Wally Wang's Apple Farm
“The Simplest Backup Solution”
by Wally Wang

Using any computer without keeping backups of your crucial files is like walking across a tightrope without a safety net on a rope that's slowly unraveling. It's only a matter of time before disaster strikes, so you better start backing up your files now before it's too late.

With a Macintosh, the simplest backup solution is to get any ordinary external USB hard drive, plug it into your Mac, and run Time Machine, the free backup program that comes with every Macintosh.

When you need to retrieve a file from the past, open Time Machine, choose a date in the past when you're certain your file existed, then click on the file you want, and click the Restore button.



For an even simpler, but more expensive solution, just get Apple's Time Capsule, which is a combination Wi-Fi router and external hard disk. Time Capsule is particularly suited for laptop Macs since you can back up your files automatically every hour, wirelessly.

Although Time Machine may make backups easy to create and even easier to retrieve files from, any external hard disk will be useless if your home or business office catches on fire and wipes out both your Macintosh and your external hard disk at the same time.

For that reason, the absolute safest way to back up your files is through an off-site backup. Now if a disaster wipes out your computer and your backup files stored on an external hard disk, your important files still exist somewhere else. Just get a new computer, retrieve your backup files, and you'll be able to start working again with just a little inconvenience for your trouble.

Fortunately, there are plenty of Internet sites that offer storage space. To entice you to try their services, most of these storage sites offer a free account with limited storage space. If you want more space, you'll have to pay a monthly fee. The more you pay, the more storage space you'll get.

One of the most generous off-site storage sites is ADrive, which offers a free 50GB storage. Other sites include Mozy with free 2GB storage, 4Shared with 5GB storage, and iDrive with free 2GB storage.



If you try one of these services, you can see whether you like the way the site works. If you try multiple services, you can scatter multiple files across multiple sites for free and get a little more storage space than if you had relied on a single free account.

For the truly paranoid, back up your most important files periodically to CD/DVD, such as every night or every week. Then store these CD/DVDs somewhere away from your computer. This will also insure that you'll keep your crucial files separate in case a disaster should strike your computer.

Backing up files isn't an inherently fun task, but it's an important one, so make sure you have both an external hard disk and an online storage site to store your files. With your files saved in multiple locations, your data should be safe until you fail to back up the right files.

Runtime Revolution

Programming can be fun (and also frustrating). Coming from a Visual Basic background, it's natural and easy to switch to a rival BASIC compiler such as REALbasic. While REALbasic is very similar to Visual Basic, it also inherits the problems of traditional programming languages.

To get anything done in traditional programming languages, you have to write a lot of code. Most programming languages provide simple commands for rounding numbers or loading files, but if you want to do something more complicated, you'll have to write multiple lines of code just to accomplish the simplest tasks. The more lines of code you need to write, the longer it will take to create a program and the more potential for error.

That's why I've switched to Runtime Revolution, a curious programming language tool derived from Apple's defunct HyperCard. Runtime Revolution uses a high-level language dubbed revTalk (formerly known as Transcript). With revTalk, you can use less code to create more functionality in your program.

For example, how many lines of code would your favorite language need to modify the font size of text displayed on the screen? Here's how many lines of code are needed to accomplish this task in Runtime Revolution:

set the textsize of field "Label Field" to the thumbposition of scrollbar "Scrollbar"

This code tells the computer that whenever the user drags a slider left or right on a slider control (called a scroll bar in Runtime Revolution), change the size of the text in a box called "Label Field" to correspond to the value displayed by the slider.

Drag the slider to the left so it points to the number 14 and the text shrinks to a font size of 14. Drag the slider to the right to point to the number 42, and the text expands to a font size of 42.



Using one line of code to do something as seemingly complicated as changing the font size of text might seem incredible, but with Runtime Revolution, such high-level tasks are trivial.

Now, how much code would your favorite programming language need to search for text displayed on the screen? Here's how to do it in Runtime Revolution:

find text of field "Search Field" in field "Label Field"

Basically, this line of code tells the computer to start searching for any text that the user typed in a text box called "Search Field" and look for this text in another box called "Label Field."

Can your favorite programming language give you fool-proof text-searching and font-resizing capabilities in just two lines of code? By providing commands that solve high-level problems, Runtime Revolution lets you focus on making your program work rather than forcing you to write, test, and debug multiple lines of code just to accomplish a single, much simpler task that you'll have to combine with other simple tasks to finally get the result you really want.

If you prefer doing things the hard way, then stick to what you know, take five times longer to accomplish any given task, and then go back and check (and check again) your code to fully debug it and make sure it works.

Or write a handful of code and create a fully functional program that works with minimal debugging. Given the choice between less wasted time and more functionality (Runtime Revolution), or more wasted time and less functionality (traditional programming languages like C++ or BASIC), why would you choose the latter?

[Wally wrote a three-part series on programming in Runtime Revolution for ComputorEdge last July:

• "Part I: Programming in Runtime Revolution"
• Part II "Creating a User Interface in Runtime Revolution."
• Part III "Coding in Transcript"]


Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) is a 64-bit operating system, but it boots into 32-bit mode for maximum compatibility with all the existing drivers needed to use printers, scanners and similar computer accessories. Of course, most users don't care about technical terms like 32-bit and 64-bit because they mean nothing to the average person. What the average person wants to know is, "Will my computer work?"

Technically, booting Snow Leopard into 64-bit mode should make it faster, but only if your software is designed to work with 64 bits. Since most people don't know whether their favorite program is 32 or 64-bits, Snow Leopard lets you run both 32-bit and 64-bit programs.

However, for those technical purists who want a pure 64-bit operating system, here's what you can do. The next time you start up your Mac, hold down the 6 and 4 keys. This will cause Snow Leopard to boot up in 64-bit mode.

Once you're running in 64-bit mode, check to make sure all your programs and accessories work. If so, then you can safely use Snow Leopard in 64-bit mode. If you run into problems in 64-bit mode, just reboot and go back to 32-bit mode.

Comments and Letters about Wally Wang's Apple Farm
“The Simplest Backup Solution”
by Wally Wang

Runtime Revolution?

[Regarding the November 13 Wally Wang's Apple Farm column:]

Wally continues to amaze me with some of his comments. This week he asks:

...how many lines of code would your favorite language need to modify the font size of text displayed on the screen? Here's how many lines of code are needed to accomplish this task in Runtime Revolution:

set the textsize of field "Label Field" to the thumbposition of scrollbar "Scrollbar"

And, of course, for anyone who writes code in an object-oriented language (which is most programming these days) the answer is one (be it VB, C# or Java):

Label_File.Font.Size = Scrollbar.Value

Granted, this is more cryptic than Runtime Revolution (RR)'s code. However, this leaves me wondering about Wally's book on VB.Net 2005. He had to know about this basic functionality. Why not just say that RR performs it in a different way?

Let's see his next example:

...how much code would your favorite programming language need to search for text displayed on the screen? Here's how to do it in Runtime Revolution:

find text of field "Search Field" in field "Label Field"

First, I don't know how RR works, but when it "find"s something, what does it do with it? VB.Net handles it this way if you show the position of the text in a message box:

MsgBox instr(Label_Field, "Search_Field")

Other languages use the IndexOf field to accomplish the same thing.

I'm not really knocking RR; it's apparently just a different way to do things. But Wally, come on...don't make it sound like other languages can't accomplish the same thing just as easily once you understand the language.

BTW, from what I'm seeing, RR reminds me a lot of COBOL, which was intended to be an easier way for humans to communicate with the computer without having to learn all the cryptic commands. However, COBOL became a big mess as programmers started to make more complex programs with nested IFs and loops.

I wonder how RR can help me to create animations and sounds that I need for my next project...

—Rob S, San Diego

Reply to Rob S., San Diego

Cobol's nested "if's" really weren't bad if the program was structured. They got real hairy when using the "ALTER" verb. I came across a program that had four ALTERS with in 20 lines of code.

—William Tiep