Backups [Was: Problems Installing Apps]

[Alex]

On Saturday, Apr 3, 2004, at 01:56 Canada/Eastern, Chris Walker wrote:

> [...] Although I believe in backups

Why the "although"?

> I notice since moving to X that people
> really really seem to stress their importance, perhaps more so than 
> when
> running OS9.  Given that X is supposed to be more robust/stable etc, 
> this
> extra emphasis always strikes me as a bit odd. [...]

Part of it has nothing to do with the OS.

More people depend on their computer now than five years ago; drives 
are much larger now (and hence contain much more data liable to be 
lost) then before. In '95, none of my clients had any business e-mail 
they needed to keep; today they have hundreds of megabytes worth of 
messages they have to back up.

Hard drive capacity is much bigger today than even a few years ago. 
There are two consequences. One, that there's more data to back up, 
because, as a well-known 'law' of computing says, the volume of data 
requiring storage grows to fill all available storage capacity. Second, 
that -- since the form factor hasn't changed -- the data density of 
current drives is orders of magnitude higher than it used to be. In 
other words, bits are crowded much closer together, hence everything 
from manufacturing tolerances to mechanical failures have a greater 
impact. This is balanced by greatly improved technologies -- but the 
latter are, in turn, balanced by the basic market reality that the 
customer wants to get more for less.

Part of it does have to do with OS X. Yes, it is much more robust and 
stable than Mac OS 9 and its predecessors; in fact, it's in a different 
class altogether. But robustness and stability (like everything else in 
this world) come at a price -- Mac OS X is also much more complex. 
Anyone who isn't all thumbs (or disabled) can fix a $70 bike -- but 
would you trust just any mechanic to poke about in the innards of your 
Porsche Boxster?

This is not unique to the Mac. Win XP is a much more powerful OS than 
Win 3.1 (to which it stands in about the same relation as that of Mac 
OS X to the 'classic' Mac OS), but it's also far more complex, and 
backing up is much more important, for the same reasons.

(Incidentally, many Mac users are not aware that there exists an 
operating system called OS/9, sometimes referred to as OS9 or OS-9, 
which has absolutely nothing to do with Mac OS 9.)

f