About 3 hours into this ordeal something miraculous happened. I accepted that the hard drive was toast and moved on. Data had been lost; files, workflows, and applications would need to be replaced, but world was still spinning. I may have set a land speed record for moving through the stages of grief. I backed off and realized that the worst part of the hard drive failure was hoping that there was some way to fix it. Now I know that there were sectors of that disk that had undamaged data. I also know that the files I could have rescued would have been the blurry pictures that should have been deleted from iPhoto and ABBA’s Greatest Hits. The time, energy, and emotion spent trying to rescue a gigabyte or two wouldn’t have been worth it.

My big takeaway from the big crash of ‘08 is that disasters strike everyone. Wishing a disaster didn’t happen often prolongs misery and delays resolution. Wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth rarely results in a constructive recovery. When a disaster strikes, calm and perspective are the two qualities most needed and the most difficult to achieve.

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When I saw that Veiosoft released Datacase, I jumped on it like a 13-year-old Chinese gymnast on a doctored passport. Datacase is an app that lets you transfer files wirelessly to from your computer to your iPhone. Right now I am putting it through its paces.

Once you launch Datacase, the iPhone is available as network accessible computer. My iPhone appears as a local computer. It also makes your files accessible through web and FTP interfaces. In order to transfer files, Datacase needs a wifi signal and to be on the same local network as the computer.  All I needed was to transfer files to the shared volumes (Shared Files, Drop Box) on my iPhone. One minor bug I encountered was that the Shared Files and Drop Box volumes were not visible from a list view in the Finder. I needed to switch to an icon or column view to see them. Once I traversed that relatively small hurdle, I easily uploaded some pictures and an excel file to my iPhone. Datacase also allows the user to view common files types. I opened up my excel document and was treated to this month’s budget numbers.

As a security measure, Datacase requires you to approve of any files sent to your iPhone. However, security isn’t as necessarily tight in the other direction. Since your iPhone is visible on the network when Datacase is running, people with access to your ip address will have access to your Shared Files volume (unless you change the permissions). Be careful not to store anything too incriminating in there. Best leave those files containing state secrets in the Drop Box. Or better yet, don’t put it in Datacase at all. 

Datacase was a minor lifesaver during a trip to Gettysburg, PA. I forgot my iPhone’s usb cable at home and had no way to transfer an audio tour of Gettysburg battlefield to my iPhone. Remembering my shiny new app, I created an ad-hoc network, assigned some static ip addresses to the iPhone and computer, and I was able to transfer the files like usual.

Datacase does not play DRM-protected files. The audio files play within the Quicktime player, not as part of the iTunes library. So if my audio tour was purchased from iTunes, I would have been out of luck. A great future feature would be to have access to other directories on the iPhone like the iTunes or iPhoto library. Although I’d imagine Apple is a little tetchy about opening those up. Another limitation, albeit small, is Datacase does not let you view Microsoft Office’s newest file type (ex. .docx, .xlsx) and other less standard file types. This limitation is most likely a result of Apple’s built in viewer. I may wait a (long) while for .docx to become the standard. 

Datacase also aggregates files by different file types (i.e. office documents, audio files, photos etc.). I can see this feature being useful once I amass a collection of files, but right now it’s a little superfluous. The great advantage to this app is its ability to share high-use files. I can give my ip address to a coworker and have them download the file from my iPhone. Pretty darn slick. 

Check out Veiosoft’s walkthrough video:

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Microsoft is like a coworker that you abhor, but have to work with anyways. Think Lumbergh from Office Space. I’ve tried to escape their icy grip, but Microsoft keeps pulling me back in. Since I’ve moved the MacBook Pro, I’ve tried like hell to use Bean and Google Docs more frequently. The rub lies in the fact so many documents I’ve created are in the MS Office black hole, never to escape. Now that I’m making a system image for our new MacBooks at school, do I dare not include MS Office in the image? Would there be wide scale revolt? Or would there be other brave revolutionaries that are willing to throw off the yoke of brutal MS oppression? (ed. Please note note the slight hyperbole was thrown in for effect)

• 2.6 GHz processor vs. 1.5 GHz
• 2 GB of RAM (I’ll be upgrading to 4 GB soon) vs. 512 GB
• 230 GB of Hard disk space (about 214 GB is usable) vs. 80 GB

With all these additional features, I am debating loading my laptop with some additional software. In particular, I’m wondering if I should upgrade the Microsoft Office and Adobe Design Suites. Both software suites cost a fair bit money. I also tend to find them a bit bloated for my needs. I’m debating whether I can dodge Adobe by using Pixelmator and VectorDesigner. I think I’ll be able to get by with Bean and iWork instead of Office. I know iWork is a bit bloated, but its integration with iLife and lower price give it some clear advantages. I’m beginning to question each application and document I put on my hard drive. Like any diet, the trouble isn’t losing the weight, it’s keeping it off.