Apple held their annual Worldwide Developer’s Conference (WWDC) last week and had both hardware and software related announcements during the keynote. For most people, the big thing was the new iPhone-model. iPhone 3G S, alongside the accompanying version 3.0 iPhone software pretty much stole the spotlight.

As an iPod Touch -owner, I’m not commenting on the new iPhone. I have very little experience with any of the models, so there’s not much for me to talk about. Except MMS-messaging. It’s there now, so the five guys who actually use MMS can now send all the messages they want. And the other thousand guys can stop complaining about the lack of MMS and come up with another missing important feature.

Now, the 3.0 software I can comment on, since it’s for iPod Touch as well. Haven’t tested it yet, so a review’s going to have to wait. I will say that it certainly looks promising. When I reviewed software version 2.0 and version 2.1 , there were two big issues I noted. First: no copy and paste. Second: native language keyboard for Scandinavia was clumsy as hell. The new version 3.0 software fixes these both. Not bad, I say. Apple’s been busy.

iPhone-less news in WWDC included a release date for the next Mac operating system, (version 10.6, Snow Leopard) and changes in the MacBook product line. Snow Leopard’s coming in September and is a bargain for existing Leopard owners, only $29. At that price, they’ve sure got my cash.

The aluminium 13″ MacBooks received hardware updates and were re-branded to MacBook Pros. In addition to minor increases in speed, two things worth mentioning happened under the hood. First, the new MacBook Pro -models have SD-card slots. I’m actually not sure what’s the point in adding an internal SD-reader, but I guess this shuts up some of those critics who always deduct points from Mac computers because all the other laptops have those. Although they still might complain because Macs still don’t have built-in slots for Compact Flash/MemoryStick/xD/Whatever. Because USB-readers are so hard to find and are enormously huge – or something like that. Still, the slot’s there and I’ve no problem with it.

Then, the second big change. For me, at least. Firewire’s back, baby! That’s right, the new 13″ MacBook Pros have a brand new shiny FW800-port. Originally Apple removed firewire from their new models when the aluminium MacBook-line was revealed, but now it’s back, and for me this certainly is most welcome. I complained about the missing firewire last October, and now I can finally stop crying about it.

Now that think about it, Apple corrected two big issues I had with two of their products. Just for me, right? Time to dance on the table and start saving money.

I’ve used Apple’s aluminium wireless keyboard for almost a year now, and I’ve been pretty satisfied with it. It’s small, light, nice looking and great to type with. The only problem I’ve had with it is that it uses three batteries instead of four or two, so you’ll always end up with one battery you have no use for.

Apple Wireless Keyboard is pretty much the ideal keyboard, since the only problem I have with it can be countered by having a mouse that uses just one battery.

A few days ago my trusty old pal decided life’s been too peaceful, and chose to spice things up. The perfect way of doing this is by the most awkward error keyboards can have: dead keys. Two of my keys just stopped working outright. Now I was presented with a dilemma: an almost perfectly working keyboard that just happens to have two faulty keys. Now, had the entire keyboard failed, it would’ve been easy to get a new one, but since it’s just two keys, well… I ended up with choosing the route of a cheap bastard.

I decided to switch the keyboard layout, so that the broken keys could be switched elsewhere on the keyboard. My software search ended with Ukulele. Ukulele is a free software for Mac OS X that allows you to edit and change keyboard layouts. After I found the tools, it was simply a case of opening a suitable keyboard layout file and mapping the broken keys elsewhere on the keyboard. On the next login the layout file became active, and I could switch to the new layout I just created.

So, thanks to Ukulele, my keyboard is still pretty usable. I mapped two letters I’m not likely to be needing very often to the broken keys. In case I happen to need them, I can still enter them through the OSX Special Characters-menu, for example. Not very convenient, but gets the job done. Here’s hoping that the rest of the keyboard keeps on rocking, behaves and doesn’t have any more great ideas like exploding.

Backups. Something we never remember to do, but always wish we had done when the unthinkable happens. Be it a hard drive gone bad, accidentially deleted file or lost memory stick, data is lost. Not a big deal if you have a copy. If you don’t, well, though luck.

Fortunately, I’ve yet to lose data due to those things just mentioned. It’s bound to happen, though, sooner or later. When considering the many devices I own with hards drives inside them, luck’s been on my side. Nevertheless, my backup record has been less than stellar.

I had the occasional document backed up now and then, but mostly just the really important ones. Finally when Apple released OS X 10.5 (Leopard) and I saw how simple backups were with Time Machine, there was no excuse.

All was well, until I started writing my thesis. Then the data loss paranoia struck. Around then I read about online backup, and decided to give it a try. I was happy with the service I initially tried (still using it, in fact), but noticed there were a number of contenders as well. I’ve since tried to keep up with the scene a bit, and now decided to write a piece about few of the backup services I’ve had experience with.

On the first part of the series, I cover the basics, such as advantages and disadvantages of online backup. On the follow-up articles, I focus more on the backup services themselves.

Note: Just so happens, Spideroak is offering 50% discount for new users, today only. If you’re interested, sign up using my affiliate link and use code ‘recovery’ at checkout. Remember, one day discount only, so it’s deal by May 20th or no deal.

>> Online backup – introduction

Decided to change the font size on the site from “maybe a little bit too damn small” to slightly bigger. Also changed the font. Now things are a bit easier to read, helps especially in the longer articles.

I still need to fix the CSS-styles. Current style sheet is far from optimal, with overlapping and useless style definitions here and there. Will make it better, someday.