Did you know you can sync folders between your machines without using Mobile Me?
This is the first post in a series of posts highlighting why Mobile Me is a giant waste of cash. For the record, I’m just trying to save you guys some cash so you can buy that new Mac Tablet, or NetBook.
So, the hardcore users know this, but some of you newcomers might not. OS X ships with a BSD based terminal that lets you run commands like any good operating system should. It’s quite powerful for new users, but once you get a grasp on it you’ll be pleasantly surprised by what you can do with it.
You have the ability to sync your Desktop machine to your Notebook with a simple line of code. This gives you the ability to transfer all your contents from your desktop at the end of the work day to your shiny Macbook (pro) before you take off home. The time it takes to do this is directly proportional to the amount of data in the folders you want to sync, so work that into your timeline for getting out the door.
Here’s the code you need to put into the terminal.
rsync --ignore-existing --progress --recursive --perms --times \
--size-only --whole-file --rsh=ssh --exclude='.*' \
Documents/ joshua-schnells-macbook-pro.local:/Users/jschnell/Documents
The only major point of note here is this line Documents/ joshua-schnells-macbook-pro.local:/Users/jschnell/Documents
The section that says Documents/ is the path to the folder you want to sync to the other machine. The second part that says joshua-schnells-macbook-pro.local:/Users/jschnell/Documents lets the computer know where you’re syncing the files to. The ‘joshua-schnells-macbook-pro.local is letting the system know the name of the machine on the network that you’re going to be connecting to. You can find this info by going to ‘System Preferences then Sharing’. You’ll see a screen like the one attached. Look for the name that ends in .local then copy and paste it into the line of code mentioned above.
This is reason one why Mobile Me is a waste of cash.
NOTE: We’re not responsible if you mess up your system. Take precautionary backup measures before you start mucking around with the code.
