ExpanDrive is like living in the future

I've become much more pragmatic in the last year or so when it comes to trying out the latest and greatest apps.  That's mostly because I have a setup that works well for me and it would take something big to make me want to take time to learn a new app or a new habitual workflow.

Of course, when both Allan Odgaard and John Gruber link to the same one with glowing reviews, that's when I sit up and listen.  In fact, ExpanDrive is the app I've been waiting for.  And waiting for.  And waiting for.^[*]

ExpanDrive (and its Windows counterpart) allows you to very simply mount a remote filesystem over SSH as if it were just another drive on your Mac.  What's more, it apparently does so with blazing speed when compared to MacFUSE et al.  I can confirm this at least insofar as I've tested.

Now, I can easily move crap around my various webservers and edit remote files and entire directory hierarchies effortlessly from TextMate.  I can mount my mini (not as painful as it sounds) making it simpler to share an iTunes library.  I can even set things up so I can access my FireWire hard drives while on the road.

This is the future I've been waiting for. Minus, of course, the jetpack that's been back-ordered all my life...

^[*] - MacFuse had promise but the installation, cautions of latency and my pragmatism kept me away until they refined it. Ironically, at least some of the MacFUSE underpinnings are used in ExpanDrive but the latter adds some caching elves and other magical creatures to make up the speed difference.