I recently wiped my Time Machine and realized how unnecessary it really is.
Upon opening Time Machine up(Apple's hard drive backup program) I saw that there was a sea of folders and sub folders and generally copy after copy of the files from my laptop. The way Time Machine works is it backs up your hard drive but also takes record of when the backup was taken. This enables you to look back at how your computer looked at a certain period of time. Scenario: "Oh crap, I rewrote my 8 page paper and saved it AND backed up the new version but I need to get it back to the original version!" Ta da, time machine saves the day by going back to yesterdays versions and letting you retrieve it from it's memory banks. For all those PC users or non-Leopard users it looks something like this....
Pretty neat, but honestly how many times are you going to need to do that?
Apple is very user friendly and finds the easiest ways for families to use a computer with as little jargon and tech savvy as possible. That is why it hides all of the program files in subfolders that you have to 'ctrl' click to see. The main problem with Apple's ability for simplified use is the fact that in most aspects of their programs, it takes up a lot more room on your hard drive than it should.
What Apples does in programs like iPhoto is save all your image files and also saves any edits you make to them as a separate file. This enables you to always be able to undo your edits, or in another sense, enables you to have too many files of the same photo on your computer. You edit it, print it, upload it to Facebook or whatever you do and you're through with the photo. Hardly do you need to revert to the original at any point that isn't immediately after you muck up your photo. Thus bringing us to Time Machine, which is just a more advanced version of this concept.
After I dragged the main folder of my Time Machine into the trash can it gave me a count of how many files were actually on my external drive....
Yup, over half a million files on that thing. My hard drive is 200Gb while my external is 500Gb. Time Machine had used up 400Gb of my external with repeated files from my laptop. For a cheap ass like me to spend money on an external drive, I am going to want to get the most for my dollar, which I wasn't at the time. After the 2 hours of preparing and deleting these files, I took my most important files and loaded them over to my external(now named Mike Jr.) manually and it took up 50Gb. Much more pleasant to see.
What Apple is doing is making computers and programs that are possible for anyone to use, but they are also helping to breed retarded girls and boys who click and delete carelessly through their files knowing that they could just undo it at any point in time. These kids will run our banks in 30 years. We don't need to learn to spell as long as we have spell check, and we don't need to be careful as long as we have Time Machine. As a former PC user it is easier to see the disadvantages, knowing that there is a different way to run a computer. I do see the advantages, but for my purposes and also to be as resourceful as possible I feel that these features are better off left to the technologically challenged.
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