Hey

I love using Time Machine as a backup tool. Although I do still do monthly backups, as a quick way of recovering old files nothing can beat it. Time Machine, by default, is set to backup every single hour. This can for some people be a problem. You may have a Mac which you are using for production use, the extra CPU and disk usage could be detrimental to your work. As well as this, may be you only want Time Machine to back up once or twice a day, to keep back up disk usage down. On the face of it there isn’t a very easy way to do this. But a cool little program called TimeMachineEditor can do this all for you.

Once as you download the program (which has a very cool icon, I think) and install it, you will be presented with the following screen. This is one of two screens which can enable you to change the backup time. For example in this screen you could tell Time Machine to back up every two hours, or every 0.5. Depending on what you feel would be best for your computer. If also has two options which you can change depending on your preferences.

Probably one of the more powerful options is using the calendar function. This can be activated by selecting calendar from the drop down. This screen enables you to specifiy the exact time in which an update can be done. For example you could do it on the first of every month. A better use of this would be to set it to backup at 9am, 1pm and 5pm. So it can backup when you start and finish work and when you are having lunch.

When you hit apply the changes will take effect. It will then edit a system preference file. This system file is the one Time Machine will use to determine when it will next back up. As a result the user interface will not display the correct time. This is because the user interface isn’t designed to work with times that are not planned into the program. These problems can be ignored. One tip, if you decide you are going to not use this program any more and you are going to uninstall it, revert the settings back to normal, this can be done through Settings > Show Default Settings in the menu bar.

This program is good. It is well designed, does exactly what it says on the tin and nothing more. From a consumer standpoint there is really nothing more that could make this program any more useful. You can download it for free off the website.

P.S. Sorry for the no post yesterday. The mind was blank, and a lot of otherwork decided it was more important.