Time Machine? Typically Apple.

[generik]

When I first read the keynote my first thoughts are that it will be implemented using a versioning file system, something like a system wide version of CVS.

Until I read about this... http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/timemachine.html

Time Machine will back up every night at midnight, unless you select a different time from this menu.

So let's say I import in some photos into iPhotos at 2pm (with the delete originals option checked!), then absent mindedly deletes them at 3pm, what good is time machine going to do for me?

Nothing.

Likewise for a Word document that I started on this morning, then sometime later at night at 11:59 when I'm really tired I accidentally selected all text and overwrote it with another character. At that moment word autosaves. What will time machine do for you?

Nothing.

Suddenly I'm more interested to see how Microsoft will try to do their implemented. They might have failed with WinFS, but at least they dare to think different for once and push technical barriers.

Spotlight? Time machine? Nice brand names tacked onto what's another background service in Microsoft's world.

 

[ckeck]

Likewise for a Word document that I started on this morning, then sometime later at night at 11:59 when I'm really tired I accidentally selected all text and overwrote it with another character. At that moment word autosaves. What will time machine do for you?

Ever heard of the "Undo" command??

 

[mkrishnan]

Ever heard of the "Undo" command??

And also the value of a good night's sleep!

Give them time. Let's see. There's some validity to your point... but it's a bit like having no car and complaining that someone gave you a an E-Class instead of a Maybach....

 

[extraextra]

When I first read the keynote my first thoughts are that it will be implemented using a versioning file system, something like a system wide version of CVS.

Until I read about this... http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/timemachine.html



So let's say I import in some photos into iPhotos at 2pm (with the delete originals option checked!), then absent mindedly deletes them at 3pm, what good is time machine going to do for me?

Nothing.

Likewise for a Word document that I started on this morning, then sometime later at night at 11:59 when I'm really tired I accidentally selected all text and overwrote it with another character. At that moment word autosaves. What will time machine do for you?

Nothing.

Suddenly I'm more interested to see how Microsoft will try to do their implemented. They might have failed with WinFS, but at least they dare to think different for once and push technical barriers.

Spotlight? Time machine? Nice brand names tacked onto what's another background service in Microsoft's world.

It's just like a slightly spiffier version of Windows System Restore. Which is nice, I've missed it.

How did you back up your stuff before? I'm in that 74% that doesn't back stuff up regularly (I normally get around to it like every 3-4 months).

 

[eva01]

I only back up weekly to an internal drive but with Time Machine I will get a 300+GB FW800 Drive just for a Time Machine backup drive.

I actually like the idea. Especially for school papers that i always frack up at some point or another

 

[ironic23]

I only back up weekly to an internal drive but with Time Machine I will get a 300+GB FW800 Drive just for a Time Machine backup drive.

I actually like the idea. Especially for school papers that i always frack up at some point or another

I agree. Backing up is especially necessary for those school papers. I've had to redo mine a few times because i overwrote them with the same file name. Gotta start getting my file-naming system organized! That's why i use SilverKeeper which backs up 5 times a week now. Phew.

 

[spicyapple]

It's always a good idea to copy a file before editing it, especially if it's a big project and you need to keep versions. It's probably also a good idea to not empty your trash on a daily basis. I only trash files when I get the low disk space warning, and only then do I go into my trash to make sure the files I want to delete will be deleted.

I guess Time Machine just adds another layer of convenience and peace of mind.

 

[stunna]

When I first read the keynote my first thoughts are that it will be implemented using a versioning file system, something like a system wide version of CVS.

Until I read about this... http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/timemachine.html



So let's say I import in some photos into iPhotos at 2pm (with the delete originals option checked!), then absent mindedly deletes them at 3pm, what good is time machine going to do for me?

Nothing.

Likewise for a Word document that I started on this morning, then sometime later at night at 11:59 when I'm really tired I accidentally selected all text and overwrote it with another character. At that moment word autosaves. What will time machine do for you?

Nothing.

Suddenly I'm more interested to see how Microsoft will try to do their implemented. They might have failed with WinFS, but at least they dare to think different for once and push technical barriers.

Spotlight? Time machine? Nice brand names tacked onto what's another background service in Microsoft's world.

I hear winFS technology is going into the new sql

 

[Flowbee]

So let's say I import in some photos into iPhotos at 2pm (with the delete originals option checked!), then absent mindedly deletes them at 3pm, what good is time machine going to do for me?

Nothing.

First of all, Apple's "Time Machine" page doesn't really give enough information to conclude that we'll only have the option to backup once every 24 hours. We may be able to set it to back up more often. I suspect we'll know soon.

But even if you back up every half hour, you still run the risk of creating something and accidentally deleting it before the backup. I think a continuous backup might be overkill. Do we really need a minute by minute history of every change we've ever made to every file on our system? Maybe this will be practical when disks get larger and cheaper, but for now it's not really what Time Machine aims to accomplish.

 

[After G]

So let's say I import in some photos into iPhotos at 2pm (with the delete originals option checked!), then absent mindedly deletes them at 3pm, what good is time machine going to do for me?

Nothing.

Likewise for a Word document that I started on this morning, then sometime later at night at 11:59 when I'm really tired I accidentally selected all text and overwrote it with another character. At that moment word autosaves. What will time machine do for you?

Nothing.

All in all, backing up once a day is better than not backing up at all. It's Apple's first stab at a new application. Give Apple time. MS has had 5 years on with System Restore. Apple hasn't had nearly that much with Time Machine.

The iPhoto situation: Take that digital camera card, assuming you haven't overwritten it with new photos, pony up the $30 for a good recovery utility, and learn your lesson. Or check iPhoto's trash, assuming you weren't also absentminded enough to hit "Empty Trash".

The Word situation: What were you doing not saving your document the whole day? That's like writing your thesis paper without making multiple backups. You're just asking for it then. And it's pretty hard to save at the exact moment Word will autosave. Plus, you can turn autosave off if you don't want to lose your undo capability.

Just saying, be reasonable.

 

[ham_man]

Ummm...SVN anyone...?

 

[eva01]

I agree. Backing up is especially necessary for those school papers. I've had to redo mine a few times because i overwrote them with the same file name. Gotta start getting my file-naming system organized! That's why i use SilverKeeper which backs up 5 times a week now. Phew.

I always add the date to mine, especially for notes. I will have five documents that would typically be titled Genetics.pages Instead i Have them dated on creation. And i start a new document after a test so i remember what is on the test

 

[clevin]

midnight? i never have my mac on at midnight, lol,
I would think mac backs files up locally until next time you have external hard drive connected.

 

[vv-tim]

I think the bigger issue is...

I have to somehow have my MacBook Pro backup my files at midnight onto its tiny hard drive (*watches Time Machine chomp away at the hard drive*)...

But wait, I can't have it even running at midnight because if I close the lid it goes to sleep!

Drat. So they want me to keep the case open where my cat can scratch it up... nice.

 

[clayj]

I always add the date to mine, especially for notes. I will have five documents that would typically be titled Genetics.pages Instead i Have them dated on creation. And i start a new document after a test so i remember what is on the test

That's a good idea.

Ideally, I think what I'd want to see is something like this... for any given app (Excel, for example), when you save a file, the original file is INSTANTLY archived and then the new file is written in its place. That way, it doesn't matter how many times you edit the existing file... each time you save it, a new copy is made. (I guess this would be considered a versioning function.) There wouldn't be any "backups are only made at midnight" option, since the archiving would occur in realtime. Then, Time Machine would present you the option of restoring any saved version of the file... and if you restored an earlier version, the most current version would itself be archived for later retrieval.

The file saving/editing activity could be stored in a database, which Time Machine would use to "build" the Finder views on the fly. That way, a file would only be backed up when edited, not daily like Time Machine seems to do.

Just my 2 cents.

 

[eva01]

Ideally, I think what I'd want to see is something like this... for any given app (Excel, for example), when you save a file, the original file is INSTANTLY archived and then the new file is written in its place. That way, it doesn't matter how many times you edit the existing file... each time you save it, a new copy is made. (I guess this would be considered a versioning function.) There wouldn't be any "backups are only made at midnight" option, since the archiving would occur in realtime. Then, Time Machine would present you the option of restoring any saved version of the file... and if you restored an earlier version, the most current version would itself be archived for later retrieval.

I like that idea a lot. That would be optimal.

 

[triotary]

Hope they will figured that out before it comes out later...

 

[clayj]

I like that idea a lot. That would be optimal.

Glad you like it.

The irony is that a few Microsoft apps, including Excel, have had this functionality for a LONG time. There is an option in Excel to automatically make backups any time a file is saved... the files aren't stored in any special manner, they're just renamed copies, but the point is that you can still "undo" a saved file by going and getting the backed-up file.

If Apple wanted to make this work the way I think it should, they'd add APIs (functions, whatever you want to call them) to Leopard that app developers could call in order to add this sort of functionality to all apps... or Leopard itself could monitor file activity and, when it detects that a file is about to be overwritten with a new version, it could do the archiving on the fly.

 

[atszyman]

Ideally, I think what I'd want to see is something like this... for any given app (Excel, for example), when you save a file, the original file is INSTANTLY archived and then the new file is written in its place. That way, it doesn't matter how many times you edit the existing file... each time you save it, a new copy is made. (I guess this would be considered a versioning function.) There wouldn't be any "backups are only made at midnight" option, since the archiving would occur in realtime. Then, Time Machine would present you the option of restoring any saved version of the file... and if you restored an earlier version, the most current version would itself be archived for later retrieval.

The only problem with that would be that you could potentially run out of disk space very quickly. I save my files 100s of times when I'm working on them sometimes after typing as little as one word and if you're dealing with photos or video fuhgedaboudit.

An even better option, albeit very difficult to implement and potentially slow would be eliminate saves all together and implement a system such that files are created as a series of commands, anytime you type/delete it encodes a command sequence. At any point you can close the file and it is saved right where you left off, and any date in the future you can re-open the file and undo all the way back to the blank document. Potentially you could have every version of the same document in one file. You could also somehow implement markers in the file so you could go back to revision 1, revision 2, etc. when you have something you're mostly happy with. If done right the files could be kept smaller than having a copy made every time you save and it would accomplish the same thing. The slowness would result from basically rebuilding the file whenever you open it which could be time consuming if implemented poorly.

 

[triotary]

what if the the program crashed and corupts the file?????? it happens to me a couple of times while running illustrator/photoshop

 

[jsw]

The irony is that a few Microsoft apps, including Excel, have had this functionality for a LONG time.

And, of course, VAX/VMS had it in the 1970s (or maybe early 1980s).

As mentioned above, versioning is great if you can solve the issue of disk space.

Some things I'd like to see:

• Application and OS file awareness, so that I don't waste space backing up things I can fetch off the OS disks and/or other installation disks.
• The ability to archive more than once a day.
• "Hot" folders, where everything I save gets versioned or archived whenever changes occur.
• Multiple servers, so I can back up to more than one system or media.
• Assistance with moving my archives to DVD either whenever I want, at a given interval, or whenever the "new" archived stuff reaches a certain size.

 

[applerocks]

Typical Mac Basher

If I'm reading this right, which I'm pretty sure I am, you are wrong.

As you make changes, Time Machine only backs up what changes, all the while maintaining a comprehensive layout of your system.

Sounds like Time Machine does exactly what you are saying it doesn't do...

applerocks

 

[Bill Gates]

If I'm reading this right, which I'm pretty sure I am, you are wrong.



Sounds like Time Machine does exactly what you are saying it doesn't do...

applerocks

You are correct. In addition to automatically making backups it also allows you to restore a file to an earlier version of itself, or a deleted file.

 

[vv-tim]

If I'm reading this right, which I'm pretty sure I am, you are wrong.



Sounds like Time Machine does exactly what you are saying it doesn't do...

applerocks

So if I delete an ISO file...

 

[RacerX]

So let's say I import in some photos into iPhotos at 2pm (with the delete originals option checked!), then absent mindedly deletes them at 3pm, what good is time machine going to do for me?

Nothing.

Actually, you can get everything back. In the keynote they say...

"If you change a file, that file is automatically backed up."​

Time Machine backs up files as they are changed... if that is midnight or 10:33.37 AM, if there is a change on your hard drive, it is backed up.

Likewise for a Word document that I started on this morning, then sometime later at night at 11:59 when I'm really tired I accidentally selected all text and overwrote it with another character. At that moment word autosaves. What will time machine do for you?

Nothing.

Actually, you can get everything back. In the keynote they say...

"Have you ever had an instant where you are working on a file and you do a 'save' and you meant to do a save as... and you just overwrote that original and you didn't want to do that? ...And you wish you could go back in time, before you'd done that... and recover that file and bring it back to the future? With Time Machine you can."​

Suddenly I'm more interested to see how Microsoft will try to do their implemented. They might have failed with WinFS, but at least they dare to think different for once and push technical barriers.

Spotlight? Time machine? Nice brand names tacked onto what's another background service in Microsoft's world.

Please show us where Microsoft has anything like Time Machine?

The problem is you were looking for Time Machine to be a rip-off of a Microsoft product, so you didn't even see what it really was.

Sad.

I suggest reading more carefully... or actually watching the keynote first, and then commenting.