Apple’s .Mac Backup. Umbrella With Holes.

The Mac is all about ease of use, sophistication, simplicity, the computing experience for the rest of us.

What happened to .Mac and Backup? I ditched it for good and I feel great.

I’ve ranted on the value, or lack of, .Mac a number of times. This time it’s .Mac’s Backup utility deserving of a rant.

Personally, if a backup system doesn’t backup all my critical files or my entire disk, it’s not much of a backup system.

Maybe that’s what makes my feelings about .Mac’s Backup so sincere-- and sassy, irreverent, and irritating. To me.

First, I’ve been on the bubble awhile regarding the whole value of .Mac anyway. Email is hit or miss. Backup is mostly miss.

Is there anything left to hit? Yes, I renewed for another year, but this time the grumbling was loud and public. Now it’s worse.

Why? Can you say Backup? It’s been driving me nuts and I’m not the only one who considers it hopeless junk.

I don’t use Backup for much-- keychain, email, and a number of other preference files via QuickPicks. Backup is set to run every night.

It does. Rather, it tries to run every night. Sometimes it hangs. Perhaps Backup is running OK on my Mac but not at Apple’s .Mac World Headquarters.

Those folks need to have a lunch, too, right?

In the past two months, I’ve had a dozen failures with .Mac mail, but that’s common. .Mac Backup is steady for weeks at a time, with nominal glitches here and there.

The glitches are growing. For three straight nights, .Mac Backup refuses to backup. I had to do it manually.

Just for grins, I decided to do a restore on to my utility Mac mini. No go. A little over half way through the restore process, either the Mac mini or .Mac would give out and dump phrases I do not understand into backup.log.

Do a Google on ”.Mac Backup Problems” and see what you get. It’ll be fun reading and make you wonder why you devote $100 a year to .Mac.

Some Mac users have resorted to four-letter words to describe their feelings.

For me, it’s a two-step process. Step One-- I’ve ditched .Mac Backup for go. It wasn’t worth the aggravation. Step Two-- .Mac is on probation.

Apple will need to have some kind of revamp for .Mac before my subscription is up next year, or I’ve just saved enough money to buy my wife an iPod shuffle so small she can wear it next to nothing.

What about you? Do you have .Mac? How does it work for you? Any problems with the .Mac Backup utility?

Off Topic Note: What is it about her Mac that caught Kate MacKenzie’s hair on fire? Somehow or another she fell out of love with her Mac and rushed into the arms of Windows Vista. Read the details about her American Tragedy.