to what you get when you plug an external USB drive into the current Airport Extreme Base Station. So, it’ll likely work the same way—but remember that because it’s always going to be networked, you won’t be able to make the first copy quicker by connecting directly as explained in the “Airport Disks” post elsewhere on the blog…
17 Jan 2008 at 10:34 am | #
Are you still on track? Daily progress updates would be cool… Given we’re checking the blog for news often anyway…
17 Jan 2008 at 10:39 am | #
@LSF: sorry, I’m not going to provide daily progress updates. Testing is proceeding…
17 Jan 2008 at 10:43 am | #
@DaveN: At least Time Capsule is N speed, which should at least make that initial backup a bit more bearable. I had bought a 1TB Western Digital MyBook drive and connected to my current Airport Extreme base station in hopes that I could access it remotely as my server, but the drive goes to sleep, and you can’t wake it remotely. And I couldn’t run any Spindown Fix apps on it because it was not connected directly to my Mac. So that was a bust.
Also, Back to My Mac doesn’t work remotely either like it’s supposed, even if I tell my machines not to sleep. Again, I guess Leopard wasn’t quite ready for prime time when they released it.
17 Jan 2008 at 10:48 am | #
@Hal: well, no—all the Airport Extreme Base Stations (with USB drive support) are N-speed, and many are also gigabit. It’s likely to be quite slow to get that first copy done.
17 Jan 2008 at 03:09 pm | #
Thanks Dave,
I’m very excited to soon have a bootable backup of my computer again! The last one I have is from the night before stinkin’ Leopard and I haven’t turned that drive on since.
By the way, will 2.5 also fix the issue with non-bootable backups continuing eating up more and more and more disk space that they don’t really need? hdiutil compact is my friend, but really I’m rather tired of it!
Thanks,
John
17 Jan 2008 at 06:22 pm | #
Dave, Why not? It builds anticipation for the release - always a good thing - and for those who are less sympathetic, it help restore their faith that work is progressing with speed and that a release is imminent. There are people who haven’t backed up for months due to waiting for SuperDuper. Personally, I think brief daily updates are the least you can do. And that’s coming from a paying customer.
17 Jan 2008 at 07:28 pm | #
@LSF:It takes a long time to write a decent blog post of any substance, and when testing is just proceeding normally a content-free one doesn’t really benefit anyone: it just gets in the way of me accomplishing what we all want—the release of 2.5.
I’m taking quite a lot of time to post reasonably frequent updates when there’s something to say, and reply to comments (like this one) as well. I also spend a massive amount of time providing regular support to both paying and non-paying customers. Not to mention trying to make sure SuperDuper! 2.5 goes out in a condition we’ll all be happy with.
Demanding updates that just say “hi, I’m alive and working”—and implying that not doing so is somehow betraying users—seems incredibly unreasonable… sorry.
17 Jan 2008 at 10:44 pm | #
Dave, I know the mental roller-coaster that is software development, that’s why I’m so impressed you’ve managed to keep SD going all this time. Sustaining a commercial software product over the long run is much harder than the initial flash of brilliance it took to create it (but then you already know that).
I agree with your positioning of SD as complementary to Time Machine. Personally I don’t want to start experimenting with Time Machine until I have a working SD-created clone of my hard drive
Looking forward to the Leopard release!
18 Jan 2008 at 03:51 am | #
About the speed of backing up to Time Capsule, Apple themselves say on their website it will take “over night OR LONGER” to make the first backup. I don’t remember exactly how long SD took for that, but I’m sure it was way faster than that. And remember, putting stuff back when a crash has happened will take equally long. So in the aspect of time, Time Capsule will offer a less pleasant experience than using Time Machine with a drive directly attached.
I think when SD 2.5 comes out, I will continue to use Time Machine via a Firewire disk and use SD again for weekly complete backups. Or maybe I’ll quit using Time Machine because I can’t see myself using it for ‘oops where’s that deleted file’ kind of use.
18 Jan 2008 at 04:38 am | #
Oh god - getting nervous, had a kernal panic last night. Just hoping I can hold out till SuperDuper is out.
18 Jan 2008 at 06:34 am | #
Rather than receiving constant progress reports I’m happy to think of you having the space to get the job done [so don’t pause to read this] Once it was obvious that a big update was needed weekly or fortnightly updates of significant progress would have been enough. Heightening anticipation oesn’t back up hard drives.
18 Jan 2008 at 12:12 pm | #
I guess one of the most frustrating aspects of developing and supporting a commercial application is dealing with stubborn customers. Some think that because they paid for the software they are entitled to receive daily progress updates. They want to pull the developer away to write these instead of concentrating on finishing up the application yet they want it now? Others are demanding an immediate release, even if it doesn’t work well. Absurd!
David N. has made it clear he won’t be releasing SD until it works properly. I am, too, waiting for it to be Leopard compatible. But I am also appreciative he is sticking with his high quality standards and that when he makes it available, I will have a dependable buck up solution.
18 Jan 2008 at 02:43 pm | #
Well, I’m giving up, moving on to carbon copy cloner which works today...................
18 Jan 2008 at 05:34 pm | #
"I guess one of the most frustrating aspects of developing and supporting a commercial application is dealing with stubborn customers. Some think that because they paid for the software they are entitled to receive daily progress updates.”
Some think they would actually like to use the software they paid for.
18 Jan 2008 at 05:39 pm | #
"Well, I’m giving up, moving on to carbon copy cloner which works today................... “
But which is not as versatile and has an intermittent fault which cancels it from starting through an ‘unknown error’ which I have posted to the developers with logged details without recieving a reply. Some developers admit that releases aren’t perfectly ready, others don’t. CCC is a useful stopgap if bootable backups are essential.
18 Jan 2008 at 05:40 pm | #
Another sing along, folks!
Somewhere, over the rainbow....
18 Jan 2008 at 10:47 pm | #
Dave, As you say, you’re already on here daily responding to other queries. It would take next to no time for you to post a simple update each day that testing has gone well and that you still feel the release is on track for Monday or whenever it was. People are interested in your work and are eager to find out what’s happening. Keeping them informed is rarely a bad idea.
18 Jan 2008 at 10:52 pm | #
By the way, I wasn’t thinking of a full-blown blog post, but of a simple one or two line status report as a comment in this discussion. After all, it seems everyone who’s interested in Super Duper is aware that you’re posting in the comments and monitoring them for news.
19 Jan 2008 at 12:00 am | #
Dave, I just noticed there have been almost 125,000 downloads of SD. At $28 a pop, that’s nearly $3.5 million. Dude. That’s pretty awesome.
19 Jan 2008 at 01:22 am | #
Hey Dave,
Wow! $3.5 mill! Say, could I borrow a few bucks for “a week or so”? I’m a little short.
Thanks
19 Jan 2008 at 01:33 am | #
Oh, and by the way…
As far as that “week or so” you posted goes,
Is your week a seven day week, or a five day business week? And do you guys at Shirt-Pocket work/update on the weekend, and consider that part of the “week” or doesn’t it count? Do you count this Monday, MLK day as a day of the “week” or is it considered a holiday, outside of the “week”?
And what exactly is “or so”? One or two days sooner, or later? I just want to make sure so we’re clear if you loan me some dough.
Thanks!
19 Jan 2008 at 06:58 am | #
Congrats on fixing the last bug. Since the new release seems to be immanent, I got some questions concerning SD vs. Time Machine:
1. My planned setup will be this: Time Machine runs continuously in the background. In addition I’ll use SD every weekend to backup the whole system (on an extra drive). So what if my system crashes on a, say, thursday. Theoretically I should have every bit of data (+- one hour) on my backup volumes. I then would restore the system via SD. But this backup is several days old, whereas Time Machine has my data up to one hour ago. Does the newly restored (from SD backup) system know that it is “now” and sees my latest Time Machine backup so that I’ll be able to restore the data of the remaining days?
2. If I would need to reinstall Leopard from scratch (without SD) and I have my Time Machine Backup. AFAIK Leopard lets me restore my latest Version of Data from the TM volume BUT I wouldn’t have the history of previously deleted data because Leopard would be a new install. Can I use SD to clone the TM volume in a way that the history remains accessible?
Thanks so much,
Stefan
19 Jan 2008 at 07:49 am | #
Aw c’mon...Give the guy a break, how many of us would be skilled enough to produce the product that Dave has come up with?
Go try and get daily progress updates and feedback from some of the big software developers.....I don’t think so.
I’m as anxious as anyone else to get my hands on 2.5 but climbing all over Dave at every opportunity ain’t going to make it happen any sooner.
We’re Mac users.....We’re supposed to be Cool........Chill.
19 Jan 2008 at 08:57 am | #
@Hal: downloads are not sales, eh?
And remember: SuperDuper! gives the ability to do full backups and user-file (Home folder) backups, completely for free, without expiration… and we provide support to those users… so there are lots and lots and lots and lots of users who haven’t paid who are still our users, and still get support.
Now, if all those users would register, that’d be awesome.
@RobLaw: I work 7 days a week, 365 days a year, about 12 hours a day, usually more, except on vacation, when I probably only work 8. Not slacking off here—never have been.
19 Jan 2008 at 08:59 am | #
@Stefan: it should, as long as you restore with SuperDuper and keep the same volume name. As far as (2) goes, we don’t change the TM volume at all, so if TM wouldn’t do this normally, it wouldn’t work with SD! either.
19 Jan 2008 at 09:17 am | #
Just filling my time by reading all the things on the MacUpdate page. I never doubted the amount of work involved, Dave. I’m one of those who would be happy to pay for an upgrade. I was hoping this app has made you a rich man, being a firm believer in our capitalist system. I wondered if MacUpdate and VersionTracker and other sites got a cut also.
I mean, the idea is simple, yet genius: Hard drives break at some point, so have an exact replica of your hard drive waiting in the wings when that happens, one that works exactly like the original in every way, while making the time to create that clone as minimal an amount as possible so people will actually use it daily. But to make that idea a reality obviously took a great deal of intelligence and stick-to-it-ive-ness.
19 Jan 2008 at 09:24 am | #
@Hal: no, MacUpdate/VersionTracker don’t get a “cut” of anything unless you specifically advertise on them. All the data up there, downloads, reviews, etc of all products are entirely community generated and not “bought”.
19 Jan 2008 at 01:12 pm | #
Count me as another customer who swears by SuperDuper! and (a) is willing to wait for Dave to finish what he feels is *right* vs putting something out there that’s gonna need a lot of tweaking; and (b) would be willing to pay for the Leopard version.
I have not upgraded to Leopard yet because SD! is a show-stopper for me. No feature set of an OS is worth the risk of not having my preferred backup strategy.
A couple of days ago, my daughter’s iBook hard drive bit the dust. I replaced it (no small feat
and now, thanks to my regular SD! backups I am sitting here watching all that data coming back to its rightful place. Once again, SD! saved my bacon (and my daughter’s homework).
Thanks, Dave-- and you have your supporters’ permission to ignore the whiners.
jtl
19 Jan 2008 at 02:47 pm | #
No response from Dave regarding clarity of the release date and the progress of testing. Rather disappointing.
19 Jan 2008 at 05:57 pm | #
Hi,
Well, here we are at the end of a long road and Superduper! is supposed to be released in a few more days. Unless it’s delayed yet again. Dave posted on the 14th that it should be a week or so and that means we should have it in our hands somewhere around the 21st. I’m going to give it until the 25th and if it’s not done by then, I want my money back. I’ve been patient but I’m tired of waiting. I’ve already had to restore my system once and surprisingly, Time Machine did it quite well. Other than the ease of Superduper! I’m wondering why I even need it if I have Time Machine to fall back on? And by the way, I did try C.C. but my backup failed halfway through and it took a couple of hours. What a piece of junk!
Next week, I have new drives coming and I was hoping to use Superduper! to ease my transition of data. If I can’t use Superduper! then I wonder what I spent my money on?
For those of you who jump on me saying that I should give Dave a break, that writing and trouble-shooting code is time-consuming. Well, I have clients too - with deadlines and agreements to deliver on-time. If I were to keep changing my deadlines at my clients expense, I’d risk getting sued or going out of business. When I’m behind on my work, I work over-time! Finally, yes - I realize that no one forced me to upgrade to Leopard… and I could have stayed with Tiger, yada yada… but Leopard is no longer a NEW OS, so that statement no longer holds true. Leopard has been shipping for a few months now and is the default installation on all new Macs. I don’t think it’s reasonable that we should have to stay with Tiger just to use Superduper!. The update is late and getting later by the day. I"m keeping my fingers crossed for next week!
19 Jan 2008 at 06:27 pm | #
@ Al - You licensed SuperDuper! as is, without any guarantee of ever receiving any upgrades, free or otherwise.
I’m just as frustrated as you are, but I don’t feel anyone is entitled to any money out of the deal.
I really wish SD was released yesterday too, but I’m willing to wait until tomorrow if it means it will work.
I’m from NY, so I’m used to people jumping when I say jump, and vise versa. However I think we’d all benefit from a bit more patience in this situation. SD is a superior product to Time Machine. TM makes a good complement, but not a replacement.
That is my opinion on the matter anyway.
19 Jan 2008 at 07:40 pm | #
@Al Wilson: Want your money back? Want your money back?! (ROTFL) Have you ever bought software before? That’s some crazy talk if I ever heard crazy talk, and let me tell you, I’ve heard crazy talk in my life, much of it in this blog.
I want my money back from either Adobe, Macromedia or Aldus for never upgrading Freehand, even though I used it (and made money thanks to it) for a dozen years or so. Global Village doesn’t write software updates for my 14.4K baud modem any more. I want my money back. I ate some Campbell’s Tomato Soup awhile ago, but now the can’s empty. I want my money back.
Al, the world doesn’t work that way (thank God).
19 Jan 2008 at 09:52 pm | #
Dave, I hope you have learned a lesson here. Part of developing software of this kind is to make sure that not only does it function properly, of course, but also equally important is that it is never left non-functioning for long periods (virtually no downtime).
If needed, you should hire more help in the future to ensure major OS upgrades get handle much more efficiently.
19 Jan 2008 at 10:09 pm | #
Those of you who are bitching at Dave about the delays should realize that it is the responsibility of the end user to make the decision to upgrade an OS understanding that certain software will not be available immediately. If you can’t do without SuperDuper or don’t have a workaround you should not have upgraded to 10.5. I’ve been waiting for this release since November just like everyone else and I think Dave has been very upfront about his progress and has tried to give us an accurate forecast of the release date. We should all be grateful that his goal is to provide is with a rock solid product. This isn’t an application that can be put out as a beta and I, for one, feel even better about SuperDuper knowing that Dave will not deliver a half-baked product. Grow up, quit crying, wait and use Time Machine or go back to Tiger and use SuperDuper. The bottom line is quit bitching. Its a solid product and from everything I’ve seen Dave is a solid guy.
19 Jan 2008 at 10:45 pm | #
As a software engineer myself I can appreciate the challenge Dave faces in terms of having people waiting for the code, wanting to give it to them and know its not totally right. I suspect that if he had taken the approach to ship code that wasn’t functional there would be a whole separate set of comments about how Shirt-Pocket let me down by giving my faulty software. Eric’s post is spot on in terms of weighing the pros and cons of doing an upgrade and making sure we have properly counted the cost of doing so.
Personally Leopard has some interesting features but some of the annoying little bugs that have bitten me has caused me to chastise myself for upgrading too quickly. Notice I’m not blaming Stevarino and Apple for my desire to upgrade quickly knowing there would be some growing pains. I take responsibility for my choices there and I appreciate Dave sticking to his guns to get it right. Its painful now but that soon will pass.
I stil have some lingering bug reports open with Apple on Leopard that have not been resolved and I know they, and Dave, are working hard on their respective areas to satisfy their users.
We’re going to get there and I’m sure when we look back it won’t seem like its been that long at all.
19 Jan 2008 at 11:05 pm | #
halneal wrote:
“I want my money back from either Adobe, Macromedia or Aldus for never upgrading Freehand, even though I used it (and made money thanks to it) for a dozen years or so. Global Village doesn’t write software updates for my 14.4K baud modem any more. I want my money back. I ate some Campbell’s Tomato Soup awhile ago, but now the can’s empty. I want my money back.
Al, the world doesn’t work that way (thank God).”
Uh, your arguments are not valid. Were not talking about commodities that have been consumed (like your ridiculous example of soup), or software/hardware that is past it’s prime. I’m referring to a product I bought 6 months ago and it’s now obsolete. I never said that I wouldn’t be opposed to paying for the update, if it were available at a reasonable time frame. Oh, never mind… I just realized that you aren’t worth my time to finish this response. It’s all rather pointless.
19 Jan 2008 at 11:23 pm | #
@Al: Yes, it was ridiculous. I was employing absurdity to illustrate my point.
20 Jan 2008 at 12:08 am | #
@Al: It’s not obsolete. It still works perfectly on Tiger, and will have a version for leopard sometime. It doesn’t really matter when that sometime is, because what you bought was a backup program that works with Tiger. I don’t see anywhere on SD’s site that says they guarantee that they will support new OS releases within any given timeframe, do you?
We’re all waiting for it, we all wanted it yesterday. impatience doesn’t get it written any faster.
I agree that maybe this could have been foreseen a bit better, and it is possible that more employees could have been hired, or more hours could have been invested. But that may not have been financially possible (and really, none of us know how much Dave has been working on it - it’s possible he’s been working 10 hour days). Also, hind sight is 20/20. There isn’t much point in pointing it out now. I’m sure Dave realizes that most of his customers are not happy waiting this long for a release, and if there is anything he can do next time to improve the overall process, I’m sure he will.
20 Jan 2008 at 01:53 am | #
As a software developer I have been the focus of attention while everyone stood around asking how long will it take you to find the bug and fix it. When people ask - “How Long?” it is extraordinarily hard to provide an estimate. Sometimes it feels like they are asking “How long will it take for the next great breakthrough?”. Breakthroughs are hard to predict. The really tough bugs take stamina, an open mind, and sometimes a bit of luck to find. Once found they need to be fixed. Fixes are usually easier to forecast.
SuperDuper needs to be bulletproof. The business needs to protect its reputation as a solid backup utility. Releasing unfinished software could irreparably damage their reputation. Although regrettable it may be better to annoy a few noisy early adopters than to lose its hard earned reputation as a solid product.
Ultimately, the customers determine the fate of a software company. I am confident that most will be there waiting when the leopard release is ready.
20 Jan 2008 at 04:52 am | #
Hey, keep working! But after you release (and get some sleep), I’d love to see a blog post about the technical details of this “magic” folder thing.
20 Jan 2008 at 08:02 am | #
I wonder what would have happened to you’re client-base when there would be some more competitive products out though.
I’ve dealt with Quark’s (XPress) only for as long as there was no InDesign, to give an example.
20 Jan 2008 at 08:50 am | #
@Al
I think you’re forgetting that SD has unique features. You’re complaining because you use SD for a relatively simple task that other applications can do. But I use SD for something that no other application does (as far as I know), that is, I use the “shared users and applications” feature to create sandboxes in which I can safely test pre-release software. I’m in a number of customer seeding programs, including Apple’s, and I need SD for that. Nothing else will do.
You have Time Machine activated and it’s working. Your data is backed up. You need SD to do another task. You could do it yourself (i.e., clone your drives using the Unix command line), but you’re not really sure if that will work properly and you want SD to make it easy for you. That’s fine.
If Dave gave you your money back, what would you do with it? I mean, would you buy another product? Prosoft Data Backup? EMC Retrospect? SD isn’t really the same as them. They both do incremental backups, which SD doesn’t, and neither is designed for testing beta software, which SD is. It’s true that both claim Leopard compatibility. EMC released it on December 6, Prosoft on December 12. Good for them. But they’re different animals, dealing with a different set of issues.
20 Jan 2008 at 09:29 am | #
The retail release of Leopard was different than the betas and had bugs. Dave said earlier he had to write around a bad API. He is getting into the guts of Leopard and Apple unfortunately rushed it out the door to meet the end of October deadline. I have a neighbor that switched to mac, got her iMac at the Apple store for Christmas but it still had Tiger on it and was given a Leopard disk. She upgraded but lost her user account admin rights which she called me to fix. It is a documented Leopard bug on the Apple site but it is certainly not a trivial fix for switchers. Her sister also switched and had the same problem. That was bad for new users. I just wish Apple had a better quality control process. It’s better than MS, but that’s a low benchmark.
20 Jan 2008 at 04:46 pm | #
Hello Everyone ... I’m new to “Shirtpocket” and fairly new to Mac. I converted from a PC about a year ago. One of my associates has been encouraging me to checkout “Superduper” . I’ve recently upgraded to Leopard and I’ve been patiently waiting for the new Leopard compatable Superduper.
Thanks for all your comments here ....
20 Jan 2008 at 05:16 pm | #
Has anyone else noticed the irony that Dave is delaying a software release caused by a bug in a too-hastily-released OS upgrade?
I suspect many of the same people upset at Dave for not releasing SD until it is good and ready are the same ones who are upset at Apple for releasing 10.5 before it was ready.
I’m as eager as the next person to see a 10.5-compatible version of SD. I bought 10.5, it’s sitting on my desk taunting me ... but I’m not moving without SD. It’s saved my arse and I trust it - and the reason I trust it is Dave’s bloody pig-minded tenacity in making sure that it’s not released until it’s ready.
20 Jan 2008 at 05:54 pm | #
Maybe Steve Jobs will give us our money back.
20 Jan 2008 at 06:05 pm | #
@Timo: Good point, although InDesign ended up being a far superior product to Quark in a relatively short period of time after its introduction. Now that Markzware has released CS3-compatible versions of ID2Q and Q2ID, I’m no longer bothering with Quark, period. I kinda missed Freehand for awhile when it went away. With Quark, it was “good riddance”. Plus, when Quark did finally come out an upgrade, they’d want a small fortune for it –- almost like they wanted you to buy their product all over again. Craziness!
I hate that Adobe has a monopoly, but the CS3 is a very sweet suite.
21 Jan 2008 at 05:41 am | #
.....
Jesus, people, what’s wrong with you?
A major, rock solid product came out a couple of years ago. At that time, I registered for a copy. And since then there have been multiple updates and upgrades to the product, and never once have they asked me for more money.
This, by the by, including the upgrades that took all the metadata and other weirdness that Tiger threw in the mix and made it happy and good.
And then the operating system that it is designed for completely changed how it handled file structures and any number of other things. And the developer set down to coding a major new release to cover it. He let us know as he found bugs. He let us know what was going on. And most of all, he stuck to the quality assurance process.
And you guys have the gall to bitch because he’s not posting a daily “still working on it?” update?
Jesu Christe in a bucket, people. At our office, we use any number of structural or diagnostic tools like Tech Tool Pro. Whenever there’s a version release of Mac OS X, we assume those tools will stop working for 4-6 months after the release, because that’s the way the industry works. We don’t take our mission critical systems to the new OS until our mission critical software can support it.
Yeah, my personal computer has Leopard, and I have to wait like all of you before I can start doing my daily Superdupe of it again, but that was a choice I made when I upgraded, and I was confident Superduper would be back when it was ready. I’m damn glad he’s chased down those bugs rather than releasing a substandard product. And yeah, I’ve actually gone to Time Machine until Superduper is ready. Oddly enough, it backs my computer up. It’s not as good as Superduper, but it’ll tide me until it’s ready.
Dave? Thank you. Thank you for giving us free updates long after everyone else would have charged us a new fee. Thank you for not shoveling the update out the door quickly when that could be disastrous. Thank you for giving enough of a damn about our data to not halfass it. And thank you for giving us productive updates when there’s something to say, rather than a litany of “still in the testing cycle. More when I know it.” All that would do is frustrate more people.
Keep up the good work.
26 Jan 2008 at 06:24 pm | #
I’m glad you are taking your time and being thorough in your testing. It will save us all a lot of time and potential problems in the future. Keep up the good work.
Don