Product Reviews

Over the past 10 years, Stairways Software's Interarchy, which was formerly known as Anarchie, has emerged as one of the best-known Internet applications on the Mac. But the vigorous revamping of its feature set and appearance over the last two incarnations has polarised opinion. Interarchy 5.0 continues to tack on new features, but at least the changes focus on Interarchy's main role as an FTP client.

The big selling point of Interarchy 5.0 is the FTP Disk feature, which lets you mount any folder from an FTP server on your desktop and access it as if it were a volume on your local network. Its potential is clear: whether you want to save an image to a Web server directly from Photoshop or backup files from the Finder, FTP Disk is an accessible and easy-to-use tool.

An FTP Disk is disarmingly easy to create - just as well as there is little supporting documentation. You just select New FTP Disk from Interarchy's File menu and enter the path to the folder on the FTP server that you wish to mirror. In a few moments, Interarchy mounts a desktop folder that looks and acts in an almost identical way to a normal Mac volume. Feedback on the FTP Disk's status is given through Interarchy's FTP Disk Manager window, which is automatically launched every time you start the program. Available FTP disks are listed, with their current status indicated by an icon alongside.

That's magic

At its most basic, FTP disk is a clever illusion, but that doesn't detract from its usefulness. The volume that appears on your desktop is really local - the program uses an exhaustive mirroring technique to ensure that actions performed on it are reflected in the remote volume on your FTP server.

Like Apple's iDisk, you can save directly to your FTP disk from any application. But in other ways it offers more versatility - for a start, you don't have to worry about an active Net connection. When a disk is unmounted, Interarchy mirrors local and

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remote volumes and keeps a copy of the FTP disk's contents inside its Preferences folder.

You can add files and folders to this directory while offline - only when you remount the disk will Interarchy queue the changes and update the remote folder. Compared with WebDAV-based online storage, which Apple's iDisk is switching to with Mac OS X 10.1, FTP Disk still retains the dual advantages of speed - local file transfers are instant and mirroring occurs in the background - as well as usability. As FTP Disk uses the standard FTP protocol, you can access your online disk with any FTP client on any platform.

Caching in

FTP Disk's appeal isn't universal. The file caching process used when first mounting a disk can take several minutes and means it only works well on frequently used or smaller folders. Stairways recommends breaking large sites into folders to be individually mounted and Interarchy also provides a way to avoid mirroring certain files and folders.

FTP Disk's method of mirroring - amendments made to the local disk are queued and updated every few minutes - means that for instant changes, you'll have to unmount the FTP Disk, click Synchronise in the FTP Disk Manager window or connect to the server manually.

For all its benefits, the FTP Disk feature overshadows the fact that Interarchy remains a speedy basic FTP client in its own right. There are other usability improvements offered in Interarchy 5.0. For example, the mirroring features used by FTP Disk are also introduced as standalone menu options, while Mac OS X users - Interarchy is a FAT Carbon application running under Mac OS 9 or OS X - get the benefit of SSH (Secure Shell) authentication and encryption to FTP servers with SSH 2 installed.

The OS X version, predictably, drops several network reporting options (including whois, finger and traceroute) that have been tagged on to Interarchy over the years, as they are replicated in OS X's Terminal or Network Utility applications. This might lead to grumbles about its price as well as the convoluted upgrade path.

The changes made by Interarchy 5.0 acknowledge that its appeal will lie far outside its erstwhile constituency of Web designers and network administrators. With few remaining reasons for OS X-based administrators to use Interarchy and with many developers already working in applications with built-in FTP integration, Interarchy is rightly aiming at new markets. There's little doubt that FTP Disk alone is an impressive tool in broadening its consumer appeal.