14 DAY TRIAL // Developer app4mac, which focuses exclusively on crafting innovative and intuitive applications for Mac OS X, has released a brand new piece of software. Also specifically designed for the Mac, Twin is touted by its maker as being “the most flexible online backup solution for Mac OS X, compatible with most Internet servers.” Twin can back up your valuable files to FTP, FTPS, SFTP, WebDAV, Amazon S3, as well as MobileMe, and supports offline backups to external drives.
“Twin is a true Mac product that preserves Finder info, resource forks, ACLs, Privileges and comes with an elegant user interface and a powerful assistant,” app4mac states. “It also provides numerous high-end features like AES-256 encryption, efficient bz2 compression, powerful exclusion rules and scheduler, support for splitting large files during network transfers, network-error recovery, individual digital signature for backed up files, multi-cores machines optimization and much more!”
Speaking of that file-splitting, files from the directory being backed up that are smaller than the maximum 128 MB size will be grouped together. Files bigger than this maximum size will be split. This allows backup and restoration operations to be more efficient, according to app4mac.
“Twin is the best backup solution for Mac OS X users who already have access to online storage (web hosting, work servers, MobileMe...), or who want to buy their own dedicated online storage (Amazon S3, Bingo Disk, Online Storage Solutions), or even users who simply want more control and advanced features than other backup products allow,” app4mac adds.
Unfortunately for those still using Tiger, Twin is optimized for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. However, PowerPC users are in luck, as it is also optimized for PowerPC G4, G5 and Intel processors (Universal Binary).
Those looking to give Twin a try can do so by downloading the trial version of the software. Good for 15 days, the unregistered version limits your backups to a single 250 Mb archive, while restoring will be done one file at a time. To remove those limitations, as well as to get unlimited free updates and tech support, you must buy the $39.19 license for the full version of Twin. The program is currently localized in English and French.