It was the singular greatest moment I’ve ever experienced in my entire work history (WARNING: I’m prone to hyperbole). Yesterday afternoon, I was writing website copy at my workstation when I distinctly heard someone say the words “Doctor” and “Dalek.”
My ears perked up, and it took every ounce of self control not to beam directly across the office. Instead, I took the mundane way in this muggle environment and walked over there, albeit quickly.
“Did I hear someone say Dalek?” I asked. Sure enough, they were talking about Doctor Who, one of the greatest television shows of all time. As any Whovian knows, The Doctor travels through time and space in something called the T.A.R.D.I.S. (Time And Relative Dimension in Space). It’s a time machine on steroids; a living, sentient machine (like Skynet, only it serves to save humanity, not destroy it).
One of the most remarkable things about the T.A.R.D.I.S. is that it’s bigger on the inside. From the outside, it looks like a blue English Police Box from the 60s, but inside it’s a magnificent machine with endless rooms and corridors.
You might think that time travel is a thing of science fiction, existing only in TV shows and books. Much like many other concepts Apple has taken from science fiction and made into reality, Apple has also made it possible (sort of) to travel back in time though their innovative Time Machine.
Time Machine is an app that comes with OS X. It is as magnificent as the T.A.R.D.I.S itself (if that’s possible), and it is as essential as the imagination of those who create our culture’s fantastic stories.
Imagine This:
You’ve just finished! After putting hours into that oh-so-important presentation or days into editing that video or months into that novel, you are finally finished. Your ready to show the world your masterpiece.
Then!
In a flash of blinding light!
You have a Close Encounter of the Uncoordinated Kind.
As you jump up to do your happy dance in celebration of a job well done, you knock over your desk lamp, which tips over your coffee, which spills all over your MacBook. You can hear the death rattle of the hard drive, but you are powerless to save it. Gutted, you watch the white smoke disperse into thin air along with all your hard work and years upon years of data and memories.
As you’re about to alight the Bat Signal, you remember that you have a Time Machine! You can travel back in time to just before the faux pas and recover your project. In fact, you can recover your entire HD with a few taps on your trackpad.
Enter Time Machine, and you’re entering another world. The interface is surreal, right out of Doctor Who or Star Trek. Your past life, in documents and data, spreads out before you and fades into the distance. Like the T.A.R.D.I.S., Time Machine is bigger on the inside, too.
Scroll through the past to restore your entire hard drive (HD) from a point in time, or just restore a single document or file. Your project (and your job), not to mention all your memories and data, are saved in a single bound.
It doesn’t have to be something as catastrophic as what was explained above. Imagine this: you deleted that perfect romantic picture or loving email when you were heartbroken. No problem! Take a trip back in Time Machine, your very own T.A.R.D.I.S., and recover your special moment along with your special relationship.
Every single person should have Time Machine set up as soon as they set up their machine. It backs up your important data automatically, almost like magic. Call one of our Mac Experts today, and they will explain all your great options for an external HD (like this one by LaCie or Apple’s powerful Time Capsule), so you can travel back in time, too.
With Time Machine, you’ll ensure your hard drive will not be exterminated.
