The reason behind Time Machine
Time Machine is one of the exciting features in the upcoming new Mac OS X release Leopard. With Time Machine not only can you back up and preserve everything on your Mac — including priceless digital photos, music, movies, and documents — without lifting a finger, you can go back in time to recover anything you’ve ever backed up.
It is no small task to pull off this software. It requires many fairly complex technologies and it includes an innovative interface, which needs to be throughly tested to make sure we — the users feel comfortable using it.
Time Machine is not something people will be able to use out of the box. You need an external hard drive to make it work. Among my Mac using friends only one out ten has an external drive and with Leopard I don't see more than one or two more buying an HD to make Time Machine work. So, it is not a feature that will be a decision maker. It's a nice to have. I thought there has to be another reason behind Time Machine besides it being a cool new feature of Leopard.
Then it struck me. I believe flash RAM based iPod nanos with video playback capability and capacities of 10-25GB are coming out for this Xmas. Hard disk based iPods are probably be up to 120-180GB in capacity by the time Leopard is out in the wild. I have no single friend who has 120GB of audio and video that they can't live without. Most people are fine with with capacity of up to 10GB. If you use your iPod to carry files around, you may throw in another 10GB. For most people a 20GB iPod nano is more than enough. So, who will buy the monster iPods with so much storage capacity?
Why get a bigger and heavier iPod and spend twice as much of your hard earner cash if you can get a slim nano that can do everything an iPod can give you?
Well, the monster iPods can double as Time Machine servers. An average Mac user will have at top 120GB of data on his internal HD. Compressed with Time Machine this will go down to 40-60GB. So on your 120GB monster iPod you will still have 60GB free space for all your media. That is if the iPod software and Time Machine is not smart enough to store each media file twice — your data is on the iPod already anyway because of Time Machine backups. These iPods will probably have special features that regular external hard disks lack. For example it can tell you on the screen the latest date of backups. Watch/listen the backed up media files, etc. The iPod Monster (code name Time Machine) will become an essential accessory to every Mac.
iTunes was created to sell more iPods. And, Time Machine will be there to sell even more of the big and expensive ones. Great strategy. Works on me. I can't wait to have one of those monster iPods on the table next to my iMac, so I can have the comfy feeling of all my data backed up and all my media available to me at all times.
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Interesting. I have several
Interesting. I have several comments on this.
First you will have to use FileVault on the iPod. A lot of people I know have had their iPods stolen. I would not like to have 120 GB of my data in the hands of some criminal.
Also, anyone who values their data already has an external drive they back up to. Since an external drive costs only around $200, it's that much to have a copy of your precious data.
The problem here though is that 180 GB is not enough to perform a full back up, and compression only does so much. Personally I have about 380 GB of data, and I only back up the most important stuff to a 120 GB FireWire drive. The ideal setup would be a 2x250 GB RAID next to the drives I already have, plus an external 750 GB drive for backing up. That would be cool.
Really awesome! Simple
Really awesome! Simple thing, but in this every day hurrying world, there is no time to think about it :)
It would be really great combination.
For now, I just count down the days when I buy my own Mac. So far, everyday at work gives me a lot of fun, and every Monday morning I run to my office ASAP, just again to be in touch with my G5 :)
iPod As Hot Swap Hard Drive
That's an interesting idea, however, I've always been more interested in using my iPod as a hot-pluggible datastore. For example, I've always been fond of the idea of having hard drive-less Macs at work, home and wherever else, and being able to throw my iPod on a dock and bam! everything is there (all my apps and files). Oh, and I want it to be my phone too. Is that asking too much?
Jon @ Sitening
I don't think it is asking
I don't think it is asking for too much, but the problem is — it is increasingly difficult to create machines that do too many things and do them all well.
Pretty Simple
There's a reason now that people don't back up (what was the % apple cited?) 5% - it's because it still takes a little bit of work to figure out and when to back up - whether to set auto set ... of course, anybody using their mac for business and does not bother is a fool but that's another story :-)
This is really for the averge person - even something great like carbon copy cloner which is essentially free- ask the average person who does back up - okay, your drive is dead - what do you do? I think you'll get a big huh?
TM should solve thsi problem for most people - and it's not exacly onerous. Most people can get by with a 80-200 GB backup - you can buy an external USB one for $50 to $150 bucks depending on how hard you shop around. All you have to do is plug it in like a camera - most people can handle that now ...
I saw on Macworld's article
I saw on Macworld's article about Time Machine that the HD you designate as your Time Machine HD can only be used for that purpose:
I think that would mean you'd lose your regular iPod functionality. I'd also be nervous about carrying around the backup to my entire HD. Like Mackie said, you'd have to use FileVault to protect everything.
Coolest feature
I noticed that several of the new "features" in Mac OS Leopard were just improvements on previous technologies (eg. spotlight, dashboard, ichat, etc.) The only new and truly mind-blowing feature was Time Machine.
The GUI design is incredibly intuitive. However, as bteverybody points out above, there are a few prerequisites, like the dedicated volume, that not everyone is going to be happy with.
Personally, I don't back up any of my work, except to CD or DVD for my clients. I'd still like to try it out. If it's seamless enough, I'll probably stick with it. But I think Time Machine will be most useful for individuals who already back up their work to a separate volume or server.
I'm just hoping that Time Machine will be everything I hoped Version Cue would be. VC has gone corrupt on me 3 times, making it unusable and leaving me unable to access the latest versions of my files. Useless, I tell you.