Basics4Mac - Time Machine Improved

Now easier to use

Time Machine icon
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Before Leopard 10.5.2, you pretty much needed to go two places to work with Time Machine. You had the Dock icon where you entered Time Machine, and the Time Machine Preferences pane where you monitored how your backups were progressing.

Now in 10.5.2, Time Machine has added a Menu Bar icon that looks like the Time Machine icon on the Dock except that it is all black. Clicking on the icon tells you the time of your last backup and also lets you start a backup right away. You can also enter Time Machine from this icon.

The Menu Bar icon does all that the Dock icon does and more, so if you want, you can now drag the Time Machine icon off of your Dock to save space.

The Menu Bar icon has one more trick: it animates when Time Machine is making a backup. The arrow spins and the clock hands move backwards. Clicking the icon when a backup is being made shows you the progress of the backup. This saves you having to run to the Preference pane every time you want to check the status.

One more thing I have learned about Time Machine. This isn't new to 10.5.2 but worth sharing nevertheless. Every other backup software I have ever used would end the backup rather ungracefully if you were to sleep, shut down or restart your Mac. Time Machine, however, doesn't seem to mind at all. It just picks up where it left off when it can. Pretty smart.