Greetings from Twocanoes Software! We’ve had a busy month at TCHQ with the recent release of Boot Runner 1.4, the introduction of a shiny new mobile app, Geohopper for iOS and a new resource at twocanoes.com for academic institutions, Solutions For Education.
We also took a closer look at the technology behind Core Storage and how Apple makes it work with Boot Camp and the 3TB Fusion drive.
If there is a topic you’d like covered in the future, have a technical support question or a fantastic apple cobbler recipe you simply must share, drop us a line at contact@twocanoes.com.
Boot Runner 1.4
Field testing Boot Runner has led to some great new features to help manage and maintain Boot Camp for large enterprises.
Boot Runner startup control now includes a maintenance feature to automate starting into a selected startup disk at a designated time. The Boot Runner selection screen now displays a countdown clock to indicate a restart events.
Learn more about the new features in Boot Runner 1.4.
Geohopper for iOS
We’ve been getting a lot of joy the past few months developing and testing a new app, Geohopper for iOS. It may not clone your Mac, but it’s incredibly fun, useful and actually breaks new ground for mobile geo-location apps. Rather than let others track your location, Geohopper sends a private message automatically whenever you arrive or leave. Let a loved one know you are on your way, keep a travel log or automate appliance control based on your location. We’ve been blogging about creative uses for Geohopper and have a FAQ that explains it all. If you have an iPhone, check it out on the App Store.
Webinars
3TB Fusion Drives
With Apple’s release of support for 3TB Fusion drives on 10.8.3, repartitioning the drive into Mac and Boot Camp becomes a more complex process. Fortunately for us, Apple conceals the complexity through a layer of abstraction known as Core Storage. If you’re curious about what Boot Camp Assistant is doing to the drive, see this article.
Migrating Boot Camp
Sooner or later, you may be planning an upgrade to a new Mac. If Boot Camp is on your Mac, then both OS X and Windows will need to be migrated. It can seem daunting if the goal is to move everything, operating systems, applications, accounts and documents. Fortunately, Apple provides Migration Assistant to make this a snap on OS X. For Boot Camp, the process can be arduous, even when using the Windows Easy Transfer utility. Unless you enjoy installing Windows from scratch, Winclone is the answer for moving Boot Camp, completely intact, to another Mac. Let our step-by-step tutorial on migrating Boot Camp walk you through migrating to a working Boot Camp in a fraction of the time.
Resizing Boot Camp
Solid state drives can improve computer performance and startup time, which is one reason why many Mac owners swap out traditional hard drives for SSDs in MacBooks, MacBook Pros and Mac Minis. With no moving parts, SSDs also run cooler when jammed into the confined space of a laptop. At present, SSDs cannot match the price-per-GB cost of standard hard drives, yet the benefits are driving consumers to sacrifice storage space for SSD speeds. If you decide to upgrade to a SSD, it may be necessary to reduce the size of the Boot Camp partition to get it all to fit. Disk Utility can dynamically resize Mac partitions, but cannot dynamically resize the Boot Camp partition. Winclone can shrink the Windows file system to fit into a smaller partition space. After imaging, simply delete Boot Camp, create a smaller partition, restore from Winclone and Bob’s your uncle! See the article Resizing a Boot Camp partition with Winclone for more details.
Solutions for Education
Solutions for Education is a new resource designed to help institutions that utilize dual-boot Macs. Budget constraints demand that schools squeeze as much value as possible out of their investments while providing students with choices among an array of innovative and cutting-edge technologies. Dual-boot Macs allow educators to offset hardware costs by loading multiple operating systems on a single hardware platform, cutting costs by more than 1/3.
Twocanoes is dedicated to providing the tools and know-how to set up, manage and maintain dual-boot Macs. Winclone imaging software and Boot Runner startup control integrate seamlessly with industry standard IT administration tools.
Administrators can build and maintain Windows Boot Camp images for automated mass deployment as easily as for OS X.
Boot Runner installed on dual-boot Macs in classrooms, kiosks and computer labs allow instructors to provide program choices and information tailored to the subject matter as well as facilitate ease of maintenance for IT administrators.
We stand behind our products and we’re here to provide help when you need it. We also offer premium support and maintenance options tailored to your organization’s needs, goals and budget. Please contact us if you would like a quote or have additional questions.