alt Hacker News> 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.
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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."
> 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)