Here’s the Deal

Homebrew vs Backblaze

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When comparing Homebrew vs Backblaze, the Slant community recommends Homebrew for most people. In the question“What are the best power user tools for macOS?” Homebrew is ranked 2nd while Backblaze is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Homebrew is:

Homebrew makes it easy for people to quickly install any open source software (that is contained within the apps repositories) for Mac.

Specs

packages4635

requires sudono

ContinuousYes

DifferentialYes

IncrementalYes

Only When IdleYes

PlatformsWindows; OSX; Android; iOS

ScheduledYes

VersioningYes

Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking

Common Questions

What are the best power user tools for macOS?

Pros

Pro
Quick access to a large repository of open source software

Homebrew makes it easy for people to quickly install any open source software (that is contained within the apps repositories) for Mac.

Pro
Easy to setup and use

Once installed, you control Homebrew using the brew command. You can find packages using brew search, install them using brew install and remove them using brew uninstall.

Pro
Open Source

Pro
Less maintenance than Macports

Macports seems to be able to get into a bad state where new packages are unable to be installed, or installed software was unable to be updated. This simply hasn't happened with Homebrew. In addition to not having to deal with corruption problems, Homebrew installs packages in userland. Not requiring root to install software is a big win.

Pro
Builds quickly and requires few dependencies

Homebrew as much as possible uses already existing libraries and tools to install software thus making builds quick and requiring few dependencies.

Pro
Unintrusive

Homebrew installs packages to their own directory and then symlinks their files into /usr/local. Homebrew won’t install files outside its prefix, and you can place a Homebrew installation wherever you like.

Pro
Does not require using sudo

Pro
Homebrew tries very hard to use existing tools and libraries

Homebrew’s recipes try very hard to use the existing tools and libraries in OS/X, so they tend to build much faster and require fewer dependent libraries.

Pro
Beginner-friendly defaults

The default configuration includes everything except for system files to be backed up. That also includes external USB drives. This will work for most people. It can, of course, be customized to each person's liking.

Pro
No file size or traffic restrictions

There are no limitations of file size or amount of data you can upload. The $5/mo plan gets you unlimited cloud storage.

Pro
Excellent restoration performance

Backblaze creates a zip file of all your files for you to download, thus decreasing the amount of data you need to download and increasing the speed of the download since it's one connection instead of multiple that need to be opened and closed for a list of files.

Pro
Secure

AES encrypted files are transferred over a secure SSL connection.

Pro
Download any backed-up files from any web browser

Some backup services like Carbonite require a client to be installed to restore files. Backblaze allows you to login and download any or all files from a web browser, meaning it also serves as an ad-hoc cloud storage platform.

Pro
Users can order a physical copy of their data

You can have a flash drive or an external hard drive delivered to you. They cost $99 and $189 respectively.

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Cons

Con
May cause issues when trying to create symlinks or installing in places where SIP has changed permissions

One of the things to like about Homebrew is that it refuses to run things under sudo most of the time. This is a great policy, but it causes issues when you want to create symlinks or install in places that SIP has changed permissions on. (Alternatively, you could install Homebrew somewhere other than /usr/local, but that might break various packages that depend on having stuff in and relative to /usr/local/.)

Con
Command line tools for XCode required

Once xcode is installed you can install Homebrew, including new(er)/different versions of most of the build stuff that xcode-select installed, like a newer gcc, newer git, etc.