Finding My Way on Mac, SyncToy
I have not been posting anything recently as I was going through a change. After working 8+ years at one company, I joined today another company to continue to create great things. But the change did not end there. At the new place I got a Mac. I have been a “die hard” Windows user and developer since early 1995 knowing many Windows internals and was exposed to a Mac (v 8.6 or so) in 2001 briefly to test my application. This particular change I guess is long overdue since many of my former colleagues jumped on the Apple bandwagon. I was one of long standing skeptics. Nonetheless, I am embracing the challenge and want to make my environment as much productive as I used to have it on Windows. It includes so many different things – getting fingers hitting right buttons and combinations, getting used to the trackpad (I used a mouse even with a laptop – I just find it more efficient!), and tools. Thanks to a former colleague of mine, who happens to be my opposite in terms of OS preferences and is a “die hard” Mac fan, recommended me a link and another link.
But I still want to do things I used to do where shortcuts do not quite help. I’m talking about tools. For example, I use FAR Manager to copy and move files around, view files, FTP and so on. I know Mac OS is not designed with this kind of freedom, but still this tool is more productive to do many things.
The next tool is Entourage. I do not get it why Microsoft does not allow to run a rule in Entourage against already received messages and in Outlook does. Am I missing something?
The next tool is Remote Desktop Connection. I know there is an option to have a VNC session. Need to explore more.
The next tool is SyncToy. This is a kind of my first Mac gotchas. It does work, in some cases. If you need to synchronize files between Windows and Mac, you can follow these steps.
- Open “System Preferences”.
- Open “Sharing”.
- Turn on “File Sharing”.
- In options select “Share files and folders using SMB (Windows).
- Pick shared folders.
- Pick and account you plan to use. (Mac may need to store your password, which poses some security risks, even the password is encrypted).
- Select users and their access permissions (You cannot get rid of ‘Everyone’, but you can give them ‘No access’).
- On your Windows computer in the Explorer type something like \\ipaddress\shared-folder-name. When asked to enter credentials, enter ipaddress\username and the password you specified as the password.
- Now you can map that folder as a network drive and you should be ready to use the SyncToy.
I did find a problem that SyncToy fails to synchronize an Entourage script if you chose to synchronize your home directory. I do not have an explanation for that yet.
I heard good things about DropBox for file synchronization – https://www.dropbox.com/features
It is available on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android, and even BlackBerry. And it’s free.
A note of warning though. Unlike SyncToy, files are stored at DropBox. A free account has a 2G limit.
… and I hear bad things about Dropbox too…
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/05/dropbox-ftc/
This article says that files are not encrypted, unlike Dropbox says.
BTW, I use muCommander as a substitute for the FAR Manager. It’s pretty decent. Requires Java.