Time Machine: Present and Future

Here’s a question that I’m not sure anybody’s answering effectively:

I was watching the video where you were talking about service packs, and you brought up Time Machine coming in Leopard. the question I have about that is how will al that information be stored? That’s a lot of information if you can go back weeks. If you had, say, 60 gigs used on a 80GB drive, You might quickly blow through that remaining 20 gigs in a really short time. If you have a 2GB video that you changed 5 times in iMovie, might that take up 10 gigs of space?

I don’t have the technical answer for this question (largely, because I haven’t been privy to the Leopard beta, nor have I been able to interpret much developer documentation for the new service), but… according to the bulletpoints on Apple’s consumer-facing page for Time Machine: “Time Machine keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac. That includes system files, applications, accounts, preferences, music, photos, movies, and documents; By default, Time Machine backs up your entire system. But you can also select items you’d rather not back up; Change the drive or volume you’re backing up to. Or back up to a Mac OS X Server computer; With a hard disk connected to your AirPort Extreme Base Station, all the Macs in your house can use Time Machine to back up wirelessly; Manage older backups so your backup drive doesn’t fill up. The first time you attach an external drive to your Mac, Time Machine asks if you’d like to use that drive as your backup.”

What SHOULD happen (eventually, if not immediately) is the release of an API that would tie into any given online data backup service which would eliminate the issue of ever running out of local hard drive space. Apple is likely to keep that feature well within their own range of products, however.

For your own feedback curiosity: The way I found out about you was from watching a video of you & Scoble at a coffee shop (don’t recall from where, at the moment). I watched it to hear what Robert had to say, but I liked some of the things you said so I looked you up and found your site. I subscribe to your videos in Google Reader via your YouTube feed. I use iTunes for some vid / podcasts, but I don’t need a higher resolution video for yours since your in the studio. That’s not a good or bad thing, it’s just easier for me to see that you updated when I’m in Google Reader. I use the pop-out feature to watch your video on the side while I continue to check my feeds.

Genius. I’m just glad you found me. Pretty soon, you’ll be able to make money by embedding my videos on your own site. ;) Stay tuned for details on that one…

I like that you have been seemingly becoming more focused on performance rather than platform. We all have our brand preferences/ loyalties, but you have done a good job being honest about what you think is good & bad about everything. Even though it’s all just personal view, I appreciate your willingness to be open minded, because I catch myself wanting to only choose a tool because of the maker. I’d like to break myself of that. So watching your videos reminds me to do so, even while still appreciating the brands I like.

Well, if nothing else, it provides credibility with my responses. It’s a bit of a challenge to bring Linux into the mix, because it’s not as black and white as “Windows vs. Mac” – too many flavors and distributions to follow.

Bottom line: I think a lot of geeks are finding themselves forced into becoming platform neutral. You simply can’t think that any one company, any one vendor, can give you every single thing you need. I predicted that Vista would double Apple’s market share – not sure if that’s happened yet, but the year is far from over. I do believe, however, that Vista has doubled Apple’s MIND share – which in many ways is a predictor of market share.

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