macJasp

iTunes 9 Media Organisation

When looking for a solution to the Time Machine backup problems I have been experiencing lately I came across an option in iTunes 9 that was asking me if I wanted to 'upgrade to iTunes Media organization' (in iTunes 9.x, selecting File->Library->Organise Library gives you this option).

After some digging around to find out more about what this option actually meant it seems that iTunes 9 has finally got it's act together in terms of how it physically stores different file types in the file system. Once the option is ticked there's no going back but it's worth doing (after backing up your iTunes folder beforehand) as the new folder structure it creates is a lot neater and certainly more sensible, no longer do you have TV Shows and Movies etc tucked away with all your music in the iTunes folder.

It does leave a few remnants of files behind but out of my 5000+ music files and movies, I only had around 4 or 5 folders to check and then delete once I knew iTunes had also moved them to their correct and proper new location but now it puts TV Shows, Movies, Ringtones and everything else in their own top level folder within the iTunes Music folder.

Large Backups with Time Machine

I've noticed very recently that Time Machine is producing regular and abnormally large backups, so over the Christmas period I recreated my Time Machine backup set from scratch (just in case something had corrupted along the way) but in the space of one week of setting up this new backup plan i've had another three large (70Gb+) backups already. My initial backup is just over 130Gb, so something is clearly not right.

BackupLoupe

In an attempt to diagnose exactly what was going on with Time Machine i chose to download BackupLoupe for Mac  It's a really nice piece of software and only €1.49 (although you do get a full trial before buying). Upon launching for the first time it scanned my Time Capsule backups that had taken place previously, giving me a clear idea of the size of each one, to which i can drill through to get a good picture of what's causing these large backups each time.

BackupLoupe states the larger one's that occur every few days are down to my iTunes folder, particularly movies and tv shows. This still doesn't explain to me why Time Machine decides to take, what seems like, full backups of this folder, particularly seeing that the files within them haven't changed for a while but it's a first step to diagnosing exactly what's going on and how Time Machine makes it's decisions.

Hopefully i'll get a bit closer to an answer in the coming weeks.

Scrobble to last.fm from AppleTV

I've recently purchased an AppleTV for my front room to replace my Airport Express, which I had been using to stream music via AirTunes. I love the device, however now that my AppleTV is my main music player i'd noticed that the last.fm app i was using to scrobble my tracks from iTunes on my Mac wasn't taking into account any music i'd played through the AppleTV, but after a bit of searching I found the ideal 3rd party scrobbler app

Scrobblepod

Scrobblepod is free, lightweight, runs in the taskbar and best of all scrobbles music i've played through iTunes, my iPod, iPhone and best of all, my AppleTV. Any music played on the AppleTV is scrobbled to last.fm the next time the device syncs with iTunes.

Customising what you scrobble

Another nice feature i noticed upon using Scobblepod was that via the settings you can also set certain iTunes tracks to be ignored from scrobbling altogether. I have plenty of audiobooks which i'd rather not send to last.fm, so it's a nice touch from the developer and makes this a killer app as far as i'm concerned and very worthy of a mention.

Apple’s Magic Mouse finally arrives

I finally got my hands on the new Magic Mouse last weekend (Apple must rub their hands in glee when it's my birthday) and all i can say is 'it's amazing'.

I've never been so impressed with something that is, well,  just a mouse at the end of the day. The build quality is second to none, it feels solid, with an almost ceramic feel to it  and even the aluminium underside matches my MacBook Pro. (The usual Apple attention to detail is outstanding).

What's even more impressive is the way you scroll on the Mac using it. It works exactly the same way as the iPhone touch screen.  When in Safari for example, the quicker you glide your finger down the top of the mouse, the quicker Safari scrolls, and vice versa, i find i do it just to see it working.

It's just sublime to use and even the packaging it came in was up to Apple's usual standard, a minimal clear plastic casing to show it off as soon as you open the packet. So yes, to say i'm pleased would be an understatement but what next on my Apple shopping list?

Changing Time Machine’s backup schedule

Out of the box Time Machine backs up hourly to my Time Capsule and it's a bit too frequent for my liking. The data on my mac doesn't change that frequently to justify such regular backups over the air.

A friend of mine informed me of a nice little utility called Time Machine Editor that changes the Time Machine backup schedule preferences using a simple GUI, allowing you to customise the frequency of backups any which way you want. Time Machine Editor allows you to set less frequent backup intervals or even setup quite sophisticated schedules and is a really useful, smart and best of all free piece of Mac software that i can't recommend highly enough.