It was never real good about backing up over a network except with hardware specifically designed to support that, like network routers that support Time Machin

It was never real good about backing up over a network except with hardware specifically designed to support that, like network routers that support Time Machine drives (or Apple's own Time Capsule). I don't know that I'd say my own experience with Time Machine is perfect, but it's generally done what I needed to do, and has actually saved my bacon a few times by letting me restore individual files back to specific versions easily -- something I'm not sure an rsync-based solution would really provide (e.g., versioning for everything).