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TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

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Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#101

Post by josephg »

Aurornis wrote: post #81
codeulike wrote: post #32

Time Machine is held in high regard for some reason (maybe the fancy scrolling interface when you look for files to restore?) but it's not really useable. It pretends that backups-over-the-network are a possibility but its completely unstable over the network and invariably decides the backup is corrupt after a few months and then tells you you have to start from scratch.

> 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…

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."

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#102

Post by burnt-resistor »

I still don't understand why people insist on spending good money on a closed, proprietary appliance when they can run a general purpose, flexible server such as running Samba and NFS that can be tweaked to solve a variety of edge-cases that no closed system can match.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#103

Post by burnt-resistor »

tlb wrote: post #34

If you set Time Machine to use encrypted backups, it will create a fake disk that's really a directory tree with a bunch of gigabyte-sized binary chunks. This is safer because it doesn't require the file system to support anything fancy like symlinks or case-insensitive unicode file names. One downside is that restoring to anything other than a Mac is nontrivial.

Unencrypted sparse bundles for TM can also be created for non-TM supported network locations.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#105

Post by runjake »

jonhohle wrote: post #80

What is Apple’s QA process? Do they rely on some random set of manual tests that may or may not get run each release? There have been so many things that seem like one of the most valuable companies in the world would include in tests, but yet break or remain broken. As an experiment, open Console and filter just errors and faults. Dozens to hundreds of “errors” will scroll by representing the normal operation of the…

Most macOS teams have unit testing. The quality of which varies greatly.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#106

Post by burnt-resistor »

whartung wrote: post #39
unsnap_biceps wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hasn't the issues always been related to remote Time Machine? I have a usb drive I use and haven't heard of any issues with that setup. Am I missing something?

I lose my Time Machine drive, like, every year or two. Sometimes, Time Machine just goes stupid and I have to wipe the drive and start over. All of my efforts in the past to copy or repair or do anything to a Time Machine drive has ended in folly, so when it starts acting up, I just wipe it and start anew. Other times, it's the drive itself, and I swap it out. 99% of the time, it Just Works. Wiping the drive for me i…

Replication isn't a backup. You need to make periodic copies of the sparse bundle / directory to actually have a backup.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#107

Post by Marsymars »

maxkfranz wrote: post #30

I'm a big fan of SuperDuper [1]. I use it for daily differential backups to a secondary SSD. I don't get the hourly backups that TimeMachine has, but my SuperDuper backups are directly bootable in the event that my system disk dies. I'm sure you could do the same with cron and rsync, but I can't be bothered. [1] https://shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.ht...

> I don't get the hourly backups that TimeMachine has, but my SuperDuper backups are directly bootable in the event that my system disk dies.

Well as long as Apple hasn’t broken that with an update: https://www.shirtpocket.com/blog/index.php/shadedgrey/youre_...

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#108

Post by nine_k »

josephg wrote: post #101
Aurornis wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

Every new manager who inherits a reputable product (anything, from software to food) is tempted by the idea of cutting costs drastically to the detriment of the product quality. While the product would be coasting on its prior reputation, the manager would get promoted for saving oodles of money, and promoted away from that product, or leave the company altogether. The one who comes next would take the blame, and handle the consequences.

I assume many managers resist this temptation, but someone yields with regularity.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#109

Post by Marsymars »

ndegruchy wrote: post #31
Aurornis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, if you're the kind of person who has a Synology, it means you had to buy a NAS, drives, and setup all the associated machinery for Time Machine over your network I don’t understand why people think this is complicated or limited only to highly technical people. NAS units are popular with consumers now, not just tech people. They buy them with drives installed and they come with instructions to set up backups…

I get what you're saying. I will only quibble that the consumers in the market for a NAS, regardless of ease-of-setup, is still bordering technically inclined. My mother-in-law has enough trouble with her iPhone, let alone a server-type-device that she needs to administer. I would imagine a more typical consumer would be buying a USB or Thunderbolt connected drive and following the prompts to set it up. My impression…

> I would imagine a more typical consumer would be buying a USB or Thunderbolt connected drive and following the prompts to set it up.

The problem is that the typical consumer with a laptop never uses it in a docked configuration and just plugs it in to charge.

You may as well tell someone they need to regularly plug a USB hard drive into their iphone to back up their photos.

Re: TIL: Apple Broke Time Machine Again on Tahoe

#110

Post by Marsymars »

DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote: post #43
chmaynard wrote: post #4

Another disturbing example of sloppy execution by Apple Software Engineering. This only reinforces my resolve to avoid upgrading to macOS Tahoe.

I just switched back to Sequoia. I gave Tahoe a good shot, used it for 4 months. Tahoe is half-baked. I upgraded to Tahoe because most of the complaints were cosmetic which I don't care about at all, but the problems are worse than cosmetic. The last straw is that Finder's scroll bars are broken in Tahoe. I put up with it until I hit an emergency at work and was working as fast as I could (each minute mattered), Taho…

> I just switched back to Sequoia. I gave Tahoe a good shot, used it for 4 months. Tahoe is half-baked. I upgraded to Tahoe because most of the complaints were cosmetic which I don't care about at all, but the problems are worse than cosmetic.

Yeah, this is most I’ve regretted updating macOS in a decade. Apple Music in Tahoe is no longer capable of playing LAN-shared music without bugging out, which is a real bummer for my normal workflow of listening to music all day while I work.

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