*** The Official macOS Ventura thread ***

[Feek]

Do many people use Time Machine these days? Or do you just back up stuff to iCloud?

I do. iMac, Studio and MBA all back up to Time Machine. The iMac and Studio alternate between a locally attached drive and my NAS and the MBA just to my NAS.

All three also back up daily to a local SSD using Carbon Copy Cloner and the Studio has Backblaze installed.

And my documents/desktop folders are part of the iCloud Drive. Not that I keep anything whatsoever on the desktop.

 

[ChrisD.]

Do many people use Time Machine these days? Or do you just back up stuff to iCloud?

iCloud/OneDrive etc is not a backup.

I use Time Machine to a local NVMe, then that backs up to my NAS using the NAS software. That is then backed up to the Cloud.

 

[Bluecube]

iCloud/OneDrive etc is not a backup.

I use Time Machine to a local NVMe, then that backs up to my NAS using the NAS software. That is then backed up to the Cloud.

I hadn’t thought about doing it this way. I’ve had a lot of issues using Time Machine with an Unraid server so am currently using a local disk. Take it you just copy the Time Machine bundle to the NAS and that’s that?

 

[ChrisD.]

I hadn’t thought about doing it this way. I’ve had a lot of issues using Time Machine with an Unraid server so am currently using a local disk. Take it you just copy the Time Machine bundle to the NAS and that’s that?

I use Active Backup for Business to back the Mac up, it also backs up the external drive (which has Time Machine backups on it) and that data is sync'd into Synology C2 which includes versioning etc (you can also use S3, Backblaze etc). I've always found Time Machine to be a bit hit and miss with NAS's although that was mostly QNAP and I've not really tested it with Synology.

I did a test restore of the data which was in C2, I downloaded it and imaged it to a new drive and used Time Machine to restore it, without much of an issue. This way if my house burns down I know I can get a replacement laptop and use this process to fully restore everything.

 

[beachBOYken]

Do many people use Time Machine these days? Or do you just back up stuff to iCloud?

I used to on my iMac but now I have a MacBook I haven’t bothered, not that it’s different, I just realised I have very little important to backup. So I just use usb stick to backup anything along with iCloud backup, yeah yeah it’s not a backup but it works in a similar way.

 

[the-evaluator]

Do many people use Time Machine these days?

Yep.

 

[ChrisD.]

iCloud backup

iCloud isn't really a backup tool, it does file synchronisation (same with photos) however that's about it. You can't choose recovery points on a Mac and you can't recover files after they are deleted etc (well maybe until X days).

It will sync corruption, deletion, malware all happily with zero versioning, point in time recovery and you're very limited to where the data can go.

 

[beachBOYken]

iCloud isn't really a backup tool, it does file synchronisation (same with photos) however that's about it. You can't choose recovery points on a Mac and you can't recover files after they are deleted etc (well maybe until X days).

It will sync corruption, deletion, malware all happily with zero versioning, point in time recovery and you're very limited to where the data can go.

Yeah its just that for me, the small files I want backed up go to a usb drive. As for iCloud I treat that as a backup "lite" for example I lose my iPhone/Mac I know my files are still in the cloud and not lost forever.

 

[ChrisD.]

Yeah its just that for me, the small files I want backed up go to a usb drive. As for iCloud I treat that as a backup "lite" for example I lose my iPhone/Mac I know my files are still in the cloud and not lost forever.

All cool, as long as you know exactly what it is that iCloud Files offers you.

It's a personal bug bear of mine and the big vendors don't help. There's iCloud backup for iPhones and iPads and this is a sort of backup, as you have a point in time you can recover to. But from what I can tell there isn't any immutability, or certainly not any published details around it.

However for files it's different, and it's pretty similar with OneDrive, Google Drive etc, where there is very little baked in version control or actual protection. They are often confused (and marketed as) with backups, and they are far from it. Which can be dangerous as consumer perception of a product is different than what the product does.

 

[Throrik]

Absolutely running with zero proper backups here. iCloud only - the odd important thing is synced to multiple providers. I have an external drive which has been used since about 2009 which is probably due for replacement at some point, but it's not exactly adhering to the 3:2:1 ratio. Considering I design and implement large scale backup solutions as part of my job I should probably do a better job on my home stuff, but I don't have much in the way that I care about.

 

[Bluecube]

Saying you don’t have much means that you have something… I’d do a proper backup before you lose that something! There are so many folk out there with unbacked up phones and PCs with years and years of (e.g.) family photos on them that I’m surprised there’s not been a massive fuss made about backing up!

 

[beachBOYken]

Saying you don’t have much means that you have something… I’d do a proper backup before you lose that something! There are so many folk out there with unbacked up phones and PCs with years and years of (e.g.) family photos on them that I’m surprised there’s not been a massive fuss made about backing up!

That reminds me, I do need to do an up to date backup of my photos.

Not done it in a while, I can't remember exactly how I backup the photos file to a usb drive.

 

[Throrik]

Saying you don’t have much means that you have something… I’d do a proper backup before you lose that something! There are so many folk out there with unbacked up phones and PCs with years and years of (e.g.) family photos on them that I’m surprised there’s not been a massive fuss made about backing up!

Nothing that would ruin my life if I lost it, or even inconvenience me beyond 30s of work - plus synced to multiple providers iCloud and OneDrive, which as Chris says isn't a backup, but it is another copy of the data, I'm not convinced that both of those are going anywhere. Family photos definitely aren't backed up for me, but I mean my main things are available elsewhere anyway, payslips, agreements, government documentation etc. I'm a digital minimalist though so not exactly your normal user.

 

[Cromulent]

Pretty much all of my stuff is in the cloud. I have two Microsoft 365 accounts synced along with iCloud. I guess I could dump it on an external drive as well, but I need to keep most things in the cloud so I can share it easily with colleagues.

Edit: All my programming stuff is on Git Lab as well.

 

[ic1male]

Edit: All my programming stuff is on Git Lab as well.

Ooh, what are you a programmer in?

 

[Cromulent]

Ooh, what are you a programmer in?

Mainly websites using Express.js or Django, but I'm learning Swift for iOS development and will also look into Kotlin for making an Android port.

 

[ic1male]

I'm learning Swift for iOS development

That's what I'm hoping to get started in when I get round to purchasing the hardware.

 

[Cromulent]

That's what I'm hoping to get started in when I get round to purchasing the hardware.

The Apple docs are really impressive.

 

[Broken Hope]

13.4 RC is out.

macOS Ventura 13.4 includes the following enhancements and bug fixes:

• Sports feed in the sidebar of Apple News gives easy access to stories, scores, standings, and more, for the teams and leagues you follow

• My Sports score and schedule cards in Apple News take you directly to game pages where you can find additional details about specific games

• Resolves an issue where Auto Unlock with Apple Watch does not log you into your Mac

• Fixes a Bluetooth issue where keyboards connect slowly to Mac after restarting

• Addresses a VoiceOver issue with navigating to landmarks on webpages

• Fixes an issue where Screen Time settings may reset or not sync across all devices

 

[Throrik]

The Apple docs are really impressive.

Swift Playgrounds is a fun little thing to go through to learn the very basics for too.