Like any software, Apple’s Mac OS’s Time Machine started out with pretty humble and simple beginnings and soon expanded into a better product, with more robust features, nuances, and arguably better reliability.

While definitely a fan of Apple over the years, and a past employee, I don’t blindly drink the Kool-Aid. Time Machine though is definitely an example of Apple taking the great underpinnings of Unix, and layering a more accessible interface and process on top so that local backups became more mainstream.

While local backups are only one facet of protecting your computer’s data, it’s a good one to get people in the right mindset of backing up, and preserving data in an automated fashion.

Check out the article below that takes you through the history, progression and provides good visuals to illustrates both the complexity and the logic behind Time Machine’s backups.

Source: eclecticlight.co – Time Machine: past, present and future