But OS X has gone through a lot of changes since Transmit 3 was first introduced and the app is starting to show its age. Enter Transmit 4!

This latest update adds a completely new user interface, innovative new features like Transmit Disk as well as a slew of customisation options. I was fortunate enough to be a beta tester for version 4, so I’ve had a few weeks to play with the new version – here are some of my thoughts.

New UI

Panic is know for their sleek user interface design and attention to detail and Transmit 4 is no exception. First off, the biggest change of them all: A NEW TRUCK!

But the logo isn’t all that has been refreshed: The entire app feels brand new. Most UI elements have been given a 2010 update and the interface feels a lot tidier.

You start off with a list of your configured servers that uses a sleek black look that was made popular by apps such as Pixelmator, CoverScout 3 and SongGenie (disclaimer – I work for equinux).

Selecting a server puts you into a familiar file browsing mode – more on that below:

Buttons and features are usually exactly where you would expect to find them and unobtrusive animations and pretty icons round out the package and give the app a nice touch of Panic personality. Here are a few bits of eye candy I noticed during testing:

File Browsing, Places & Quick Look

An FTP client fundamentally has two jobs: show me my remote files and allow me to move files between my local and remote storage. To accomplish that, an FTP application has to replicate a lot of the functionality of a regular file browser, so users can browser their local files as well as their remote files.

Transmit 4 offers single and dual file-browser layouts, (rearrangable!) tabs and the icon, llist, column and cover flow viewing styles you are familiar with from the Finder. But it also has a few additional tricks up its sleeve, that you won’t find in the Finder.

Here are some of the more interesting file browsing options:

• Folders above Files changes the sort order, so that folders are always displayed before your files in a view
• Quick Look makes it easy to see a file’s content and even works with remote files stored on your FTP server
• Places can store shortcuts to your most frequently used folders, so they are just a click away. You can also drag files to a Place shortcut.

Places is really useful, but the way you add locations by dragging them to the breadcrumb area is a bit unconventional. Once you’ve figured it out though, it quickly became one of my favourite Transmit 4 features.

Transmit 4 offers enough view options to suit almost anyone’s preferred file browsing style. Whether you perfer to work with multiple windows, tabs, split layouts, column view etc – Transmit 4 has got you covered. While it’s debatable whether most users need so many options, file browsing habits are usually so ingrained that it was probably a good idea for Panic to include as many options as they could.

DockSend, Droplets, TransmitDisk and more…

Most of the time, I find myself uploading files to the same place over and over again. Transmit has a number of ways that give you an easy way to send a file to your FTP server straight from the finder:

• Drag it to a custom droplet you can create in Transmit 4
• Enable Docksend and you can drag it directly to the Transmit 4 icon in your Dock
• Turn on TransmitDisk…

TransmitDisk is a nifty new feature, that uses MacFUSE to allow you to mount your FTP server as a volume that the Finder can see. Once mounted, you can interact with your FTP folders like you would with a drive on your local network.

In my experience this worked fairly well, but occasionally felt a little bit more sluggish than using Transmit’s own file browser – but your mileage may vary.

Conclusion

Overall this is a great upgrade to an already very useful application. The new features are well thought out and make working with your FTP server a lot easier and faster. While this isn’t a revolutionary upgrade, it is solid enough to make it worth your while.

You can buy or upgrade to Transmit 4 in the Panic Online Store.

Here’s a few setups I’ve tried over the years that helped me stop worrying about backing up by automating the entire process.

Strategy 1: Just the basics

I used this system by itself for a while due to limited capacity on my external harddrive and still use it to keep an off-site backup of my most important files and documents. I don’t back up everything however, so bear in mind that this is a trade-off between storage-location security and capacity.

Basically I use Transmit and Automator to backup all some selected files to an FTP server. If you don’t have your own FTP server, you could also use a free dropbox or mozy account to do the same thing. Transmit installs a handy “synchronize folders” Automator action, so just select the folders you want to back up and save your automator workflow. Then you can use OS X’s built-in cron scheduler to automatically run your workflow to back up your files. (Edit: this guide (link) is helpful for setting things up!)

I usually back up my mail accounts, most of my application preferences, personal documents and files this way. Applications as well as my Photo, Music and Video libraries are not backed up though.

Pros: Offsite storage, access from multiple locations, no peripherals required.

Cons: The first sync could take quite a while, depending on the amount of data you’re backing up, although incremental backups after that are relatively fast. Longest restoration time as you’ll need to install a clean system and slowly rebuild your system piece by piece should your hard drive die. No backups of older versions of files.

Verdict: Ideally only used in combination with 2 or 3. Only rely solely on this strategy if you like reconfiguring your entire system or don’t have an external harddrive.

Strategy 2: Mirror your drive

This was my favorite strategy pre-Leopard. I used Shirt Pocket Software’s excellent SuperDuper! utility (Shareware, but offers a free mode that can also be used for this strategy – backups will take longer though) to create a complete copy of my harddrive on a partition of my external firewire drive (you can also use Carbon Copy Cloner, but I can’t attest to its reliability as I’ve never tried it). If a system update should break something, reverting to your previous settings is as simple as booting off the external drive and putting SuperDuper in “reverse gear”, copying your backup to your internal drive.

I set the external partition up to be the exact same size as my internal drive and ran SuperDuper 3 times a week. The best part about this strategy is that restoring the system is super fast and you can even boot off your backup drive and continue working should you need to.

Pros: Fastest “turnaround” time in case of a crash, fastest backing up, predictable backup size

Cons: No version control, requires an external harddrive, no off-site storage.

Verdict: Great alternative for Tiger users, or if you frequently like to switch hardware or test different OS versions.

Strategy 3: Backup everything, all the time

Of course, no article on backups would be complete without mentioning Time Machine, Apple’s system-level backup utility built-in to OS X Leopard.

Time Machine completely relegates backups to a background process that most users won’t even notice and allows you to really just forget about them. Time Machine will also back up multiple versions of files, allowing you to retrieve older copies of documents in case you’ve deleted something important. As it stands Time Machine is more or less an ideal solution for most users. Turnaround time is fairly fast, although you’ll need to copy your files back onto your internal drive before you can use the system, there’s no way to boot off a Time Machine drive.

Time Machine will consume a large amount of space on your external harddrive however, filling it entirely before it starts deleting older versions of files. One way to avoid this issue is to partition your drive, but as  harddrives have become so affordable, it’s probably worth investing in a dedicated large backup drive. Also, should you discover an issue with a system update, there’s no easy way to revert to your system’s previous state.

There are a few reasons you might want to go with Strategy 2 instead, (say you want to keep around an older OS installation on a spare backup drive to boot into, e.g. to test something under Tiger), but for a lot of users Time Machine will be the easiest backup strategy to go with.

Pros: Version control built-in, unobstusive, most extensive backups.

Cons: Backups aren’t bootable, there’s no built-in way to easily schedule backups for specifc times or intervalls, requires 10.5 Leopard, capacity intensive.

Verdict: Highest level of data retention, not quite as flexible or customizable as SuperDuper!

Conclusion
Personally I currently use a mix of strategies 1 and 3: Time Machine performs my main backups, but I use a  DropBox beta account for my most important “current” files and also backup my photos to my FTP server. Apple’s system updates also seem to be much more reliable and you very rarely hear complaints about a system update making something worse, so the lack of an easy “revert to previous system” with Time Machine is not so much of an issue.