The best backup software for Mac 2018. Once you create an account and select your plan (there's a 30-day free trial, too), you download the Mac app and get started. Backblaze is focused on. OS X/Linux: CloudBerry Lab is giving away free licenses to its premium backup client, which normally costs $29.99. It offers encryption, compression, and unlimited backups to cloud storage.
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Microsoft Live Meeting on a Mac. And, since there is no installable Live Meeting client for Mac, you have no options. Here’s the explanation I received from a Microsoft Live Meeting support person: Office Communication Server meetings are hosted on internal servers. If the address for your meeting is given as meet:sip, it is an internally. Oct 06, 2014 Office Live Meeting Client (Windows-based client) does not support Mac. Office Live Meeting Web Access (Web-based client) supports Mac OS X V10.5.x: Firefox 3.x with Apple Java 1.5.0_16. Safari 3.x with Apple Java 1.5.0_16. More information please click below link. Microsoft office live meeting client for mac. Microsoft Office Live Meeting is an online collaboration and Web conferencing service that empowers business people to conduct real-time, interactive presentations and meetings over the Internet. Hi, Microsoft Office Live Meeting is a different client from OCS live meeting Software. Current live meeting software does not work for Mac clients.At least I am not aware of one. Nov 26, 2011 I've reviewed the Live Meeting documentation. I've found numerous documents on the Live Meeting website. They cover the system requirements for Live Meeting on a Mac.
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Good backups are essential for every Mac user. Tools such as Apple’s Time Machine, included as part of OS X, make it easy to store multiple versions of every file from your computer on an external drive or an AirPort Time Capsule. And if you want the security of off-site backups without having to physically move drives around, an online backup provider such as CrashPlan is a good option.
But while both these forms of backup serve important purposes, I also recommend maintaining a clone (also known as a bootable duplicate)—a complete, identical copy of your startup volume, stored on an external drive in such a way that you can boot your Mac from it if necessary. (To learn more about designing a solid backup strategy, see Backup basics: The quick, something-is-better-than-nothing backup system and Bulletproof backups: When you absolutely can’t lose any data.)
What a clone offers that the likes of Time Machine and CrashPlan do not is immediate recovery: You can get back to work almost instantly after a drive crash or other severe problem with your startup volume. You simply attach your clone drive, restart while holding down the Option key, select the clone drive in OS X’s Startup Manager, and press Return. A few moments later, you’re back up and running—and you can then repair (or replace) your main startup drive more or less at your leisure. By contrast, even though Time Machine also backs up every file on your drive, restoring all those files to a new drive takes hours (or possibly days); restoring an entire drive from an online backup service takes even longer.
A clone also comes in handy for troubleshooting, because you can use it to run third-party utilities on your ailing drive. (Your Mac’s built-in OS X Recovery features include Disk Utility, but sometimes you need a drive-repair app with more oomph.) Finally, having a clone is essential when upgrading to a new version of OS X, because it gives you the option to easily revert to your previous system (by erasing your upgraded-OS drive and then restoring from the clone) if compatibility problems arise.
There’s app for that
Unfortunately, you can’t make a clone merely by copying files from your startup volume to an external drive in the Finder. Every file on your drive—including thousands of hidden files—must be copied just so, with permissions and other metadata intact. Symbolic links (Unix-based file references that function like Mac aliases) must be recreated correctly. And, crucially, the System folder (/System) on the backup drive must be “blessed,” which entails recording its physical location on the drive in a special portion of the drive’s hidden HFS Volume Header. (For more details, read Mike Bombich’s article What makes a volume bootable?) All this is best done with a utility designed expressly for cloning.
More than two dozen third-party backup apps can make bootable duplicates. (You can see a list in the online appendix to my book Take Control of Backing Up Your Mac.) It’s also possible (if not especially convenient) to clone a drive using Disk Utility or by using the
diskutil
command in Terminal. Most of these apps and processes do an entirely respectable job, but two cloning utilities—Shirt Pocket’s $28 SuperDuper and Bombich Software’s $40 Carbon Copy Cloner—stand above the rest. Each has a long history, focuses on cloning, presents a simple and clear user interface, and includes unusual features that make it an especially good choice for creating and maintaining bootable duplicates.SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner
For everyday cloning tasks, SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner are equally good in almost every respect, and they have a core set of features in common. In both apps, you choose a source drive (say, your startup volume) from a pop-up menu on the left, a destination drive (your clone-backup volume) from a pop-up menu on the right, and any desired options using additional pop-up menus or buttons. Each utility provides a plain-English summary of what’s about to happen; you then click a button to begin the copying operation.
Both apps give you the option to erase the destination before copying files from the source; or to update your clone incrementally to reflect only those files that are new, changed, or deleted since the previous cloning run. (The free trial version of SuperDuper disables the incremental update feature, which Shirt Pocket calls Smart Update.) Both also let you deselect specific files, folders, or filename patterns to omit them from your backup, although they have very different interfaces for doing so—I find this task much easier to accomplish in Carbon Copy Cloner than in SuperDuper.
In addition to using an actual drive as the destination, each app can copy the source volume to a disk image (which won’t itself be bootable, but which can be restored to a drive that will then become bootable); you can choose from among several disk-image formats, with or without compression. Carbon Copy Cloner also offers encryption for disk images, while SuperDuper lets you choose from three levels of compression. Likewise, you can use either app to restore a drive from a disk image. Both apps also let you schedule backups to run unattended—on a recurring schedule, when the destination drive is mounted, or both. (For example, I update my iMac’s clone twice a day, since its destination drive remains connected all the time, but my MacBook Pro’s clone updates only when I plug in my backup drive.)
Both apps can also perform designated tasks—for example, running shell scripts; ejecting the destination drive on completion; or instructing your Mac to sleep, shut down, or restart—before or after a cloning operation. (In Carbon Copy Cloner, such actions can be specified only for scheduled tasks.)
In my testing, both apps functioned impeccably, copying everything exactly as they claimed they would, including all the finicky OS X metadata, permissions, and links.
However, beyond the basics, the two apps diverge in interesting ways—each one offers useful tricks that the other does not.
SuperDuper’s sandbox and special options
SuperDuper has two post-run options that Carbon Copy Cloner lacks: It can create a disk image of the destination volume (useful in an institutional setting where you may need to copy an image to multiple Macs), and it can install a package-based app on the destination.
In addition, SuperDuper has a feature called Sandbox, which requires some explaining but turns out to be very useful in certain situations. When you create a clone using the Sandbox option, the contents of the source volume’s /Users folder (and, optionally, the non-Apple apps in the /Applications folder) aren’t copied to the destination. Instead, SuperDuper creates symbolic links of those items from the source to the destination. Because so many files are merely being linked rather than copied, a Sandbox clone takes much less time to create than a regular clone, and it occupies less space on the destination drive. When you restart your Mac from the Sandbox volume (assuming, of course, that the source volume—typically your normal startup drive—is still connected), everything should behave almost exactly as if you copied all the files. But any changes to the contents of /Users (such as modifications to documents in your home folder) are made on the original drive, not the clone.
Wrapping existing PKG/MPKG installers is the best way to ensure the vendor's dependancies are met (versioning, etc.), and the wrapper makes it easier to manage things on the Casper end (vendor-application-version.pkg). [Edit: My apologies, missed the part about it being a self contained *.app.please disregard the above.:)] Snapshots are dangerous and it assumes all the logic built into vendor provided PKG/MPKG installers isn't needed. If you log on and the application works, simply wrap the vendor provided PKG/MPKG and deploy it. Push the native PKG/MPKG to a logged off Mac (the litmus test). Snapshots are a good way to get burned, whether it's immediately apparent, or whether you later come to the realization later on down the road that you've built a house of cards.;) Don.
What’s the point of all this? For starters, you can safely do anything you like while booted from the Sandbox clone—upgrade OS X, install new software, try out wacky system customizations, or whatever—and none of those changes will affect your original drive. However, you can also feel secure knowing that any changes you make to documents and settings while working from the clone will also show up when you switch back to the original drive. (Note that if you use the “Sandbox - shared users and applications” option, updates made to linked third-party apps while running from the clone will affect the original drive.) This makes a SuperDuper Sandbox a great way to test, say, a beta version of OS X. SuperDuper’s documentation cautions that you should not treat a Sandbox clone as a replacement for a regular clone, but as a supplement for testing purposes. The developer also recommends against restoring a Sandbox clone to the original drive.
Carbon Copy Cloner’s conveniences
Although Carbon Copy Cloner lacks a Sandbox feature, it has four other unique capabilities that you may find even more helpful.
Recovery HD support When cloning a volume, Carbon Copy Cloner can duplicate the hidden Recovery HD partition that’s created when you install OS X 10.7 Lion and later—this is the hidden partition that makes OS X Recovery possible. At first, I didn’t see much point to this feature, because when I boot from a clone, I can use third-party disk utilities that may offer more features than the limited toolkit (Disk Utility and Terminal) I get when restarting into OS X Recovery. But having a Recovery HD partition on an external drive can come in handy. For example, if you want to encrypt the external drive using FileVault, that drive must have its own Recovery HD partition. In addition, if you ever need to erase (or replace) your internal drive and restore it from a clone, Carbon Copy Cloner enables you to restore the Recovery HD partition as part of the process; with SuperDuper, you’d have to run the OS X installer again to recreate that partition.
Archiving Versioned backups (such as those created by Time Machine and CrashPlan) normally are not bootable, and bootable clones normally contain only the most recent versions of your files. But Carbon Copy Cloner has a mode that attempts to give you the best of both worlds. When you use the “Preserve newer files, don’t delete anything” option, Carbon Copy Cloner moves any items that have been deleted from the source volume, and older versions of items that have been changed, into a date-and-time-stamped subfolder of a new _CCC Archives folder at the top level of your destination drive. Those folders maintain the original drive hierarchy—so, for example, if a file was originally located in /Users/jk/Documents, it’ll be found in /_CCC Archives/[date and time]/Users/jk/Documents afterward. Carbon Copy Cloner can also prune older files (beyond a size limit you set) when updating your backups. Although restoring files that were archived this way is much less convenient than in most backup programs, the feature does (to an extent) enable you to combine both backup techniques.
Network cloning SuperDuper can clone a drive to a disk image that’s stored on a network server, but Carbon Copy Cloner can also clone a drive directly to an external drive connected to another Mac on your network. That means you could later hook up that drive to your Mac and boot from it, without having to restore anything first. The procedure to set this feature up is odd: You must first create an authentication-credentials package on the source Mac, manually copy that package to the destination Mac, and install it there (complete instructions are included in Carbon Copy Cloner’s documentation). But once configured, it’s as easy to clone your drive to a network volume as to a local volume.
Block copying Carbon Copy Cloner normally operates on a file-by-file basis, but when certain conditions are met (for example, both the source and destination volumes must be locally attached and be able to be unmounted), the utility can perform a block-by-block copy, which is faster for an initial backup. (Updates to existing backups are always file-by-file, which is faster for that purpose.)
Honorable mention: ChronoSync
Though SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner are my favorite drive-cloning tools, a third backup app, Econ Technologies’ $40 ChronoSync (4.5 mice) earns an honorable mention here. As its name suggests, ChronoSync is primarily a Mac-to-Mac sync tool, but it also includes an extensive set of backup features, including the capability to make bootable clones. Like Carbon Copy Cloner, it can even clone to an external drive connected to another Mac on your network (as long as you install the $10 ChronoAgent utility on that Mac). Also like Carbon Copy Cloner, it can move changed and deleted files to an archive folder on the destination; and like both Carbon Copy Cloner and SuperDuper, ChronoSync supports incremental updates, scheduling, pre-/post-run scripts, and the use of disk images as destinations, although you must create those images manually in Disk Utility.
On the downside, ChronoSync lacks special features such as SuperDuper’s Sandbox and Carbon Copy Cloner’s Recovery HD cloning; and although it has a massive array of options you can configure, it’s not quite as easy to use as my top choices. However, it’s still an excellent all-purpose choice for syncing, backups, and cloning.
My pick
Arguably the most important things we carry around with us on our iPhones are our photos: they're personal, unique, and irreplaceable captures of moments in our lives, and if something were to happen to and we hadn't properly backed them up, then our treasured memories would be lost forever!
There are a handful of fantastic apps for backing up and storing your photos in the cloud, which will keep them safe no matter what happens to your iPhone. It all depends on what features you think are most important!
Here are the absolute best photo backup services available for iPhone, iPad, and Mac!
Apple iCloud Photo Library
For those fully immersed in the Apple ecosystem, the iCloud Photo library is a must-have. Not only can you automatically back up all of your photos the moment you take a picture on your iPhone, but you can also quickly access them from any Apple device instantly, including iPhone and iPad, Mac, Apple TV, and any computer or mobile device via iCloud.com. High-resolution originals are stored in iCloud, while smaller mobile versions are kept on your iOS device, saving precious storage space while giving you access to all of your photos.
The Photos app on iOS and Mac has basic photo editing features, like cropping, retouching, adding filters and manually adjusting levels, white balance, and other tweaks. With iCloud Photo Sharing, you can show off your vacation pics to friends and family with iOS devices so they can 'like' and comment on them.
Cloud storage for Apple is free for the first 5 GB and jumps up to 50 GB for only $0.99 per month. The average person will need more than 5 GB (especially because iCloud storage syncs more than just your photos — it's also where your iPhone backs up). The 50 GB tier is just right for most users at just $12 a year. If you need more, iCloud storage pricing is reasonable with 200 GB costing $2.99 and 1 TB running $9.99.
If you are an Apple family, the iCloud Photo Library is deeply integrated into all of your devices and keeps your original photos safe and easily accessible across multiple devices.
- Integrated in iOS - Find out how to use iCloud Photo Library
Amazon Photos
If you have an Amazon Prime account, storage limits are not an issue when it comes to backing up your photos. You can take advantage of unlimited storage to automatically upload all of your pictures to Amazon Cloud. The desktop app, Amazon Cloud Drive, grabs all pictures from your computer automatically, while the iOS app uploads your entire camera roll (including iCloud Photo Library pics). Photos are accessible from Amazon's iOS Photos app, desktop Cloud Drive app, or your Amazon Cloud account via the web.
Amazon Photos does not have any editing features, but it has decent organizational tools that let you quickly create albums and sort pictures by date. You can easily share individual photos, or share an entire album, using the app Share feature, to email, SMS, Facebook, Twitter, and more.
If you have a massive amount of photos, especially high-resolution pictures that take up a lot of data, and you have an Amazon Prime account, the Amazon Cloud service is a great way to back up your photos without worrying about space.
Online Backup For Mac
- Free - Download now
Adobe Creative Cloud
Adobe's photo syncing service, Creative Cloud includes an amazing, feature-rich application for photography enthusiasts and professionals. With Creative Cloud, you can access and edit images across multiple devices and sync changes as you work. The key to Adobe's service is project creation and photo editing. You must have a Creative Cloud account, which costs $9.99 per month, to upload and sync photos and edits, but the service also includes access to a number of photo and video project apps, like Photoshop, Slate, and more.
Once uploaded, you can meticulously adjust picture quality using Lightroom for tone curve, split-tone, noise reduction, lens correction, camera calibration, and more. All of your changes are immediately available between desktop and mobile devices.
It is ideal for taking your pictures one step further. If you are a heavy photo editor and want access to robust and professional tools, Creative Cloud with Lightroom and Photoshop is a great backup service to use.
- Free - Download now
Google Photos
These days, practically everyone is connected to Google in some way or another, whether it is through Gmail, Hangouts, or YouTube. Having a Google account can be beneficial if you want to use the company's cloud storage to back up your photos. You can add pictures to Google Drive, which will automatically sync to the Photos app, or back up your entire collection of pictures using the Desktop uploader and iOS app.
Google Photos provides some pretty amazing organizational tools. For example, it will automatically recognize such things as people, places, food, and events, and organize them into collections for you. Plus, you can build your own personal albums, or create shared albums that others can access via a link. You can even let the recipients add their own content to a shared album.
Google Photos also includes some basic editing features, like adding filters, tweaking lighting, and color balances.
Google Drive includes 15 GB of free storage with additional plans starting at $1.99 for 100 GB. If you are big on sharing albums with others for collaborative purposes, Google Photos is a great option.
- Free - Download now
Microsoft OneDrive
Microsoft's cloud storage service may be great for keeping your work documents in the cloud, but it also has a nifty camera uploader that can automatically send your iPhone's camera roll to OneDrive. With the desktop app, you can access and download pics to your computer. You can also download them onto any device by visiting OneDrive Live and logging into your account.
On iOS, you can simply toggle the Camera Backup feature on and all of the pictures on your device will be uploaded to the company's storage service.It has great organization tools, like adding tags and creating albums. And, you can share files and albums with others by inviting them to collaborate or sending a link. Use OneDrive alongside Microsoft Office apps, like PowerPoint, to import pictures into documents.
If you tend to use Microsoft's suite of productivity apps, OneDrive is a great app for having direct access to your photos from other Office apps.
- Free - Download now
Dropbox
Dropbox is an incredibly useful cloud storage service for backing up all kinds of documents. Like OneDrive, it also has an automatic camera uploader that will constantly update with your newly taken photos. These images can be viewed right in the Dropbox app for iOS, or using the desktop app. When you log into your Dropbox account via the web, you can access your photos anywhere.
You can add comments to photos and include names from your contacts, which will notify each person that is mentioned. You can create new folders and share them with other Dropbox users. You can also send a link that will allow the recipient to view pictures without needing to be logged into a Dropbox account.
If you want to be able to share your photos with anyone, whether they have an account or not, Dropbox makes it easy to upload everything on your computer and share it with others.
- Free - Download now
Anything else?
Remote desktop client app for mac. Do you have a favorite photo backup service? What are some of its features that make it the best option for you?
Updated January 2019: This article still has the best of the best options for backing up your photos! If anything changes, we'll be sure to update our list ASAP!
Backing up: The ultimate guide
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