So Time Machine. Brief summary: the next version of the Macintosh operating system will include software that automatically backs up all of your files, and lets you easily (using the cheesiest interface since Dashboard’s) restore lost files with a few clicks. Every single document you create will be versioned daily, so if you accidentally deleted a bunch of stuff a month ago and need it back, you’ll be able to get it. I may be getting ahead of myself (and Apple), but I think there’s a good possibility that TIme Machine is part of an architecture that will take your entire computer to the next level: the famed information superhighway.
Here’s a fairly frequent annoyance of mine: I’m sitting on the coach and I want to look something up. I grab Katherine’s laptop, look that thing up, and then I want to do something else, but the files or programs or whatever are on another computer, which is clear across the room. Both computers are on the same network, so I can log in and get what I need, but it’s not the same as sitting at that computer.
Let’s say that with Mac OS 10.5, Apple announces that through their .mac service you’ll now have unlimited storage space for Time Machine, either at a price, or even free (“Buy a new Mac, get infinite storage for all your data — never lose a file again.”). When you set up your account, you set up your .mac service, and Time Machine automatically over the next week copies all your data to your secure .mac server. (Seems crazy, but consider that in the course of a day you probably only work on a few documents at once and receive some emails. Once the initial upload is done, all Time Machine needs to do is back up those files.) So great, now you have a backup of your files that you can access whenever you need to, provided you have internet access. If your house burns down, you can buy a new computer and restore all the files from the backup, or maybe even pay Apple a small fee to burn you DVDs of those files and send them to you.
Why stop at backups, though? If you can back everything up to a server, you can also do it to an iPod. Plug that iPod into another computer, and you could log into your account just like normal and have access to all of your files. That computer can resync any changes, as can the iPod. Have a second computer you’re using all the time? That one can stay synced, too. What results is a huge shift in how we use computers. The only thing that we all accept to be ubiquitous right now is email. I can log into Gmail at home, then at work, and know that all my email is there. Imagine if every single file on your computer were this way. Log into any Mac, anywhere, and have access to all your files.
There is, of course, no evidence that this is where Apple’s headed with all of this. Bandwidth is a huge problem as well, obviously. Still, forcasting into the future, it seems silly that we’d have all these computers hooked up to a network, but still have to recall on which one we saved some particular file.