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Time Machine - Leopards quirky best feature
John Gruber, over at Daring Fireball, makes a great point regarding Time Machines bizarre-o interface:
The most striking aspect of Time Machine is its UI. When it debuted at WWDC 2006, it immediately faced criticism that it was just downright gimmicky. It is in fact gimmicky, but, I think, that’s actually a good thing in Time Machine’s particular and unique case. Apple has made something so effect-laden and so extraordinary that users want to see it in action — the fact that that something is backups, which, let’s face it, is effectively a chore, is a noteworthy achievement. Making backup software that people can’t wait to try, and which, once activated, just automatically kicks in and does its thing on a regular schedule, is like making people want to go ahead and sign up for life insurance.
The argument for Time Machine’s game-like UI isn’t that it’s more usable, but that more people will use it. That’s actually more important in the case of backup software: there will be data saved that would otherwise have been lost if Time Machine instead sported a more traditional, straightforward visual appearance, because there will be some number of users who will have turned Time Machine on in the first place only because it looks so damn cool. It’s results that matter most, and the result of Time Machine is going to be that more Mac users will be backing up their data regularly than ever before. For some Mac users, who otherwise still wouldn’t be backing up regularly, it’s going to end up being the most important feature Apple has ever added to the Mac OS.
The design of Time Machine is the single most Apple-like thing in Leopard. No way would a UI like this have come from anyone else, including the old pre-return-of-Steve-Jobs Apple Computer — if anything, the old Apple of the 1990’s was more traditional than any other UI design company.
I never really considered it this way…I thought it was simply weird. But it does make perfect sense when seen in this perspective. By making the curiosity and ‘what the hell’ factor so prominent, it leads the user to perform a task that would normally be boring and tedious — one that would remain undone and lead to heartache down the road.
Granted, Time Machine isn’t perfect (lack of network drive support, dvd archiving), but it’s a great step in the right direction.
