Time Machine is held in high regard for some reason (maybe the fancy scrolling interface when you look for files to restore?) but it's not really useable. It pretends that backups-over-the-network are a possibility but its completely unstable over the network and invariably decides the backup is corrupt after a few months and then tells you you have to start from scratch.

▲

Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Time Machine is held in high regard for some reason (maybe the fancy scrolling interface when you look for files to restore?)

There was a time in the past when Time Machine was reliable and well-designed. It made backups into a nice experience that were accessible to everyone.

If your only experience with Time Machine is the modern incarnation with all of the flaws and seemingly missing QA process then I understand how its popularity would be confusing.

▲

Eric_WVGG an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> modern incarnation with all of the flaws and seemingly missing QA process

… so I’ve been kind of biting my tongue on this thread because “works fine for me” is not interesting or helpful, but: it’s been working great for me since it was introduced in 2007.

Periodically a disk will get flaky or go bad, maybe once every 2-3 years. I’ll erase the drive and start over. I always have two backups running so there’s never danger of being completely unprotected.

I don't doubt the people having Time Machine problems, but they usually seem to involve some unusual setup like a NAS. But for every one person who has a problem and speaks up, I suspect there are hundreds or thousands who are just humming along without a hitch.

(and yeah, I do pray for a "Snow Tahoe," "oops all bug-fixes" MacOS release, and I’d love to hear that there’s a team working not just to make Time Machine more resilient, but to expand it to do local backups of iPhones and iPads… a guy can dream)

▲

josephg 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That tells a story. I bet its something like this:

1. There was a small, smart team which made time machine in the first place. They did good work. Building time machine required some pretty deep integrations into macos that not many people understood.

2. Years passed. The people who built time machine moved to greener pastures. At google and samsung you mostly get promoted for releasing new products. Not maintaining old ones. I wouldn't be surprised if its the same at apple. Over time, the people who made time machine left and were either replaced by more junior developers. Or weren't really replaced at all.

3. Random changes in the kernel break time machine regularly. Nobody is in charge of noticing breakage, or fixing it. Most people who care (and have the knowledge to fix it) have moved on.

I find things like this so odd from an organisational management perspective. Do companies not realise that features like time machine would have an ongoing maintenance cost? That someone would need to check that time machine still works with every release? Or is it just vibe based management out there? "I guess nobody works on that, and we don't test it. Oops whatever."

	▲	nine_k an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Every new manager who inherits a reputable product (anything, from software to food) is tempted by the idea of cutting costs drastically to the detriment of the product quality. While the product would be coasting on its prior reputation, the manager would get promoted for saving oodles of money, and promoted away from that product, or leave the company altogether. The one who comes next would take the blame, and handle the consequences. I assume many managers resist this temptation, but someone yields with regularity.

▲

thedanbob 16 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I finally got fed up with TM and switched to borg via Vorta. So much more reliable. A couple of times I've gotten error messages when I went off network while it was trying to do a backup, but each time the repo was fine.

▲

al_borland 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think because it is probably one of the only backup solutions (or first) that went after the average user to get them to actually backup. Plug a USB drive in, click yes to the prompt, and they’re done.

It has its flaws, but any system is better than no system at all, which is usually the trade off that would be made.

▲

Wowfunhappy 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> maybe the fancy scrolling interface when you look for files to restore?

That's why I like it. Some of the visual flare is of course superfluous, but the timeline really is nice.

It's like git except it works without me having to think about it. (To be clear, git is much better, but I have to think about it.)

▲

ezfe 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

When backing up to a local system it is extremely useable and reliable. It creates separate snapshot volumes for each backup and can be navigated in the Finder interface or using the fancy space interface.

Also, backups over the network are possible and have worked well for me for a few years.

▲

atombender 2 hours ago | parent [-]

It's reliable except when it's not. I'm using Mojave, and currently fighting a bug where a local snapshot gets stuck. When I list the local snapshots, I see the old one, then a gap of several days, and then additional snapshots.

From what I can tell, this snapshot is preventing space reclamation. The last month or so, I've constantly run out of disk space even when not doing anything special. As in actually run out of disk space — apps start to become unresponsive or crash, and I get warning boxes about low disk space. When you run low, the OS is supposed to reclaim the space used by snapshots, but I guess it doesn't happen,

The stuck snapshot can't be deleted with tmutil. I get a generic "failed to delete" error. The snapshot is actually mounted by the backup daemon, but unmount also fails. The only solution I've found is to reboot. Then I get 200-300GB back and the cycle starts again, with snapshots getting stuck again.

I'm considering updating to Tahoe just because there's a chance they fixed it in that release.

	▲	jtbayly an hour ago \| parent [-]
		I doubt it. Good luck. I think I have the same problem on Tahoe.

▲

garyrob 30 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

With external SSDs plugged directly into a USB port, it's worked 100% fine for me and saved my butt a few times.

But, I haven't installed Tahoe. I may skip it entirely, hoping that they do a Snow Leopard-like clean-up-the-mess release in September.

▲

dijit 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

idk, works for me.

On the extremely rare occasion I have to replace my laptop, I literally just point it to the backup on the network with the cable plugged in, and an hour later it's "my laptop" again.

▲

crazygringo 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Agreed, exactly matches my experience over SMB. It works at first, then eventually refuses to work until you delete it start again from scratch. Eventually I just gave up.