ccc

On Tuesday Apple announced the release date for macOS High Sierra – we can expect to see it on the App Store on September 25. We've been busy testing High Sierra over the summer, and I'm happy to say that we're ready for it. We've posted an update to CCC 4 that fixes a couple cosmetic High-Sierra-specific issues, and we're preparing to release an update to CCC 5 with the same fixes, plus more improvements that are specific to High Sierra.

I introduced CCC to the world over 15 years ago. With the debut of CCC 5 within reach, I thought it would be neat to see how CCC has changed over the years. I still remember the day that I published a description on VersionTracker and anticipated the response. Would people like it? Would someone else beat me to the solution? I've been thrilled with the response I've gotten from users over the years, and I'm happy to say that I've grown this little seed into a successful company that produces and supports a great product.

We're delighted to announce the next major version of CCC. With powerful new features for the advanced user and helpful features and simplifications for the novice user – CCC 5 makes managing your backups easier for everyone. Take a look at what's new in CCC 5:

August 22, 2017 Update: We have published a Kbase article that offers more up to date information on this subject here: Everything you need to know about Carbon Copy Cloner and APFS

Update September 16: CCC 4.1.10 qualified on macOS Sierra

Choose "Check for Updates" from the Carbon Copy Cloner menu to download the latest update. And be sure to update your backup before upgrading to Sierra!

Recently Palo Alto Networks reported a "ransomware" threat to Mac users named "KeRanger". After reading their analysis I found myself deeply concerned. Ransomware threats are nothing new, but I realized that this is probably the closest I've felt to the seedy world of cyber terrorism. Up until now all of that seemed to be aimed at governments, defense departments, big corporations... Windows users!

A security vulnerability was recently reported on the Sparkle framework that many applications, including CCC, use to manage application updates. The report indicates that applications using non-secure (e.g. http rather than https) URLs to retrieve application update information could be vulnerable to a "man in the middle" attack.

We hear this concern frequently:

"I'm considering buying CCC, but I am concerned that a new OS will come out and I will be asked to purchase a new license to continue using CCC."

We released CCC 4.1.4 last week with a handful of minor bug fixes, as well as some enhancements and a stamp of approval for use with OS X 10.11 "El Capitan". This update is free for CCC 4 license holders, and recommended for anyone currently running CCC 4.

We posted a beta of CCC for El Capitan beta testers back in June and I'm happy to report that our testing of CCC 4.1.4 (beta) has been going well on the new OS. So far we haven't found any significant problems. We've made a couple adjustments to how the Recovery HD partition is cloned, but that change was relatively minor. Backups are bootable, scheduled tasks are running on schedule, smart updating is updating smartly, backups to network volumes are working great. On the whole, this appears to be a low-impact OS change.