There is no one backup solution that's best for everyone. Apple doesn't pitch Time Machine as an enterprise class backup solution, but rather a very easy to use utility for the vast majority of home users who otherwise would never do backups, and it seems to fit that role pretty well. And, if you really want redundancy with Time Machine you can always take your external hard drive off site and start a new set of backups with a new hard drive. Time Machine is so easy to use that this process is scantly more work than rotating the media with other more robust backup solutions. So, while Time Machine may not be the perfect backup solution for all users, it's vastly better than the solution most users employ, which is nothing.
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Time Machine problems
Sorry - I'm not giving Apple a pass on this.
Why didn't they include network drive support?
I personally don't want my data sent over the internet
Some people especially enterprise don't want their data sent over the internet.
You're being quite selective with criticising Time Machine. Instead of focusing on what it's not designed to do try to find problems with what it is actually intended for.
I personally don't want my data sent over the internet
See above - why didn't Apple support network drives? It's advertised as backup, it should do the full job for backup, and it doesn't.
James
Call me simple minded, you
Call me simple minded, you can always backup to more than 1 external drive. No?
Time Machine IS simple minded
Yes, you can backup to more than one external drive, but I don't know how well Apple juggles those two drives. But this model breaks of one of three rules for the Pirate BAckup System: backups must be Automatic, Redundant, and Restorable.
Your idea follows the Automatic and Restorable rules, but leaves out Redundant. If you have two copies of your backup, and they're both in your office, you don't have Redundancy. If you carry one external drive away each day and replace it with the other, you're no longer Automatic.
James
You're right, but..
You're absolutely correct that Time Machine sadly does not offer remote, redundant backup through network storage or the Internet. However, Apple does offer the latter through its Backup application in conjunction with a .Mac subscription. It's true this option does require users pay for the full benefits of the 10GB storage. But in conjunction with its other features (its ability to backup and restore easily critical user settings among others), a .Mac subscription may be worth it for those who want that level of protection. Admittedly, this is by no stretch of the imagination an enterprise solution and both Time Machine and Backup often er on the side of simplicity rather than exhaustiveness of features. But if the main hurdle to users backing up their data is the extra effort required to remember to do so frequently and the difficulty of setup and restore, Apple's solutions aren't half bad I think.
You're right ... why not connect the dots?
My confusion comes from the lack of support for .Mac in Time Machine. Why not offer radio buttons - A for external disk, B for your .Mac account? Nothing hard about that.
James
Now that's a fair critique.
Now that's a fair critique. I missed the mention of the remote, .Mac storage option in your original piece. One only hopes Apple will make Time Machine more robust in future iterations and link it up with .Mac. It would surely ad even more value to the pay service. But can they ever make it enterprise worthy?
Apple in Enterprise
Apple should stay out of the enterprise business. See my ITWorld blog here:
http://www.itworld.com/Net/apple-ignore-enterprise-nlsnetworking-071218/index.html
James
Re: why not connect the dots?
Why not offer radio buttons - A for external disk, B for your .Mac account? Nothing hard about that.
Wow, way to trivialize the process of engineering solutions (in a very broad sense, not just software). Your criticism of Time Machine for not also being an off-site solution is certainly valid for a comprehensive backup strategy (i.e., the Pirate's Code), but it does offer unique features that other backup options don't, including BeInSync. Engineering is about balancing trade-offs, so to recommend a solution like BeInSync without acknowledging short-comings is disingenuous. In particular,
Don't get me wrong--BeInSync appears to be a very worthwhile product. But, no product or service solves all problems.
In response to your specific point, full, regular (i.e., hourly, like Time Machine) backup of a hard drive over the Internet just isn't practical. Apple even scaled back Time Machine over a local network before the final release of Leopard. In my opinion, Apple's biggest sin was not the current implementation of Time Machine, but the simplified marketing message that implies it is the entire answer.