Dear Herb, Blick, Randall, X-Air, Grand, and WeatherCat alienated fans of Apple Computer,
I use Time Machine with its default settings and it's worked perfectly for years. I occasionally find that I have wandered into a swamp of spaghetti code and wish I could put things back to where they were. Time Machine has always rescued me. I wouldn't be without it.
This is my point of view. Time Machine should work because it is first an elegant design and second it is the sort of thing that should work completely on its own protected by UNIX preemptive multitasking so that it can accomplish its duties no matter what else your computer is doing. Since I've been using UNIX systems since the 1980s, I know what sort of rugged durability can be expected of UNIX. OS X is a FreeBSD derivative of UNIX, the same flavor that was chosen for the Mars Spirit and Opportunity rovers. So when OS X doesn't work, it is because someone screwed up with a system that should be rock solid.
I also picked up a freeware program called Time Machine Editor, which allowed you more control of the backup interval. Now Time Machine backs up once a day in the wee hours of the morning.
Unfortunately that does defeat the second really handy feature of Time Machine: saving yourself from files that you changed and really shouldn't have (as Grand mentions.) Backing up once an hour isn't nearly the burden that it appears to be. All that is backed up is what
changed. Even when you are working hard, it won't end up being that many files.
I think Time Machine's original design was elegant and very desirable. I would prefer to keep using it precisely because it was an example of Apple at its best: creating simple software that is innovative and really useful. I used other backup software before Time Machine, but once I got use to Time Machine, I would very much like
never to do back!
Please don't take any of the following as personal. It is purely my opinion and not supported by any non or for profit entity, nor did any political group provide any funding.
the whole episode isn't exactly giving me warm fuzzies
Sounds a bit paranoid to me, although I've found that even paranoid people have enemies! 
I think I've heard of just about every single app and even a lot of functions in every OS fail or crash at some time. These are not military grade, mission-critical machines and apps we're using. Frankly, I'm surprised (and extremely thankful) that TM so rarely causes a problem. I think it's much more likely that the drive it uses will fail more often that the app[citation needed].
Unfortunately, X-Air your background isn't in IT so perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to judge. I've spend a lot of time around UNIX systems, so I know what they are capable of. The only reason Apple computer is still in business is that Steve Jobs rescued the Mac by moving from Mac OS to UNIX-based OS X. OS X is now over 15 years old, so Apple engineers should be as good with UNIX as anybody on planet earth. That's why I'm angry about it. I got my first Mac in 1988 and I lived with all the quirks of OS 6 on. Rebooting more than once a day was a sad but common occurrence. What was cute in 1988 was utterly intolerable by 1998. When OS X came along, I could be proud about being a Mac user like I had never been before.
It seems painfully clear to me that Apple has lost its priorities. The evidence is most glaring when a product that should be bullet-proof because robustness is possible and extremely desirable, nonetheless fails to up hold up to that bullet-proof standard. Time Machine should -
never - have a memory leak -
period. Software engineers know how to avoid such things in such a comparatively simple context and there is no excuse for the alternative.
Seeing what I observed is an extremely bad sign. Apple has put innovation ahead of quality. Microsoft nearly self-destructed with this sort of false virtues. There was a time when Apple quality truly meant something we all could count on and be proud of. It is something that made the company truly unique in the silicon valley. Apple is rapidly slipping into the morass of frenetic geek mediocrity. Without a radical change in management priorities, it is a slippery slope from which the company is unlikely to survive.
Edouard
