When 2005 began, I doubt that many of you expected Apple would announce a switch to Intel processors by the middle of the year. At the time, the new products included a pair of product lines that Apple said it wouldn’t produce: The Mac mini and the iPod shuffle. So you knew from the get-go to expect the unexpected, but did you ever believe that would include a switch to Intel processors?

The news came out of left field, and I scarcely believed the published reports in the mainstream press months later that it was about to happen. Yet when Steve Jobs explained the reasoning, it made perfect sense. Apple had fallen behind the curve with processor performance, particularly the PowerBook, and both Freescale Semiconductor and IBM had failed to deliver the goods. Yes, the rumors that Apple had been doing parallel development of Mac OS X for Intel were true. When Intel CEO Paul Otellini embraced Steve Jobs on the WWDC keynote stage, you could actually believe they had become close friends, though the cynics among you no doubt wonder how long that’ll last.

In any case, you know that Intel has managed to make its processors better and better and deliver products essentially on schedule. You can’t say that for Apple’s existing chip suppliers. Yes, there’s now a line of dual-core Power Macs, but, like the older models, they can easily replace a space heater in a cold room with a huge network of cooling apparatus. Jobs said that Intel’s roadmap includes both more power and reduced power requirements. And if you don’t believe him, take the fastest Intel-equipped desktop, open the case, and count the number of cooling fans inside.

In any case, a surprising amount of misinformation arose over the move. Jobs was hiding some secret truth, some said, and the public pronouncements just couldn’t be true. On the other hand, where’s the G5 version of the PowerBook and that long-promised 3GHz Power Mac? When the latter comes, as it eventually will, the processor inside will be made by Intel.

At first, the skeptics claimed that people would stop buying new Macs in anticipation of the arrival of MacIntels in 2006 and 2007. In the real world, Mac sales hit record levels as more and more folks switched from the Windows platform. Not that sales increases will last forever, and as anticipation grows in the coming year, it may well be that sales of some models will stall. But reading the tea leaves about Apple is a frustrating practice. The company continues to do the unexpected, although examining the list of products it says it won’t produce almost always yields an opposite result.

Now the other issue is just how many Mac OS X for Intel applications will be available. Depending on whom you ask, making Universal Binary versions, which run on both PowerPC and Intel, can be difficult or unexpectedly easy. It depends on a lot of complicated factors that are of interest strictly to programmers. Those huge productivity applications, such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Word, will be among the last to switch, and you’ll probably have to invest in paid upgrades to get them. Other software, such as games, are likely to arrive in Universal Binary form as free downloadable updates. In fact, a few applications for the new architecture are already present, but you’ll never know without inspecting the Get Info window under Tiger. It’s that transparent.

Older applications will continue to run pretty well under Rosetta, an emulation technology that Apple developed using resources licensed from Transitive Corporation. Supposedly it emulates a G3, which means that applications that take advantage of the enhancements available for the G4 and G5 may not run so well. Yes, there are rumors that Apple has managed to add G4 support to Rosetta, but there’s no confirmation yet at Apple’s site for developers, so time will tell.

There are also unconfirmed reports that Mac OS X and many applications actually fly along at incredible speeds on the Intel-based test computers Apple is leasing to developers. But since those very developers are prohibited by Apple’s confidentiality agreement to talk about such things in public, you won’t know for sure until the real MacIntels appear.

Speaking of which, anticipation is high that the first announcements of those computers will be made in January at the Macworld Expo in San Francisco. In fact, expectations are so high, that Apple may indeed be forced to deliver those products whether it wants too or not. To be sure, the Intel processor that supposedly will power those first MacIntels, which bears the nickname Yonah, will reportedly be in volume production early in 2006. If Apple can get the rest of the design elements in place, it could happen. If not, I can see where sales of some of Apple’s products might stall because of the failure to satisfy the hopes and the dreams.

My emotional center believes it’ll happen. The logical center of my mind recalls that Apple’s only official pronouncement is that the initial run of Macs with Intel Inside will show up some time in the first half of 2006. I’m not a betting man, but I’m willing to consider bets that my emotions will win out, at least this time.

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I have been preaching the frequent backup religion for years, and sometimes people listen to me. Maybe I’m a little more obsessive-compulsive than you, but I actually have two external backup drives. In addition, I will use a DVD or CD for archiving. No, I don’t use bank vaults all that much, but it’s either that or buying a safe. Well, maybe one of these days.

In any case, I like my backups simple. My backups are actually clones of my startup drive, so in the event of a sudden drive failure, I can reboot from one of those drives and not lose more than a few hour’s work. I also do periodic file backups throughout the day, to avoid even that few hours. Over the years, I’ve had to rewrite whole book chapters twice, and it wasn’t fun. Having a root canal may actually be less painful, although it’s a close call.

When it comes to simple backup solutions, one application that’s really done the job for me is Shirt Pocket Software’s Super Duper! 2.0. Yes, it’s shareware, and at $27.95, it’s an absolute bargain. Now on the surface, Super Duper! may seem like one of many programs that can clone a drive. Of course you can do that with Apple’s free Disk Utility, but there’s a lot more to consider, a series of clever features that, particularly in the newest version, make it a fairly comprehensive backup solution.

Among my favorites is Smart Update, which is a brilliant slant on the disk cloning concept. As the name implies, this feature simply updates the files that have changed, and deletes the ones that have been removed. The end result is still an exact duplicate of your original drive, but it takes a whole lot less time to complete, and you’ll want to take this approach after the initial erase and clone process. Suddenly, you can do an updated backup in maybe ten or fifteen minutes a day, because Super Duper! runs really fast. Unlike other backup solutions, it checks your files and makes copies all in a single step, which shortens the process considerably. Programmer Bruce Lacey really knows his stuff.

You can also restrict backups to your Users folder. It’s not necessary to clone an entire drive.

Among the usual performance enhancements, version 2.0 adds what I’m sure was a much-requested feature, and that’s scheduling. As with the other features, it’s nearly integrated into the simple setup screens. Whereas some backup applications offer confusing and sometimes difficult-to-comprehend options, Super Duper! offers a “What’s going to happen?” window that tells you precisely what it’s going to do and the end result. Frankly, you’ll scarcely need to consult the online manual, although it’s there if you need a little extra guidance.

As the backup proceeds, you’ll see a very detailed progress screen, showing you not just how much was done, but the actual throughput of file transfers. In my experience, you’ll pretty much see speeds that come close to a drive’s maximum, and that’s just terrific.

I’ve been using Super Duper! for months and it’s run perfectly every single time. The new version is noticeably faster at getting the job done. Since my work schedule varies from day to day, I don’t have a fixed backup time, so I don’t need to schedule. But I can run my regular backups with just a few mouse clicks, and it’s fast enough that I can take a coffee break and return with one drive complete, and do the second drive over lunch. It never misses a beat!

Of course Super Duper! can’t do everything and you may find yourself wanting something more comprehensive, such as Retrospect. For example, optical and tape drives aren’t supported, and you can’t make a bootable drive from a Mac’s USB port. But the latter is a limitation of the Mac OS and maybe Apple will look into that question again with 10.5 Leopard as it begins to use Intel processors.

In addition, network backups are rather more difficult, because you have to save your drive as a disk image. I suppose this makes sense, though, since a number of users might want to put their backups on the same share and that keeps them separate. I would prefer, however, if Super Duper! could simply treat a networked drive in the same fashion as one connected to your Mac. But maybe I’m alone in making that request.

To many of you, I know backups are a chore. You put it off and the days pass. One day, something goes wrong. Your drive goes south, or you trash a file by mistake. But then it’s usually too late for simple solutions. True, Prosoft Engineering’s Data Rescue can help in many cases, but do you really want to depend on 100% success? It’s a lot easier to just have a clone of your hard drive available so you can get back to work fairly quickly.

No matter what your backup approach might be, particularly if you tend to avoid this task, Super Duper! can make it simple as can be. I recommend it highly, and at $27 .95, it’s a steal!

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Whether Microsoft Internet Explorer for Windows has less than 90% of the browser market or around 85% depends on which survey you’re looking at. Regardless of which stats are correct, it’s certainly true that both Mac and Windows users have a generous choice of browsers. But I’ll only worry about Macs, as usual.

First, of course, there’s Firefox, the upstart open source browser that’s taken the online world by storm. It’s rolling towards a final 1.5 release, weeks later than expected. The major improvements include automated updates, so you can be alerted when new versions are available without having to check your favorite software update site, or a news release. Other improvements include the ability to drag and drop the order of browser tabs and various and sundry performance enhancements. The version I have is RC3, so there’s work left to be done. I wasn’t able to measure much of a speed boost, but the interface has been cleaned up somewhat and is a bit more Mac like. Yes, the little things do indeed count. However, launch times are still a little on the slow side, at least for the Mac version; I haven’t had a chance to check it out on Windows.

Firefox’s little brother (or sister), Camino, is slowly rolling towards the official 1.0 release. It’s performance level is pretty much the same as Firefox, since it’s based on the same rendering engine. But a snappier launch cycle conveys the impression of greater speed. It may not be as full featured as Firefox, but some prefer it because it conveys an appearance of being more Mac-like, and that’s a huge plus. Plus the bookmarks menu supports site icons, whereas Firefox, for some reason, doesn’t. This may be an issue of no great significance in the scheme of things, but if the appearance of an application is a strong point to you, it’s another check mark in favor of Camino. Maybe it’ll even get a real official release party some day, or just remain an underground alternative, as it is now.

The latest Safari, version 2.0.2, which debuted in 10.4.3, has loads of improvements under-the-hood. Supposedly they add up to superior compatibility with various sites, but I found one, run by prolific author Brad Steiger and his wife Sherry, that reliably crashes Safari, at least on my Mac. Since Brad and Sherry are long-time friends, I’m disappointed, although I can get the site to work on other browsers without incident. Apple continues to boast that Safari “loads pages more quickly than any other Mac web browser.” That may be true, although some maintain that Firefox is superior. Then again, Apple’s comparison is with Firefox 1.0.2. I’m curious to see if there will be a comparison with Firefox 1.5, when the final release is out. On the other hand, like all face-offs of this sort, it depends on what sites you check. I can testify, however, that Safari launches faster than all the others, and that can easily convey the impression of better performance, even if the results may be otherwise debatable.

I wonder how the folks at OmniGroup are doing these days with OmniWeb. Descended from the earliest browsers when it debuted on the original NeXT platform, it’s as feature-rich as they come. It uses Apple’s WebKit so should be similar to Safari in rendering pages. For some reason, however, it seems to display pages a little slower than Safari. Although it is the lone Mac browser that carries a price tag, a few days of use may convince you that it’s worth $29.95. I don’t have the space to list all the features, which would fill an entire article all by itself. You’ll cherish Workspaces and Saved Sessions, particularly if you want to recreate a complicated layout of browser windows after relaunching the application. You can easily customize ad blocking to allow you to accept pop-ups on sites that require them for proper navigation, such as the online shipping component of Federal Express, and even set specific preferences, such as font size, for a particular site. What more can you ask?

Of course, Opera is also loaded with features. Now that it’s free, except for an optional technical support contract, you can see where many of the browser features, such as tabs, originated. The latest version, 8.51, seems a tad more Mac friendly than previous versions. Mac versions now manage to appear at around the same time as its counterparts on other platforms, which is great news. Unlike the other applications listed so far, this one has an email client. It may not be state-of-the-art, but if you want to do it all in a single application, it’ll get the job done. Although Opera Software has long boasted at having the fastest browser on the planet, that, to me, seems debatable, but you won’t complain about the speed. Over time, at least, launch times have improved. My only quibble is an occasional printer problem, where a Web page comes out blank. The same page prints fine on other browsers. Usually dumping most of the preference files, except the ones that cover bookmarks and customized toolbars, does the trick, until the next time.

Have I missed anything? Well, Netscape continues to be developed on the Windows platform, but since there have been no new Mac versions for quite a while, I’ve removed it from my list.

My favorite browser? Well, I continue to move among three, depending on my mood and the particular features I need. I start with Safari, jump to Firefox and Opera, and back again. If I ever make up my mind, I’ll let you know.

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