I am a Mac user

Turn the clock back 12 months and there is no way I would have thought I would have been able to say that.

Most people that know my long term affilation as a windows user and avid gamer would be wondering why the hell I would be using a Mac.  Let me quote a recent conversation I had with a friend of mine.

Me:
"Black Ops aye. Well unless they release an OSX version I'll have to give it a miss ;)"
Him:
"I just thew up in my mouth a little bit...."


My previous exposure to the Apple Mac came 16 years ago whilst studying computer science at university.  We had no choice as it was a Mac only lab, so I begrudgingly used the Mac.  My experience at the time was not great as I struggled to bridge the gap between my PC and the Mac.

Fast Forward 16 years and I now am the owner of a nice new shiny 27 inch iMac and feel very much at home on my Mac.

I started to think about why it took me so long to make the move to Mac as I cannot see myself leaving for another platform anytime soon.

It all started early this year with my moving all the data and application I could to the cloud.  This resulted in not being closely coupled to any particular operating system.  I was messing around 6 months ago and loaded Ubuntu on my net book, I was instantly up and running with all my core data and applications.

I had become free of Windows for the first time since I started running windows 3.11 and more importantly I was now operating system agnostic.
I spent the previous 6 months working from Ubuntu and really enjoyed being free to explore various operating systems.

2 months ago decided to was time to upgrade my main PC as it was getting a tad old entering its 5th year.  I started looking around and thought hey Apple hardware is really nice, I could give OSX a go.
I feel very much at home on my Mac and I even cringe a little when I now have to do some work or help someone on a windows PC.  I am now very much a Apple Mac convert and find myself hanging out for the next cool piece of Apple tech.

Hopefully the 11 inch Mac Air is announced tommorow as I need to replace my lenovo laptop!!

Instant Dropbox Uploads

In the past I have written about how I find Dropbox very useful.  If you were following this blog you would also know that I decided to store all my mp3's in my Dropbox folder/cloud.

Over the past 2 weeks I have discovered something quite unexpected with Dropbox.  When uploading files to your Dropbox that others have already uploaded to their own dropboxes , Dropbox recognises this and your files are instantly uploaded.

I first discovered this when the Gorillaz released their new album Plastic Beach.   As soon as this album was available I downloaded it and placed it in my Dropbox.  I had to look twice when instead of chugging away at 50k~ per second for the next hour the files uploaded in the blink of an eye.  Originally I thought this was a one off, a glitch,  a freak of nature, however the same thing happened last week with another new album release and this time it was not even a main stream album.

So it would seem that Dropbox checks all files that you select to upload to their servers and if they already have them they simply do a server side copy.  This is a pretty smart and clever use of resources.  Given the team at Dropbox are clever at using the resources available to them I think it would be safe to assume they do not copy the files on the server, but instead just simply reference them in a database which in addition to saving bandwidth from the upload also saves space on the servers.

So this got me thinking about the rumoured cloud service that Apple are working on for ITunes.  A music file cloud service lends itself to this technique perfectly.  After a short amount of time hundreds of thousands of users will upload their entire library to the ITunes cloud.  By the time I get around to it, I should be able to upload my 40gig~ of mp3's in less than an hour :)

I look forward to the day where I can upload my 25gig Blu Ray Rips.... Automagically.!!

All of my data in the Cloud

When I say, "all of my data in the cloud" I really do mean this.The main way I achieve this is via Dropbox.

Dropbox serves as a sink that catches all of my data, so even if the data does not yet live natively in the cloud, with the use of Dropbox I can ensure "All" of my data is stored in the cloud an available from all of my computers with the exception of my Android (WTB Android client for Dropbox!!).   This allows me to use traditional desktop applications whilst still ensuring all my data is always available and in sync, even if I am using a public access terminal.

An interesting trend that I am seeing as I continue on this journey into the cloud is that more and more of my data is leaving my Dropbox folder as I take on further services and functionality becomes available in the cloud. First I moved all of my email archives from the past 10 years away from Outlook PST's and into Gmail, then it was my documents into Google Apps, then my photo's into Picasa and I was recently reading that Apple are working on a cloud service for iTunes that will result in all my MP3's heading that way (Apples Secret Cloud Strategy).

As it stands today, I am using around 80% of my 50gigs of Dropbox storage, refer picture below.  The way things are going I will not be surprised to see this under 5gig and maybe one day I will uninstall Dropbox? A concerning thought for Dropbox shareholders no doubt (Dropbox raises 7.5 Million).

Now that Google has enabled any file type to be uploaded to Google Apps, will this see an even quicker demise of Dropbox?

 I personally find the Dropbox service to be fantastic and it can see it will be a part of my toolkit for sometime to come as I delve deeper into the cloud.