Before I switched from Windows to a Mac I did a lot of research. One of the things I spent a considerable amount of time on was software. Could I find Mac equivalents for most, if not all, of my Windows software? I found that I could find a Mac equivalent for almost everything, save for a couple programs. One of those programs was a little file/folder comparison and sync utility called Beyond Compare. Believe it or not, this was almost a show-stopper for me because I literally use this program every day. I bought it back in 2005 for $30 and have been using it constantly ever since. I had been certain that a comparable program for the Mac would be easy to find but it just wasn’t. (I’ll refrain from using a bad “it must really be Beyond Compare” pun.)
So I compromised with a workaround; run Beyond Compare in a virtual machine and set all non-Windows local directories up as network shares. This works, but it means that I’m still dependent on opening Windows XP every time I need to sync directories. Every three months or so I’d check back again to see if Beyond Compare had been ported to the Mac or if a comparable competing product had been released. After a year and a half, I finally found that product. continue reading…

