[Brave Ulysses]

.mac is currently down with a message about enhancing the experience.

It does seem overdue for an upgrade.

I guess we'll get the new webmail appearance and hopefully some other stuff (I'd like more iDisk space)

[Wyatt]

It's not been that long since the last iDisk storage bump, has it? I don't see that being part of it (but it'd be great if it was).

The mail interface is probably all it is. I wouldn't get too excited.

[Brave Ulysses]

you're probably right. More than any features I would like it if they just made it more reliable and faster. It pains me to renew it every year but I do find it midly useful and convenient. I just wish it was more reliable.

I'm guessing storage increases will wait for Leopard's release since I'm banking on .Mac being an integral part of Time Machine.

[Wyatt]

I'm afraid Time Machine will be too storage-intensive to utilize .Mac. From everything Apple's saying about it in public now, I'd say you'll need a dedicated local external hard drive for Time Machine.

That said, some basic Time Machine integration would be really good for .Mac, I think. It might make some people who would never buy .Mac before think about it if they could use Time Machine to back up folders of important documents with little effort.

[chucker]

Time Machine is oriented around backing up entire hard drive partitions, not particular files (or even just home folders). The storage needs would be positively huge. Even if Apple were to offer so much storage (say, 100 GBs in iDisk), it would take unrealistically long to perform backups, which would jeopardize a key aspect of Time Machine: that it's so fast it appears to be seamless.

Sure, subsequent backups wouldn't take as long, but unless they do decide to add binary diffs, it's still too much.

IMHO.

[Brave Ulysses]

You make valid points but right now there are major holes/gaps in Time Machine. These are only holes/gaps because of the way Apple usually does things. Right now Time Machine, at least to me, seems like a very unApple solution because it really only works as intended with additional third party hardware. Meaning, an external hard drive.

That's not Apple taking advantage of controlling the whole widget. It's not making Apple any more revenue (unless they start selling an external hard drive which i don't see happening). It's also not increasing .Mac yearly subscriptions which I see becoming more and more important to Apple down the road since it's consistent revenue.

Also, with Time Machine's current method of only updating once every 24 hours and not continuously throughout the day it lends itself well to a major upload of changed data from the previous 24 hour period.

It's all speculation, but I think Apple has something up its sleeve in regards to Time Machine backup options because they pretty much ignored it during the presentation and haven't said a whole lot about it outside of the presentation either.

[chucker]

Originally Posted by Brave Ulysses Also, with Time Machine's current method of only updating once every 24 hours and not continuously throughout the day it lends itself well to a major upload of changed data from the previous 24 hour period.

Time Machine does have an hourly option, which amounts to very short backup cycles, usually about a minute with an average workload. Of course, due to the lack of binary diffs, if you're a video editor and add or modify huge uncompressed data, or if you run Parallels a lot (thus modifying a huge disk image), you have to endure multiple-minute backups.

It's all speculation, but I think Apple has something up its sleeve in regards to Time Machine backup options because they pretty much ignored it during the presentation and haven't said a whole lot about it outside of the presentation either.

Yeah, I do see where you're coming from. I just don't think Internet-based backup is feasible at this point, though JungleDisk and Joyent BingoDisk clearly disagree (but, come on, $199 a year for backup alone?).

[Wyatt]

I don't think Net backup is feasible now either, especially for providers. I don't think anybody wants to see .Mac go up to $200-300/year, and I really believe we'd see an increase like that if Apple was to provide a comprehensive backup option.

[Windowsrookie]

Damn you MacPro users and your four hard drives....

[SpecMode]

Well, new features/storage upgrades/etc. are real nice and all, and would help a bit in justifying $99/year to keep my account up-to-date, but personally, I'd be happy if they simply fixed whatever it was that they broke about a week ago that's got Mail.app asking me for my .mac password every hour or so.

[jdcfsu]

It's back up... but I don't see any changes other then this post in the system status: "10/09/2006 Web Services were unavailable for 2 hour(s) to all .Mac Members"

Who knows what they were doing.

[psmith2.0]

Getting it ready for the real update, probably. I know in the past that the store has gone down for a short while on a day (or time frame) normally not associated with new product releases and announcements.

A day or two later, voila...new stuff. Maybe they have to take it offline to do some behind the scenes set-up work, so the actual transition (like the actual website and store additions on new products) goes smooth?

I don't know...I know nothing about this sort of stuff. Just speculating...

Yeah, I was expecting some massive overhaul: new look, new features, new goodies, etc. But all I see different is a link on the front pages for some new "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials.



Oh, and I gotta say it: I find the relationship counselor quite attractive, in that straight-laced, bookish, "hair's in a bun, but you know she undoes it and takes the glasses off when she's getting down to business" kinda way. Rawwrrr.



Odd...maybe tomorrow or the next day it'll all come together and make sense.