What third-party apps would you install on a clean Mac to restore your preferred working environment? Adam Engst recently had the opportunity to learn just what apps he really uses—here’s the list.

If you're trying to decide which large hard drive model to buy, check out Backblaze's drive stats for 2022, which show the reliability of each drive model the company uses in its data centers.

After spending several days helping some elderly friends with their Macs, Adam Engst came away with a new appreciation for how difficult some aspects of Mac use are for older people. Some Apple efforts are a step in the right direction but may not be available to today’s users. And there’s plenty of room to improve.

Online backup service Backblaze is raising its prices to $70 per year to accommodate larger backups and higher component costs. But you can lock the previous $60-per-year price in for another year by prepaying now.

macOS 11 Big Sur has thrown a cryptographically signed monkey wrench into the inner workings of backup apps that make bootable duplicates. There are now workarounds, and Apple promises to fix the necessary underlying tool, but Adam Engst suggests that we need to rethink the role bootable duplicates play in a modern backup strategy.

Backblaze has again released annual hard drive statistics that report on the company’s hard drive reliability stats for 2020. In spite of everything else that happened last year, hard drives became more reliable.

When you buy a new Mac and migrate your old Mac’s files to it during setup, Setup Assistant moves over numerous settings and configurations. But don’t assume you’ll just be able to pick up exactly where you left off, since there are quite a few apps and services that require additional post-migration attention.

Backblaze’s annual poll asking how often people back up their data shows small improvements across the board. But the percentage of people who either don’t back up at all or back up once a year or less is still far too high.

Cloud backup service Backblaze has released its hard drive reliability statistics for 2019, factoring in data for over 100,000 drives.

Backblaze has published a description of what it’s like to be a hard drive in the company’s data center, writing it from the perspective of a hard drive called Zach. Wonderfully silly, for sure, but it’s an engaging approach complete with interesting technical bits.

Perturbed that the online backup service Backblaze retains old versions of files and deleted files for only 30 days? You can now pay extra to maintain such files in your online backup for either 1 year or forever.

It’s unusual for customers to get insight into why companies raise prices and how those price hikes work out, but online backup service Backblaze is being highly transparent about the reasoning behind and results of its February price increase.