Thank you for your input, uncle. Go have some stuffing and sit in front of the TV. That’s a good boy.
Honeychile, I’m just barely to the point I don’t really use 68K apps any more. (Although I’d still rather do most quick-n-dirty sketching with SuperPaint 3 than any tools I’ve got). I still use PowerPC apps, not just 32-bit apps, although I’m content with doing so on a virtual machine.
The most important and irreplaceable 32 bit app is actually Timbuktu Pro. You hand me a 64 bit app that can remote into all my other Macs and I’ll switch. (That includes MacOS 10.3 macs, MacOS 8.6 macs, and a System 6.08 mac… it also lets me transfer files into and out of several virtual environments that aren’t fully integrated with their host OS, such as Windows 95 and Windows for Workgroups 3.11).
Also have some stored routines in QuickKeys that I haven’t managed to replicate in Keyboard Maestro, as impressive as it is.
Eh, i am currently whining about my new apple, but i don’t (yet?) A think the purchase was a mistake. My newest Dell was definitely a mistake. It’s glitchy. And it’s os is constantly popping ads into the screen. Drives me nuts. (Buy macafee antivirus software! Bing can help you shop!)
Oh, =update: I ran Carbon Copy Cloner after booting the new box from the external Mojave backup drive, after running one final CCC backup of the old laptop. Backup-in-reverse, erasing the internal SSD and overwriting it with my Mojave environment. Booted and it opened with everything where it was supposed to be, right down to restoring the open windows in my web browser. Nice. Worth the hassle.
I loved my Time Machine and it saved my ass a time or two when my computer (also known as “pretty much my entire personal and professional life”) crapped out for some reason. But last time I had some kind of issue with the Time Machine, the folks at our Mac store, who were able to fix it, warned me that when it finally died for real (an inevitability as it was an old piece of equipment living in an unairconditioned environment in the humid tropics) I would have to move to a different system.
That day has come to pass - no more Time Machine for me. They still use them at the Mac Store, though.
Hehe you want a 64-bit app that will remote all your stone-age hardware? Who pays you to use tin cans and string?
TimeMachine is the backup software, and it still works just fine. TimeCapsule is the WiFi backup hardware that Apple has killed off.
Sorry @abcdefghij - of course you’re right, it’s the Time Capsule I meant. (Shouldn’t you throw in a gratuitous “you stupid idiot” since we’re in the Pit?)
Oh, thanks. I just created a new time machine yesterday, to back up my new Mac, and was confused by that.
Time Machine is perfectly fine for what it does: it maintains a backwards-looking repository of what used to be on your hard drive, up to and including the last time your backup ran.
I prefer Carbon Copy Cloner (or its competitors SuperDuper and/or Retrospect) and their philosophy of backing up (or “duplicating”): it maintains an exact copy bit for bit and byte for byte of your hard drive, optionally keeping as many files that have since then been deleted as will fit, and it’s bootable.
Restoration from Time Machine is all about opening Time Machine and rummaging around for that file you used to have, or the version of it you had before you utterly screwed it up, and fetching it back. You can do an enormous restoration of thousands of files, but this is really what it’s geared towards, a safety net at the individual file level.
Restoration from CCC (and its similar competitors) is all about “uh oh, computer won’t boot, either I hosed the operating system or it failed physically” so you boot from the backup and continue seamlessly from where you left off, then as soon as you get a chance you reformat the internal drive, clone/duplicate in the reverse direction, and reboot from the restored internal. Or if it’s hosed beyond redemption, insert a replacement internal drive and clone/duplicate onto it instead and reboot from it.
My needs and concerns (and workflow), not an innate superiority of CCC over Time Machine, is what makes it the tool for the job for me.
My non-techsavvy gal friend from the lower east side NY asked me to set her up with backup and I attached two externals and run Time Machine to one and CCC to the other.
Here’s a new Apple thing that is frustrating, and it is related to this thread as it regards using older Macs.
Apple just started a thing called Advanced Data Protection (ADP), which encrypts much of your iCloud data with a key that you (not Apple) posses. This is great. (2022 is a bit late to implement a feature that iCloud should have had at launch.)
You cannot use ADP unless all of your Apple devices are using the newest OS. That means all phones and tablets must be on 16.2 (came out this morning!), and Macs must be on Viaduct 11 or whatever the latest MacOS is called.
Even if your daily machines are all modern, but you have an old MacBook Pro in the closet you haven’t used in a year, but keep around as a backup? Sorry, either remove it from your iCloud account or no ADP for you.
I should be able to encrypt my iPad backups, even if I have an old Mac. If I can’t see the encrypted files from my old Mac, that is understandable, and should be my choice.
I don’t care if the intricacies of the ADP require certain hooks in the new OS to handle the encrypted tickets and updated login tokens. I don’t care why Apple designed ADP to not work with old devices; my point is they should have designed it to gracefully fail with old devices, instead of requiring upgrades to use ADP at all.
And fuck off with the “I don’t use iCloud” responses. Using iCloud is an excellent feature of i-devices. Continuous cloud based backup and 50GB for $0.99/month are great features. I know, some of you don’t use iCloud, and don’t miss it, right up until you loose your iPhone and all of the important data on it.
That’s why I use it. It’s really cheap for what you get.
Hmm. I’ve never used iCloud. And i don’t have an iPhone. What does it do for me if i just have a laptop?
My companion bought me a coffee cup like this one:
So it’s server space being made available to you, along with built-into-the-OS software that – theoretically – keeps all your data safe by making sure a copy of it is residing on that server. ETA: Without having to learn how to run backup software, i.e., it just automatically happens in the background, etc. /ETA
There are people who would consider that their data on Apple’s own servers is more securely kept than that same data on their own hard drive. I’m not one of them.
My above-mentioned non-techsavvy Lower East Side friend is perpetually frustrated by not being able to find where she saved documents. Internet goes out for awhile and documents she thought were in a local folder aren’t there – turns out she was saving to a shadow folder of the same folder hierarchy except in The Cloud.
I detest any technology that obscures from the end user where their own data is kept. (Hey iTunes and iPhoto / Photos, yeah, you!). If you don’t understand file and folder hierarchy in its native simple form, you probably shouldn’t have a computer.
A lot of office-based technology uses some sort of cloud. My company is partnered with an IT firm that maintains ours. Of course, I’m not going to put any personal files in the cloud, but it’s so handy for office files. When I changed departments, I was issued a Macbook Pro and it integrated the PC-based cloud effortlessly.
I use both PCs and Mac, but my department mates adamantly will not use PCs. They attribute anything that goes wrong on their Macs to Microsoft issues. It’s kind of funny. I’ll try to tell them PCs aren’t as inferior to Macs as they used to be, and they sneer and call me names.
They’re wrong and you’re right. I still like the MacOS experience better but Windows has come a long long way, and so have hardware PCs themselves. Definitely not sneer-worthy. I prefer not to use one, myself, but I grew up Mac and I’m fluent in it (in my own evaluation, if not necessarily that of Charlie_Tan) whereas I have to ask advice for some embarrassingly simple things when I"m fumbling around in Windows.
A copy of which data?
All the Word documents you create, all the Excel spreadsheets you make, all the MP3 files you rip from your old CD collection, that web page you’re trying to create for your HTML class, your recipes database, the email attachments you downloaded from your sister, those old photos you scanned on the flatbed scanner at school… you know, your files.
I use both Macs and PCs. In fact, i currently own two MacBook pros (I’m in the middle of migrating) and two PCs (a small HP for carrying around, and a larger Dell for gaming). They each have advantages and disadvantages. I like Windows 10, but I’m cranky about a lot of the “helpful” features in Windows 11.
Not in 50gb. 
My new Mac has a 4TB drive because the old one, at 1TB, is mostly full. It’s cheaper to buy more space than to sort through my photos and delete 98% of them.