MacBook Pro Help

[lordkenmore]

"Karen has noticed a lot of fashionista's and design people used Mac's. It seems to be the fashionable thing to do these days."

Apple has become fashionable in many circles. I see teenagers at the library, for example, and it's not uncommon to see them using a MacBook.

Design people--at least graphic artists--have preferred Macs since the 80s. They were, probably, one of the few reasons Apple didn't go under during its dark years. A lot we take for granted now got started on the Mac. PhotoShop, for example, was developed on a Mac.

Another interesting (?) historical note is that I understand a NeXT computer figured heavily in the creation of the World Wide Web. NeXT was the computer company Steve Jobs created after he left Apple in the 80s. Later on, NeXT became the foundation for OS X.

 

[earthling177]

Allen said: "Is there anyway to verify that the Time Capsule is turned on?"

Go to System Preferences and click "Time Machine". That control panel will tell you if TimeMacine is on or off, which disk it's storing the backups on etc.

Every hour the system will make an incremental backup, so the backup disk will hold hourly backups for the past 24 hours, daily backups for the past month and weekly backups until the disk fills up.

From that disk one can recover the entire disk, or a directory, or a couple files.

Suppose you accidentally delete a file or botch it while editing (say you accidentally deleted too much text). You can click the Time Machine icon on the dock (green dial with counter-clockwise arrow). The screen changes to "warp field" where you can navigate the time line and directory structure until you find the right version of the file(s) you want, select them and click restore, presto, you have your files back. You can also recover deleted emails the same way.

 

[lordkenmore]

Time Machine

This is something pretty obvious, but it's worth remembering to explain--or try to explain--to those who know little (and often would like to know even less) about computers.

Time Machine is NOT something you can put 100% faith in. It's a great invention--I wouldn't mind having it--but since it since it uses a disk set up on the premises with the Mac (often directly connected) it can potentially be rendered unusable by the fire/theft/washing machine explosion that takes the Mac out. Thus if one has critical data, it's a good idea to have another backup scheme in addition to Time Capsule. Ideally, something that involves off-site storage.

 

[earthling177]

John, all that you said is very much true.

However, much as the saying goes "the best camera is the one you have with you", meaning even a cellphone camera is better than a pro camera you left at home, any backup is better than no backup. And backup that happens regularly and automatically is better than backup that happens only once a week, once a month, or never.

I have Time Machine working, and I also make a full bootable backup once a month or so -- Time Machine, good as it is, is not a clone, it needs to be restored to a disk. CarbonCopyCloner or SuperDuper are good to clone the entire drive so if anything happens you can just boot from the external drive. But I've seen Time Machine save people's bacon a few times. Obviously, if the hard drive fails or is failing, you can't trust that backup either. But again, it's better than the vast majority of the home users, who don't even have a backup, much less regular or current backup.

Because the vast majority of the times one does need a backup it's not because some disaster took your entire computer setup, but just because the hard drive failed or, even more common, people accidentally delete their own files. A current backup is great to fix that.

 

[lordkenmore]

any backup is better than no backup.

Absolutely true. And I think Time Machine is a great idea, and it's very likely that if I had a Mac capable of supporting it, I'd use Time Machine. It's just that it wouldn't be the ONLY backup scheme. And, in a case where it's ONLY Time Machine vs Nothing, well, my vote would be "Only Time Machine."

The problem--or so I feel having known countless people with limited computer skills--is that they don't understand the realities of the risk of data loss. They might view Time Machine as 100% perfect solution--and never do any other backup of data that is hugely important and cannot be replaced. For that matter, I have even heard of people ask if a second partition on a hard disk is good enough for backups. (I don't know if Time Machine lets one pull that off--but it's something that can be done with other backup schemes.) They simply don't realize that if the disk fails--a major reason why backups are necessary--they won't be able to recover that backup data on the second partition. At least, not without a recovery service at $$$$ which may or may not be able to recover everything.

 

[earthling177]

It's not impossible to set up Time Machine from a second partition from the startup drive, but when you try to do that the system will in fact alert you to the problem and ask for confirmation -- which is quite a shock for light users of MacOS X, because the system is so "yay! lets do it!" otherwise (the first time you connect an external hard drive to a Mac it bends over backwards to get you to set it up as a Time Machine drive).

In my experience, most people who use Time Machine mistakenly think it's an archiving solution instead of a backup solution. They think each and every version of a file is safely preserved and that they don't need to make any effort to archive those important intermediate versions of the file(s) somewhere else. The problem is that the system will cheerfully get rid of older versions to conform to the scheme above, which is prominently posted on the control panel: hourly for 24 hours, daily for a month, weekly until the disk fills up, then new versions will make older versions get deleted. The intention is to buffer users from mistakes and small accidents, not to archive all their work for eternity.

I've also seen (on the 'Net, "so it must be true!" ) people get upset when the external drive dies and they buy a new one and complain that "now they lost all their history!" -- well, if the internal drive is working well, why complain? But I understand they don't see it as a backup, but as an archive. Which is wrong, but what can you do? ;-)

 

[whirlcool]

I found out the hard way about having a backup disk in the same room as my computer.
The last desktop we had I added a second hard disk just for backup purposes. It was only used to backup the primary drive on my PC. I thought I was safe as I always did a clone backup of the primary drive. If anything happened, all I would have to do is swap drives. Right? Well, we had a super power surge. Blew the computer out even though it was on a surge protector. Using some kind of hard disk utility I was able to recover the primary drive, but the secondary and the power supply was toast. I was very lucky there and two months later that drive failed.
But I had a good external backup by then.

I now have a WD 1TB external backup drive. I keep in in our bedroom closet on the other side of the house from where the computer is and only bring it out to backup the computer.

I think about 98% of computer users don't even think about backing up their systems. A lot of times they'll say things like "I don't have anything important on there." But what about digital family photos? What about online financial statements, what about userid's & passwords for commonly visited websites? And what about all their bookmarks/favorite places?

And then you have the people who think once they buy their computers they are done. There is nothing else to buy. Hmph! When you purchase your computer that is just the start! What about anti-virus programs, what about backup programs? Operating system updates?

Whenever I mention the cost of an external drive and a backup program I usually get the response "Well, maybe in the future I'll think about it", but the reality is that some problem will come up and they won't have a backup for their computer either.