The One Thing We Need in OS X El Capitan (And Didn’t Get)

| Particle Debris

Have OS X users become overwhelmed by terabytes of data? Are they bored or over burdened by the idea of backing up? Is iCloud a simplistic, lame answer to a much more complex question? OS X El Capitan does nothing to address this emerging issue.

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We have reached an impasse. Everything with Apple must be easy and comfortable. Yet the very idea of backing up hundreds of gigabytes (or terabytes) of data is out of sync with the capabilities of HFS+ and the software technologies provided. As a result, it's easier to brush this issue under the rug than it is to deal with it for the average Mac user.

One answer from Apple, apparently, is to shift the burden from standard technologies to faux-modern methods that appear to ease the experience. For example.

  1. Don't back up photos. Store and sync them all in iCloud.
  2. Don't buy music. Stream it on demand.
  3. Don't collect movies in digital form. Rent them on Apple TV and let Apple retain a record of purchased movies for later viewing.
  4. Don't bother with an awesome mail application for archiving correspondence. Let Twitter bear the burden of archiving our communications.

This works for many new and casual users, but it increasingly annoys more experienced and professional users who appreciate OS X. It also brushes under the rug certain critical storage issues with the the Pollyanna notion that all will be well.

Until it isn't.

Unsuccessful Success

In a sense, Apple is a victim of its own success. Apple earned billions of dollars selling us stuff (music, movies, TV shows), and now the burden of maintaining all that stuff has become too much to deal with for many users because their OS and backup tools are too primitive.

Of course, if Apple had continued to develop an earlier technology, its Xserve RAID, into an awesome modern day, affordable Apple branded storage box to be used with, say, a (mythical) version 5 of Time Machine, our problems would have been easily solved along the way.

Instead, we have a stagnant Time Machine service that hasn't kept pace with our needs. On page two here, Joe Kissell experiences what many other users have—an unrecoverable Time Machine backup error. This still happens in 2015 because Apple hasn't invested the time and engineering resources over the years to ruthlessly and relentlessly update Time Machine until it is highly flexible, transparent and bulletproof.

Today, one must consider the possibility that, by default and neglect, customers are just plain tired of playing nursemaid to a terabyte of music and videos. And when Apple doesn't make it simple, easy and foolproof to keep all that data backed up, customers are going to seek the easy way out. They fall into the four methods I listed above.

Apple cheerfully indulges the customer's naiveté.

By abandoning Time Machine's technical development and promoting iCloud as the easy answer to everything, Apple is, in essence, betraying the user base. The company is telling us to be a lightweight, happy user and don't take our data too seriously because there isn't very much of it. But for serious, long time users, professionals and businesses, Apple leaves the hard work to others.

In essence, Apple has turned a blind-eye to its previous success and neglected the needs of legacy customers. But the problem isn't going away, and so one would hope that in OS X 10.12 Apple turns its attention to fast, superb backup technologies, hardware and software, that always just work.

That's not too much to ask of Apple. 

Next page: the tech news debris for the week of June 8. Joe Kissell's Time Machine disaster.

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Comments

geoduck

I wish you’d do an article on backup software. I’ve seen the unrecoverable backup error with TimeMachine a couple of times. Any more I just start a new backup stack every twelve months and it seems to take care of it. But it shouldn’t be that way. I’m really ready to say ****it and start using something else.

And you’re exactly right about Apple not understanding that we have lots of data. Faster but smaller drives on their systems when we have more files, more documents, more pictures, and more music all the time. Here’s another good example: Photos. You can set Photos to run everything to the cloud. Sounds good, except that I have several hundred GB of pictures. 1: I really don’t want or need anything older than a few months out on the cloud. 2: My Internet service would take days if not weeks to upload all of that data. 3: The cost of renting enough iCloud space would pay for a local backup drive in just a few months. And yet it’s an All or Nothing option with Photos, so I opt for nothing. Really lousy way to introduce a new service.

jbruni

ZFS would have been nice to carry forward. It was an option in some of the early beta releases of 10.4 and disappeared right before GM. I understand that ZFS would be a battery killer for laptops, but for something like time machine (which is always attached to power), it would have been perfect.

It amazes me that HFS is still the file system in 2015.

Lee Dronick

And yet it’s an All or Nothing option with Photos, so I opt for nothing. Really lousy way to introduce a new service.

I would like to see a time delay, perhaps as an option, so that I could review the photos taken with my iPhone before they go to iCloud, delete certain ones. Or something where we could mark the ones we wanted to be clouded and then send them by clicking on a button.

Something I want in El Capitan? Auto-Capitalization such as we have in iOS

BenG

I must be missing something here.  I use SuperDuper to back up my 1TB SSD in my MBP to a 1TB HD.  OK, so I only have about 1/2TB actually in the computer.

It takes about 40 mins for a full bootable backup.  I usually keep on working while it is crunching.  I could schedule it to run when I am elsewhere, but this works OK.

JoelS

I have to say, the new eye candy features really don’t do much for me.  How about a spell checker that really works (I think most Mac users keep a browser open and use Google to find corrections to mis-spelled words).  The spell checker is just one of dozens of Mac technologies that are woefully poor in performance and out of date.  I really think Apple needs to get serious about basic functionality.

Lee Dronick

Joel I am not understanding what you mean by the built in dictionary not working, I haven’t experienced that. Unless you mean it not being more full featured. Now I must say that I really like Merriam-Webster Dictionary app on my iPad.

fultonkbd

I’m with BenG on this one. I must be missing something…

You have your internal hard drive. Buy an external hard drive of the same size (or larger) and let that be your Time Machine back up. That way if you trash a file you can go back and grab it.

Then buy another external hard drive and clone your Mac internal drive once a week. That way if the system goes down, you can boot up and clone it back.

Then finally buy a 3rd external drive and clone your Mac internal drive at set intervals and then store that drive offsite. Just incase of theft or fire.

Maybe I just don’t understand what the author wants Time Machine to do (or the other primitive back up software), but I have been doing it like that for years and rarely have downtime due to back up issues.

davidneale

Kissell’s thinking is painfully naive: the hardware was clearly not “just fine” if both TM and Disk Utility reported problems with it, and to rely on a single Time Machine, or any other form of backup, is asking for trouble. That’s not a problem with TM, that’s a problem with the user.

jameskatt

ZFS is more trouble than it is worth. It would break numerous apps.  This is why Apple dropped it.

Realize that Apple hired the file guru of BeOS to work on its file system.

As a result of his work, HFS 2015 is a whole different animal than previous versions. 

There have been a lot of changes underneath the hood to make it a better file system. I prefer HFS to any Windows file system simply because in years of use it has been far more stable, not prone to complete corruption when the computer crashes.

There are lots of other back up services and programs if you need more sophisticated backups than Time Machine.  If you want something more sophisticated than what Time Machine gives you then simply use the more sophisticated backup system.

For example, for my needs, I do
1. MULTIPLE WHOLE CLONES of every hard drive for backup - 10 backups each is a good idea. Some are kept offsite in case of disaster.
2. Backup files TO OTHER COMPUTERS - some are clone computers which are ready to go if the main one dies.
3. Backup to the cloud EVERY VERSION OF EVERY FILE PERMANENTLY.

The apps and services I use for backups are:
1. Carbon Copy Cloner - which can do multiple simultaneous clones
2. ChronoSync - to backup individual folders and files to other computers in the network
3. CrashPlan - to do an unlimited data cloud backup that contains every version of every file ever backed up.
4. Microsoft OneDrive for Business - which gives you HIPAA compliant security for real-time a cloud and local access to your files on any Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, and Windows Phone.  Soon OneDrive will have UNLIMITED storage. Currently it has 1 TB of storage.  I use ChronoSync to clone files onto OneDrive for sync with every computer and to keep a backup online.  OneDrive for Business is highly stable, nearly 100% always available.

You cannot expect Apple to do everything for everyone - particularly those with high end needs.

Time Machine is only a very basic backup system. Don’t expect more.  And if you do, find other utilities and services which can do a better job.

Lancashire-Witch

“The company is telling us to be a lightweight, happy user and don’t take our data too seriously because there isn’t very much of it. ...”

I think that attitude John, is not restricted to data backup. I think Apple has a very casual attitude to users’ data. Period.  For example, the company simply deleted Web Journal data from iDevices (everything except photos) when it ceased supporting iOS7 iPhoto. No advance warning; after upgrading to iOS8 the data was gone! (I was surprised but not delighted)

I worked in a large IT department for many years. I would have been in serious trouble if I had ever, deliberately, deleted end-user data.

It’s almost as though Apple regards the whole user experience as simply a hobby - regardless of the volume of data.

I’m now very wary of relying on any Apple Cloud-based service. The rug can be pulled out from under you at any moment. If it’s private [Mr Cook] it should also be secure.

wab95

John:

These are important thoughts about data backup, however I’m not convinced that they necessarily flow from the OS X upgrade promised in El Capitan (I’m going to have a hard time saying that one without an involuntary vision of Q calling Picard ‘Mon Capitan!’ You’re welcome).

I tend to agree with jameskatt and others that one should maintain modern data hygiene, which includes redundant backup systems as part of one coherent and consistent strategy involving both online and local hard media. I have never relied on TM as my only source, nor for that matter, any other single solution, unless I’m out in the field and all I have access to is my local portable back up disk. Without doubt, TM can and does fail, and could be substantially updated; however as only one player on the field, in a worse case scenario, it simply becomes the weakest link in the chain, and an expendable one if needs must.

I also know that Joe Kissell knows this and is also a staunch advocate of not only redundant backup systems, but switching to more robust ones as the technology improves.

The one thing we do need, however, is speed. Our files have grown to the multiples of TB, and this needs serious bandwidth to backup at pace. Busy professionals will not abide a slow solution, which is effectively too costly time-wise, and therefore a non-solution. This is true for both online and local solutions, for which hopefully Thunderbolt 3 will provide a modern answer for local media.

As for the ‘Oatmeal’ piece, your comment that his take on the Apple Watch reflects your own experiences is somewhat disconcerting; to which experience do you refer? The neighbour’s hot tub? The Robocop? The pickles? One shudders to think.

Time for me to pack and head home.

Cheers.

spaceboy949

1. Don’t back up photos. Store and sync them all in iCloud.
2. Don’t buy music. Stream it on demand.
3. Don’t collect movies in digital form. Rent them on Apple TV and let Apple retain a record of purchased movies for later viewing.
4. Don’t bother with an awesome mail application for archiving correspondence. Let Twitter bear the burden of archiving our communications.

Really that is your backup advice?

Pretty lame.

First, like most people I have too many photos to just post to iCloud and do I really want them there.

Let Twitter handle your email communications? Are you kidding? Who wrote this?

John Martellaro

spaceboy949: You have misread the article and its advice.

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