OK! netTunes and launchTunes release (and netTunes re-release—sorry about the Purple Rain) done, so it’s time to get back to what I keep getting asked about: SuperDuper! and Time Machine.

To get the “Frequently Asked Questions” out of the way right at the top of this post: no, we’re not dead, we’re not angry, and Apple has no obligation to leave market opportunities for independent developers, notify us that things are coming, or pretty much anything else.

This is business. It’s difficult for Apple to come up with 150 features to add into the next version of the OS, and harder still to make those features compelling enough that we’ll all pony up our hard-earned dollars to upgrade.

(As an aside, does anyone else out there think there was a definite hint, in the “feature” presentation of the keynote that bragged that OS X is now a “bigger, all-inclusive bundle”, that the price will be higher when Leopard is released?)

Some sort of backup functionality belongs in the OS. It’s been a long time coming. The fact that it wasn’t there left opportunities for 3rd parties, but that doesn’t mean Apple shouldn’t address the missing functionality.

And so, they have, with Time Machine. Really, I think that’s a great thing. People need to back up more often, and I hope Time Machine encourages them to do so.

Now, I can’t really get into a lot of details, because our NDA prevents disclosure of anything that wasn’t in the keynote. But let’s talk about what we’ve seen there, and why SuperDuper! remains both relevant and necessary—a true complement to the functionality in Time Machine.

First, as is likely obvious, Time Machine is designed to provide automatic “temporal” backup (discussed in broad terms in the post The Ninety-Nine-Per-Cent Solution many months ago).  Its primary usage scenario—and the one that the keynote focused on—is to allow quick recovery of files and data that have gone missing, etc. It does this in a way that’s highly integrated with the OS, with a unique UI that’s both cool and kinda cheesy… and, as was the case with Spotlight, with a certain amount of application-level impact (something 3rd parties like Shirt Pocket could never mandate).

What’s important to note is that this isn’t, and never was, what SuperDuper! was designed to do.

Our tagline, Heroic System Recovery for Mere Mortals, tries to sum up the whole idea: SuperDuper! is designed to provide excellent failover support for the all-too-common case where things fail in a pretty catastrophic way, such as when a drive fails, or your system becomes unbootable. We do this by quickly and efficiently creating a fully bootable copy of your source drive. Perhaps more importantly, recovery is near immediate, even if the original drive is completely unusable, because you can start up from your backup and continue working.

You can even take your backup to a totally different Macintosh, start up from it, and work while your failed Macintosh is in the shop… then, when it comes back all fresh and shiny, restore things and keep working.

All of this is done with a minimum of fuss and bother, and with respect for your time. And while Time Machine can restore a full system (the details of which were not shown, so I can’t comment on them), as can other similar products, that’s not its strength. Doing so requires you to actually take the time to restore the backup in full, which interrupts your workflow, requires a destination device, and takes a lot of your time—at the exact moment when you can least afford it.

So, when Leopard comes out, and Time Machine is released, be assured that we’ll continue to be relevant and necessary. We’ll work alongside its rapid recovery of individual files, and will seamlessly augment that with our rapid system recovery.

And, of course, we’ll continue to improve every part of SuperDuper! to make backups faster and easier for all.

(Digg this post.)