Apple yanks wireless backup from Leopard last minute

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  • Reply 61 of 162
    sdw2001sdw2001 Posts: 18,015member
    Wel, I for one was looking forward to this feature as the owner of a MBP. Having to plugin is going to be a pain in the ass. I was unsure of upgrading to Leopard right away, mostly due to money. This will actually give me pause, not that it's a huge deal.



    The "To Do" notes will be an issue once I get an iphone (after it goes 3G). I would use that feature as I would dotmac integration (both are a must for me).



    Now, should people be irritated? Yes, I think they should be. Clearly Apple has its reasons, reasons that are probably stability/performance related. But they had this feature publicly announced. They talked about it. It was a sub feature under one of the major new features in the OS itself. It was one of my first questions....would it work wirelessly? Apple answered my question, and I was happy with their answer.



    But now they yank the feature at the very last possible second. I think that's not right, unless the issue was so major it was going to cause your computer to explode or zero its drive, then explode. They should have a least publicly announced the reason.



    I don't fault people for buying an Extreme either. They did so on Apple's word. There was no reason to think they'd yank the rug with 12 hours to go. Usually I'd say "you're screwed, don't be a baby" but in this case I think Apple screwed this one up.
  • Reply 62 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by camimac View Post


    That's not the point, do you know many people who will bother? Isn't the whole idea of the Mac that "it just works" (even though that's just one of the worst marketing mottos I've ever seen in my life)?



    Um, well that's probably why they yanked it. It didn't "just work".
  • Reply 63 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mungler View Post


    crees - Time Machine will do a backup every time you connect an external disk, if its overdue. This, i think, is a good solution for laptop users.



    As much as I don't agree with all the whiners, your suggestion is not a good solution for laptop users.



    The whole point of Time Machine is that it happens without your interaction, in the background, automatically. If you have to remember to plug in an external drive to do an occasional "catch up" backup, you're no better off than with any previous backup solution. Not to mention, your backups become so sparse that you'll probably miss files on occasion that get deleted before they are backed up.



    This wireless Airport feature was not only posted all over the web site, it was featured prominently in Jobs' WWDC preview of Leopard. He had a slide with a HD hooked up to a Base Station, using Time Machine with an iMac. So it was reasonable for people to expect this functionality in the final shipping product.



    However, I do think that persistent bugs must have made it necessary to temporarily disable it. My hope, and hunch, is that it will be a top priority for 10.5.1 to get this feature working again. As others have said, an unreliable backup system is worse than no backup system at all. It leaves you with a false sense of security. And the last thing Apple needs is hordes of articles talking about how Time Machine ate people's entire photo libraries, etc.



    As far as TB drives, and Airport N being too slow for backups, I have to disagree. Sure, the initial backup will take a really long time over Airport. That's why I was planning on doing the initial one with a wire, and then moving over to wireless, as I did with my Apple TV. But the hourly and daily backups should be relatively small, file-size wise. On an average day, how many GBs do you change on your HD? I'm thinking that my average would be 100-500 MBs, factoring in iTunes, work files, preferences, etc. That's a few minutes over 802.11n. Sure, some days it will be more, others much less. But I've been using .Mac's Backup program over the air with my Base Station for months now, and it works fine. I can't see this being the real issue. You can still use Time Machine over the network if the drive is physically connected to another Mac. Isn't that still going over the air if my laptop is connecting to the network via Airport?



    I suspect it's a bug of some kind in the base station itself, or in the Airport Disk drivers that they have to hammer out with a firmware update.
  • Reply 64 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by camimac View Post


    Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly does the Sarbanes-Oxley Act got to do with this?



    I was under the impression that Apple could not provide additional features unless they recorded income from a product as subscription revenue (which would also mean that revenue is spread out overal several quarters).



    Apple charged $1.99 for the 802.11n update earlier this year becaues of that and are spreading income received from iPhones over several months for that same reason.



    The basic idea is that a company can't sell a product based on some future value not yet available. That's what got Enron in trouble . The work around is to charge a "subscription" fee, so that the customer is continually paying for the product, so that feature additions can be included. This subscription is invisible to the purchaser, and completely handled by Apple accounting. So, potentially, you're one time $129 for leopard may be recorded by them as $5.375 every month for the next 24-months.



    Unfortunately for Apple, that completely skews quarterly earnings, because they can't realize the full purchase price on anything until whatever "subscription" period they have created has come to an end. For something like the iPhone, that may mean it even looks like a loss, when in reality, the money just hasn't been recorded as income yet. Fortunately for Apple, that hasn't seemed to affect their quarterly earnings at all.



    (IANAA [i am not an accountant], I've just been an observer on how this has affected business before.)
  • Reply 65 of 162
    akacakac Posts: 512member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Eriamjh View Post


    Apple is looking like M$ with feature deletion.



    You do realize Apple has done this on almost every OS X release since 10.2? We can count a bunch of stuff. Most of it did come at some point, though some did not (Home on iPod anyone?).



    Leopard is still very awesome even with a few missing things. I know for sure that this feature was axed due to bugs that were not resolvable before release.
  • Reply 66 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Leonard View Post


    Big deal! So Apple yanked one or two small (and I do mean SMALL) sub-features before release. Maybe it had some problems and wasn't ready. Would you rather have the feature and lose data? I think Apple's done this in the past once or twice. Something isn't ready for the Gold Master, so they don't put it in and release it in a later update.



    You can pretty much simulate this feature by sharing an external disk on a second computer.



    At least Apple stayed on schedule.



    The way current version of Leopard looks, it should have been yanked altogether, until it looks more like a release and less like a beta. There are problems pretty much everywhere with the current "release" (which I have just installed from the box). Mail, .Mac syncing, Finder, sharing... And I'm sure as I'm digging deeper, more issues will show up. So far it doesn't look much better than the latest beta I've had (559).



    Apple is the new Microsoft. Congratulations, everyone.
  • Reply 67 of 162
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tetzel1517 View Post


    Off-topic, but where are you finding HD content for your Apple TV?



    Legitimately, there are some HD podcasts. Also, if you have an EyeTV HD tuner, you can transcode an HD recording to AppleTV compatible 720p file. That's hardly an ideal solution though unless you plan to re-watch them a lot.
  • Reply 68 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by farlander View Post


    The way current version of Leopard looks, it should have been yanked altogether, until it looks more like a release and less like a beta. There are problems pretty much everywhere with the current "release" (which I have just installed from the box). Mail, .Mac syncing, Finder, sharing... And I'm sure as I'm digging deeper, more issues will show up. So far it doesn't look much better than the latest beta I've had (559).



    Apple is the new Microsoft. Congratulations, everyone.



    Could you outline the problems that you are having?
  • Reply 69 of 162
    So any AFP-writable share will work? Seems no one has mentioned (guess it's still a bit early) what happens if you are using a shared folder on a partition with other data on it?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by alienzed View Post


    Personal File Sharing works wirelessly, so mount your drive and back up to it and stop complaining.



  • Reply 70 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by audiopollution View Post


    Could you outline the problems that you are having?



    First, every time I start Mail client, I get different views: sometimes it shows RSS, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it shows "ON MY MAC", sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes id shows "REMINDERS", sometimes it doesn't.



    .Mac sync complained that there are conflicts between .Mac and local Address book. When I went to check - the conflicts were exactly the same, no difference, so I asked it to resolve conflicts, using local data. After that Sync would still say there's 1 unresolved conflict, but when it starts Conflict Resolver - no conflicts detected. The only way to fix this that I could come up with is to reset .Mac from local data, then reset local data back from .Mac.



    Also, as it turns out, Leopard is completely 32-bit. No signs of anything 64-bit, and I have the latest MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo (it IS 64-bit capable).



    $ uname -a

    Darwin mymacbookpro 9.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.0.0: Tue Oct 9 21:35:55 PDT 2007; root:xnu-1228~1/RELEASE_I386 i386



    That's all after about 15 minutes of poking around in Leopard after the installation. I'm sure there'll be more problems discovered later, as I start testing other parts of the system.



    To add to the list of frustration, it kernel paniced, when I starter Parallels Desktop for the first time. And VPN Tracker is not working completely.
  • Reply 71 of 162
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Leonard View Post


    Big deal! So Apple yanked one or two small (and I do mean SMALL) sub-features before release.



    For some people, ZFS and Resolution Independence aren't small features.
  • Reply 72 of 162
    emig647emig647 Posts: 2,454member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Louzer View Post


    Once software hits beta, features aren't supposed to be added/dropped. Once it hits release candidate, its just bug fixing time. Once it actually is announced, you actually expect them to know what it will/won't contain. If it has to change, fine. But, again, tell your customers, don't try to hide it.



    That's untrue. If software hits beta and SQA comes back with a big bug report on a feature. And you can't fix the feature in time, you have no choice but to cut it... or push the date further. There is no other choice.
  • Reply 73 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Leonard View Post


    Big deal! So Apple yanked one or two small (and I do mean SMALL) sub-features before release.



    Okay, sole arbiter of what's important to individual buyers.



    I for one purchased Leopard in large part for time machine, to backup to the external drive I purchased specifically for time machine, which I have connected to the Airport Extreme I purchased specifically for time machine.



    Come on Apple. That sucks.
  • Reply 74 of 162
    [QUOTE=Louzer;1163448]
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by digitalclips View Post




    Too bad Apple doesn't supply any way of recording or distributing HD content. So you're stuck either getting it off bittorrent or recording it yourself via EyeTV.





    Hello- 720p is HD wannabe! How much of that "720p" did you get from iTunes? Have you been enjoying your YouTube smear videos on that 42" Plasma ?-loser Without handbrake. AppleTV would be in the grave already.

    And AppleTV must be one of the most environmental unfriendly products of all time with the heat that it constantly generates. And it has no on/off switch but it constantly on- and for what?

    And I don't use VISTA but will need a VISA in order to buy a new computer to run Lepoard's DVD player, new external hard drive to run time machine, dotMac account, etc. Hey- a new VISA add in the making!
  • Reply 75 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GQB View Post


    Ah yes... the howling at the moon begins.

    Get a clue... features miss release. Welcome to the real world.

    The fact that it was on the list in the first place means that it will be out as soon as its reliably working. (Want to see how many MORE people would be pissed if it had been shoehorned in and it didn't work properly?)



    And finally, anyone who buys based on rumors of features is a f**cking idiot.



    Rumors of features? So, I'm a f**cking idiot for relying on Apple's online marketing material? Oh, shit. Stupid me. Brilliant you.
  • Reply 76 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Kimo_ona_Mac View Post


    This issue on Apple ynking wireless backup is a no-brainer. Simple response to clear this matter with the MAC universe - It will take a week to backup a 1TB drive via Apple airport extreme (n)using Leopard and Time Machine and if the connection drops you have to start all over again. I truly believe that is why it was dropped. It takes me an hour to move 10gb via Airport extreme connected to a NAS drive. TOO SLOW to use as a networked backup for me and the family. DUH!



    First of all, no one is backing up all of a 1TB drive via Time Machine most likely. You don't need to back up applications, the OS etc... What are you using Time Machine to back up a 1TB drive to anyhow? A 5 TB RAID?



    Plus, this was one of the reasons why everyone was looking forward to 802.11n - much faster.



    Finally, you are not constantly moving the whole drive. The first time yes, then after that it is incremental. Thus, you could do a hard connect for the first pass and then use wireless from then on.
  • Reply 77 of 162
    haggarhaggar Posts: 1,568member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Leonard View Post


    Big deal! So Apple yanked one or two small (and I do mean SMALL) sub-features before release. Maybe it had some problems and wasn't ready. Would you rather have the feature and lose data?



    I would rather have an official, public, honest explanation from Apple as to why the feature was removed. None of this waving the hand and doing the "Jedi Mind Trick", pretending that those words never appeared on their web site.
  • Reply 78 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by minderbinder View Post


    This just means they didn't work out the bugs in time. I'll bet it shows up again in .1 or .2. Bummer for people who bought an airport just for this, but it wasn't a smart move, you should never buy hardware based on assumptions about potential future software features.



    Overall, Leopard has been working great so far, I've even had some hardware work fine that I expected would need driver updates. It seems like some people have their panties in a bunch over relatively minor issues.



    Yeah, don't ever buy hardware that touts its ability to work with an operating system that's made by the same company, *especially* when that company puts up video after video demonstrating that very feature, and mentions that *exact* hardware by name! That is just waaaaaay dumb. I mean, just wait to buy everything until you *know* you're getting what is advertised. Thanks for sharing that nugget of universal enlightenment.



    At least I'm not some dumbass that bought a *whole* Mac based on assumptions about potential future software features like those contained in Leopard.
  • Reply 79 of 162
    shadowshadow Posts: 373member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by farlander View Post


    Also, as it turns out, Leopard is completely 32-bit. No signs of anything 64-bit, and I have the latest MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo (it IS 64-bit capable).



    $ uname -a

    Darwin mymacbookpro 9.0.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.0.0: Tue Oct 9 21:35:55 PDT 2007; root:xnu-1228~1/RELEASE_I386 i386



    This is a silly, uninformed claim.



    Leopard contains 4 (FOUR) versions of the frameworks etc. : 32 bit PPC, 32 bit Intel (i386), 64 bit PPC, 64 bit Intel (x86_64). unameis is not designed to list them all. I guess unames is 32 bit itself so you get this result. Try:



    otool -f /System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Versions/C/AppKit



    (type the path to any library you are interested in) and see the results. You should have 4 architectures listed. I heard from developers that all Cocoa objects work fine in 64 bit, example: NSData was limited to less than 2GB before and can get huge data chunks now. So is NSImage etc. With the libraries outside Cocoa it is a more complicated issue: one and the same function can not return 32 bit and 64 bit type at the same time and you don't want to break all the existing code by suddenly returning 64 bit value where one expects 32. Mac OS X (like almost any other OS besides windows) uses LP64 model which standardizes on the data types and pointers length.



    On the AirDisk: The fact that it was in all recent betas and on the Apple web site is a clear indication that it was pulled because of a bug. I expect 10.5.1 in a month from now or earlier. That is the way Apple works: when they ship the OS for mastering they start to work on the first update which should fix the most critical bugs.

    With the exception of the 10.0 Public Beta, Apple never shiped betas publicly an there are always glitches with the .0 version. That's why some prefer to wait for .1. If the reports are true, the incompatibilities are not as big as with Vista. Also, if you follow the recommendations for upgrading the OS you should:



    1. Make sure your critical applications (those you depend on for having work done) work, using a test configuration

    OR

    2. Wait for the others ( incl. software vendors) to test and report.



    And cool down a bit. You will forget all these disappointments in a month and become a happy Leopard user
  • Reply 80 of 162
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by GQB View Post


    Ok... hyperbole.

    But nevertheless, making a hardware investment based on a proposed feature for an as-yet unreleased product is skating pretty close to the edge. I don't buy 1.0 anything, let alone make committments based on it.



    My rant is more about the knee-jerk 'I'M GONNA SUE!!!!" idiocy.



    Are you gonna buy Leopard 10.5.0?
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