Knox a "hobby"?

binaryeric

I am beginning to believe that AWS has decided that Knox is a "hobby" much like Steve Jobs feels about the Apple TV. I purchased a license this past June - 5 months ago. In that time barely anything has been changed with Knox.



The UI still displays "10.5" and "10.4 or later" - Clearly 10.5 is "later" than 10.4 so that is just bizarre. Any mention of 10.6? 10.6 was released nearly 15 months ago. It's such a small fix (cosmetic) that it makes me think that the larger fixes are being completely ignored.



Also, when Knox was owned by it's original developers, the unmounted vault icon actually worked? When I initially downloaded Knox from AWS and this wasn't working, I thought "Well this must be some weird bug that they'll work out in the next few days." Nope. 5 Months later it still has the weird file type icon rather than the nice closed briefcase like it had even two years ago. I have attached an image showing the current icon (left) alongside the old icon (right) that I STILL USE from when I used Knox before it was purchased by AWS.



Why can't Knox create Sparsebundles!? It's a command line option? (-type UDIF|SPARSE|SPARSEBUNDLE) I don't want to use Knox back up. I want to use Time Machine. The core competency of Knox should be to create encrypted images and make them available in a simple way to normal users... not being a backup application.



From where I sit, it looks like AWS purchased Knox with the best intentions but have not invested the resources necessary to actually make it a prime time product. This would be fine if you didn't go to such an effort to market & sell paid licenses for it.



I was honestly hoping to be able to use Knox to help my entire family manage their data more securely but until AWS decides to give Knox the attention it needs, I will be unable to do so.

thightower

Hi eric



Aside from all the other stuff, (really not my stuff being just a mod and not a coder) I just want to point out Knox will create images or bundles.



if you choose 10.5 then a bundle is created and if you choose 10.4 a image is created.



Edit : Unless I am missing something.

binaryeric

[quote name='thightower' timestamp='1289963216' post='15306']

Hi eric



Aside from all the other stuff, (really not my stuff being just a mod and not a coder) I just want to point out Knox will create images or bundles.



if you choose 10.5 then a bundle is created and if you choose 10.4 a image is created.



Edit : Unless I am missing something.

[/quote]



Hey! You are right! Well that makes me feel a bit better. At least that part is better. I am not sure how I was supposed to derive that from the "10.5" and "10.4 or later" text.



Thanks for the heads up on sparsebundles being possible.

Oxon

Hi binaryeric.



I have changed your "left-hand" icon to the "right-hand" one on my vault sparsebundle file by using "Get Info" on Knox.app, selecting, then using cmd-c on the knox icon (above the Spotlight Comments box) then copying it using cmd-v after selecting the corresponding icon in the sparsebundle file's "Get Info" window.



Oxon

[Deleted User]

Hi Eric,



Thanks for the feedback on Knox, and thanks to Tommy for helping clearing up the 10.4 or late and 10.5 issues, I'll mention this to Dave and Roustem to see if we can be more clear. From what I understand Tiger doesn't support sparsebundles like Leopard and Snow Leopard do, hence why it creates a standard image file, of course these are still compatible with Leopard and Snow Leopard, whereas sparsebundles aren't backwards compatible with Tiger.



Knox is by no means a hobby for us, and we've got some exciting plans for the future, but as you may know we do have somewhat limited resources so we need to carefully decide when's the right time to add new features to Knox. I think it's safe to say that Dave & Roustem wouldn't have bought Knox from the previous developers if they didn't have their own passion for what it could become with some love and attention.



Incidentally, the reason we recommend that sparse bundles (created by Knox or not) should always be specifically excluded from Time Machine and other backup/sync products is because if the vaults are currently mounted by OS X at the time of a backup, any utility that backs it up will appear to "succeed" but data integrity is not guaranteed. At some point you may end up with a sparse bundle that cannot be mounted if it is restored, which really would be an issue for a lot of users who trust Knox to secure their data.



That's one of the prime reasons why Knox's built-in backups will always close/dismount the vault: it makes the resulting backup a consistently valid copy of the original.



Hope that helps,