Mac backup to iCloud?

[bniu]

Was thinking, I backup my iPhone and iPad to my iCloud already, why can't we take Time Machine into the cloud and have an iCloud backup of our Macs? I'd surely like to utilize some more of my 1TB iCloud storage.

 

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

Upload/download speed. The service would likely be extremely slow, when 500 million users are backing up 150+ GB each. Also, restoring a large backup could take weeks.

 

[maflynn]

Restoring my Time Machine backup via wifi was in excess of 8 hours. After that I moved my backups off of the Time Capsule and onto a DAS. Online backups are such that I do not see the advantage.

 

[snaky69]

Was thinking, I backup my iPhone and iPad to my iCloud already, why can't we take Time Machine into the cloud and have an iCloud backup of our Macs? I'd surely like to utilize some more of my 1TB iCloud storage.

It would take ages.

A phone and iPad is different. If all your media is purchased through iTunes then backing it up is not necessary, as it could simply be redownloaded through iTunes store. The OS is available through iTunes, same goes for apps. Basically the only thing being backed up is contacts and preferences, pictures, and a few docs here and there.

A computer? The files are much larger, and there's a whole lot more of them.

At internet speeds most people are getting, it's just not possible to do in a reasonable amount of time.

 

[Weaselboy]

Was thinking, I backup my iPhone and iPad to my iCloud already, why can't we take Time Machine into the cloud and have an iCloud backup of our Macs? I'd surely like to utilize some more of my 1TB iCloud storage.

I don't see Apple allowing a full disk backup to iCloud like we do locally now with Time Machine, but I could see them adding the option to backup just the users folders as a Time Machine option.

Many of us already backup the users folders to online backup services and I see no reason Apple could not add this functionality to something like Time Machine with iCloud.