Expert Help

One thing I’ve found, over the past year or so that I’ve started using it, is that Time Machine has special value to the power user.

If you’re not a power user, you’re probably afraid of emptying the trash on your computer. Or it wouldn’t even occur to you to do so. It wouldn’t necessarily occur to you to be worried about the privacy implications of leaving data or old emails lying around in online accounts.

But if you’re a power user…ah, that’s different.

For me, anyway.

So when I know I want to delete something, I mean really know it, I double-check that I did everything right, and then I go ahead and do it. Done. Problem solved.

Unless—unless, maybe that thing I was so sure about? Maybe I actually got it wrong. Maybe I want those emails back. But they’re gone. And I know they’re gone, because, remember, that confirmation alert that told me that this really, really, double-cross-my-heart, couldn’t be undone? Yeah, I clicked OK on that alert. I was kind of smug about it, too. Regular users might not understand all the implications of that alert, but I did. I knew what I was doing.

So, yeah, now, I want those emails back. And guess who’s gonna save me: me, the kind of expert who scoffs at the simple, minimal-choice user interfaces that Apple provides for OS features like Time Machine?

Well, that would be Time Machine.

Thanks!

P.S. In my expert defense, I rarely use the razzle-dazzle flashy (and slow, and cumbersome) UI. I just go and navigate the saved directories. But if it weren’t so damn easy to set up, I wouldn’t have those directories to navigate in the first place.