Make .Mac backups start immediately

As you may be aware, Apple used to offer a free service called iTools. Five years ago, “free” went the way of the dinosaurs, and iTools was replaced with the $99 per year .Mac.

At first, Apple’s .Mac service didn’t offer much more than did iTools. But over time, things changed. Subscribers got more disk space, an online learning center, discounts on software, occasional free software, a great online webmail client (as webmail clients go), the ability to synchronize data from multiple Macs, and many other features. While it can still be argued (quite well) that the .Mac service is overpriced and other free services can match many of its capabilities, the main benefit of using .Mac is its high degree of integration with your other Macs.

One example of that is the Backup application, which helps with that most dreaded of daily duties. (You do back up daily, right?) You just tell Backup what files and folders to back up, and set a scheduled start time, and you’re done. As long as the machine is awake and on the net, the backup will happen automatically, sending your most precious files out to the .Mac servers. In my case, I have it back up a disk image file (encrypted) that contains key personal files, as well as other less critical stuff (such as my Macworld writing, which exists online but I’d rather not lose). I like the piece of mind that comes from knowing these files are safely backed up outside the home, and that it happens without my intervention.

defaults write com.apple.Backup 'Backup Timer' -int '1'

This sets the timeout delay for the dialog box to one second, instead of 120 seconds. So while the dialog box will still appear, it will then quickly vanish and your backup will start—much nicer! If you ever decide you want the delay again, repeat the above command, but replace the 1 with the number of seconds you’d like to use instead (with 120 being the default).