4 ms·

> Time Machine gets little to no love, and users are getting steered ever more strongly towards backing up data onto iCloud. Is there a platform other than Lin

> Time Machine gets little to no love, and users are getting steered ever more strongly towards backing up data onto iCloud. Is there a platform other than Linux that doesn't push integration with cloud services? Windows pushes OneDrive, and Google pushes Google Drive on their platforms. Also, I would argue that Time Machine gets little to no love because it's nearly feature complete. It's dead simple to use, does what it says on the tin, and stays out of the way to the point I forget about it most of the time. Is there anything in particular that you feel that Time Machine is missing? > Even buying an Apple device isn't really buying a device anymore. You're really buying a transferable lease for 6-7 years on a device that has a hard stop to go to landfill after that time due to software obsolescence by way of unpatched vulnerabilities. Again, is there a platform other than Linux that isn't similar? Also, with the progress that the Asahi Linux project is making it should be very feasible to slap Linux on an M1 Mac as soon as it goes out of support. > I don't actually dislike Chromebooks at all, but this is saddening when you've bought a computer to use it as a computer and any sense of ownership or agency is quietly clawed away. I keep seeing vague hand wavy claims like this on HN, but I feel that Windows, Chromebooks, and Macs are still very open to tinkering.

jcoletti 3y ago
> Also, I would argue that Time Machine gets little to no love because it's nearly feature complete. It's dead simple to use, does what it says on the tin, and stays out of the way to the point I forget about it most of the time. Is there anything in particular that you feel that Time Machine is missing? I almost completely agree with this, but do like the scheduling features of the free third-party "TimeMachineEditor" tool, which lets you control the backup intervals, windows, and set an exclusion window. Otherwise, TM has been pretty flawless for me.
- highwaylights 3y ago
  To give one example that is particularly troublesome: Time Machine allows verification of backups when writing to a network share. When you write to an internal or external drive, you can’t verify your backup. Any corruption to your backup over time can’t be detected so you can’t really trust that the backup is going to work when you need it. On one hand, sure, there’s no way to verify historical file changes as the old versions are no longer on the current disk, but I should at least be able to verify that the current snapshot matches my current file system.
howinteresting 3y ago
My 5 year old laptop supports Windows 11 which means that it will likely get updates for another 5-6 years from today. That's a total of at least 10-11 years of support. This tends to vary by generation (my laptop is just new enough for official Windows 11 support) but I think in any case is quite impressive. And of course after 2028 or whatever I can throw Linux on it and use it for another few years.
- highwaylights 3y ago
  I’d be surprised if it’s not longer. Windows 11 support wasn’t based on age of device like in the macOS world. They did a really good job (IMHO) of communicating the security rationale for having that line in the sand for people that asked that question.
highwaylights 3y ago
> Again, is there a platform other than Linux that isn't similar? Windows. If you buy a Windows computer it will retain software support for many, many years - and support for new versions is never arbitrarily withdrawn based on device age. The only restriction I know of in the Windows 11 migration was that it would insist on TPM2 support (and for very good reasons). Macs do have Asahi Linux in the pipeline, but the arbitrary withdrawal of support on the basis of not having bought an entirely new computer from the same vendor in X number of years is really anti-consumer, and I’m surprised it’s not illegal. Even in the Windows world, if a new major version comes out you could pay to upgrade (even though I don’t believe end users have had to do that for several major releases now).

jcoletti 3y ago

> Also, I would argue that Time Machine gets little to no love because it's nearly feature complete. It's dead simple to use, does what it says on the tin, and stays out of the way to the point I forget about it most of the time. Is there anything in particular that you feel that Time Machine is missing? I almost completely agree with this, but do like the scheduling features of the free third-party "TimeMachineEditor" tool, which lets you control the backup intervals, windows, and set an exclusion window. Otherwise, TM has been pretty flawless for me.

highwaylights 3y ago
To give one example that is particularly troublesome: Time Machine allows verification of backups when writing to a network share. When you write to an internal or external drive, you can’t verify your backup. Any corruption to your backup over time can’t be detected so you can’t really trust that the backup is going to work when you need it. On one hand, sure, there’s no way to verify historical file changes as the old versions are no longer on the current disk, but I should at least be able to verify that the current snapshot matches my current file system.

howinteresting 3y ago

My 5 year old laptop supports Windows 11 which means that it will likely get updates for another 5-6 years from today. That's a total of at least 10-11 years of support. This tends to vary by generation (my laptop is just new enough for official Windows 11 support) but I think in any case is quite impressive. And of course after 2028 or whatever I can throw Linux on it and use it for another few years.

highwaylights 3y ago
I’d be surprised if it’s not longer. Windows 11 support wasn’t based on age of device like in the macOS world. They did a really good job (IMHO) of communicating the security rationale for having that line in the sand for people that asked that question.

highwaylights 3y ago

> Again, is there a platform other than Linux that isn't similar? Windows. If you buy a Windows computer it will retain software support for many, many years - and support for new versions is never arbitrarily withdrawn based on device age. The only restriction I know of in the Windows 11 migration was that it would insist on TPM2 support (and for very good reasons). Macs do have Asahi Linux in the pipeline, but the arbitrary withdrawal of support on the basis of not having bought an entirely new computer from the same vendor in X number of years is really anti-consumer, and I’m surprised it’s not illegal. Even in the Windows world, if a new major version comes out you could pay to upgrade (even though I don’t believe end users have had to do that for several major releases now).