Needless to say, I was pretty bummed when my MacBook harddrive failed and I found out TimeMachine had failed to backup my unpublished photos in Aperture. Since everything involved came from Cupertino, Apple deserved at least a letter asking for a hand.
Taking a page from Consumerist, I looked up the executive responsible for applications and sent him a polite snail-mail letter detailing the situation and how the undisclosed limitation had impacted me. Since two Apple applications were at fault, I asked for a $328 refund of their combined price.
About a week later, I got a call from someone in their executive office. He was polite and tried to be sympathetic, but ultimately wouldn’t budge from the position that Apple wasn’t responsible for data loss, even if their own backup software failed to backup data from one of their own applications. I couldn’t seem to convince him that such defective software justified a refund.
He did throw me one bone: a goodwill gesture of an extra power adapter for the guilty MacBook. It certainly doesn’t redeem their failure, but it was good to see them at least make some effort to retain a disgruntled customer. If nothing else, I can hawk it on eBay to pay for the data recovery…
August 19th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
i’ve been using apple for about 2.5 years now (still use windows), but i have no confidence in time machine. every time i read something about TM a user is complaining about this or that limitation or quirk. i mean this respectfully and don’t ask rhetorically: but if you are deep into photography (either as a business or hobby), given all the gripes/observations/criticisms about TM, why would you trust it all?
August 20th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
A fair question, Carl.
Aside from this incident and other shortcomings, Time Machine is still easier to use and maintain than my previous rsync backup scripts. I also do have a backup of all my full-size published photos in a non-public area of my web server.
Though since Time Machine also doesn’t address the need for off-site backups, I’m considering duplicity, if anyone has comments on that.
August 20th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
well — assuming you don’t know about these services already — i use jungle disk for off-site; and i use superduper (w/external HD). superduper seems very easy to use … but my backup needs, while very vital to me, aren’t all that complicated; i don’t need to perform a backup every day, just a few times every couple of weeks.
March 19th, 2009 at 1:38 am
I have to say that your blog is pretty cool. If you could add a few more videos I would really appreciate it!