I have a few questions for you today that I want you to honestly answer. Do you make frequent backups of files on your computer? Do you have to manually launch your backup utility? Have you tested your ability to quickly recover information from a backup?
Most of us, and certainly most of the masses don’t make regular backups of our data. When we do the process is usually manual and time consuming. We may have do download a utility. Install it. Configure it. Finally we have to remember to run it. When do we remember to run it? In my experience, a typical user remembers to run a backup process about 5 minutes after they realize that they can’t find that super critical file containing the secret recipe for grandma’s Mississippi Mud Pie. Most of us don’t make time to follow through on backing up even though we realize should. Despite all of the gripes that I have with Apple’s information security program, I must say that they have a winner with Time Machine. Time Machine is integrated into Leopard, so there is no need to install anything. There really isn’t any necessary configuration other than turning it on (it may even come “on” by default… frankly I don’t remember). By default it backs up everything on your drive. Time machine goes so far as to back up changes hourly. Apple has really made the backup and recovery process about as transparent as you would want it to be. The average user won’t have to think about backing up, it just happens.
Just to be cool, Apple uses a trippy space interface that allows you to page through your backups so you can choose how far back you need to go before recovering. It really is nifty and if you aren’t carefully (or if you are heavily medicated) you can find yourself staring blankly at the interface. I think they must have some kind of subliminal messages in the background because it is really hard to look away once you get hypnotized by the interface background. Despite the trippiness the recovery process is point and click. Most importantly… it works. I have always been a big fan of transparent security and Apple scores a perfect 10 with Time Machine.
Despite the relatively recent release of Leopard and Time Machine, there are already a couple of really nifty utilities that extend the functionality of Time Machine. TimeMachineScheduler allows you to tweak the intervals that Time Machine runs a backup which is useful if the hourly backup is a little too frequent for your liking. iTimeMachine is a bit more useful in my opinion, affording you the ability to backup over the network using what it terms “AirDisks”. If you don’t have an external hard drive, this will allow you to backup to a file share on another computer or NAS device. These tools are freeware or donationware adding much appreciated functionality to Apple’s Time Machine.
Now if only Apple could turn back time and not release the MacBook Air…
iTime Machine can be found at:
http://www.xiotios.com/itimemachine.html
TimeMachineScheduler can be found at:
http://www.klieme.com/TimeMachineScheduler.html
