Hi Mac friends;

A time goes on, we are seeing more and more of our Mac users updating their operating systems to OS X Leopard.  Also it seems that most of those who have not already made the move to Leopard are thinking about and getting ready for it.

This new operating system offers so many new features it's hard for me to come up with which one is best.

One of the new items that has impressed me most is Time Machine.

Time Machine is an application that runs in the background and doesn't interfere with anything you need to do.  While it is quietly doing its thing, it is making incremental backups (every hour) of any changes you have made.

These changes can be emails you have received, songs you have added to your iTunes library, photos you have added to to iPhoto, updates to and additions you have made to your Applications folder, names you have added to your Address Book or any of dozens of other items.

I realize that many of you are now backing up your computers to external hard drives with SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner.  Both of these applications are great for no one should be without a good backup.

Well, if you are already backing up, why should you know about Time Machine?

Well, let me try to explain it by using an analogy.  Making a bootable backup of your hard drive can be likened to taking a picture with a still camera.  The picture shows what your subject looked like at the moment the shutter clicked.  By contrast, using Time Machine is like taking a movie with a camcorder where the result is a series of still frames that when played show a moving picture.  Time Machine allows you to examine each of the frames that show what your computer looked like at any time. 

With your bootable backup you can only recreate your hard drive exactly as it was at the time the backup was run.  This is pretty useful and I think everyone should be doing this.

But, let's consider that time when, after a couple of days, weeks or months, you realize that an important email you received was intentionally or accidently deleted and now you really need it.  You can find it with Time Machine.

Or an important photo was deleted from iPhoto. You can find it with Time Machine.

Or a song was deleted from iTunes.  You can find it with Time Machine.

I think you get the idea.   Backups are important but there are several ways to do them.