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Rush wants Apple's Time Machine to back up e-mail

Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh outlines his problems with latest Leopard upgrade, but it's not clear whether he understands how certain features actually work.

Tom Krazit Former Staff writer, CNET News
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Google, as the most prominent company on the Internet defends its search juggernaut while expanding into nearly anything it thinks possible. He has previously written about Apple, the traditional PC industry, and chip companies. E-mail Tom.
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Tom Krazit
2 min read

Rush Limbaugh provided a little more detail Wednesday on the Mac issues that have been driving him batty (yes, more so) since he upgraded to Leopard.

The bombastic radio host has been a Mac user for years, but on Tuesday he complained on his show about issues with six Macs that he runs on a network, without providing any details. The story made its way around the Mac community to a mixture of curious and hostile responses, and now Limbaugh has outlined his two main beefs.

Rush doesn't like the fact he can't back up his e-mail with Time Machine. Rushlimbaugh.com

The first one is the Back to my Mac feature introduced with Leopard isn't working on a regular basis. This is supposed to allow you to access files and applications that reside on a Mac running Leopard from any other Leopard Mac. He wouldn't be the first to report problems with Back to my Mac, and Apple has been looking into compatibility issues with third-party routers.

Limbaugh's more puzzling complaint, however, involves Time Machine. Time Machine was considered one of the more compelling reasons to upgrade to Leopard, as it's designed to make backup and restoring files--which few people actually do--a much easier process. Most of the early complaints around Time Machine have involved the inability to use it wirelessly with MacBooks or MacBook Pros unless you buy Apple's Time Capsule product, but that's not what has El Rushbo up in arms.

He's peeved that Time Machine doesn't appear to work with e-mail. "E-mail is everything, and Time Machine will not restore e-mail mailboxes. Restores everything else but that, and ought to restore either a single message or a whole mailbox, and it won't," he wrote on his Web site Wednesday.

However, Limbaugh doesn't get into how he accesses e-mail on his Mac; for example, whether he's reading it off the server or downloading the messages to his Mac. Most people in corporate-style setups read their e-mail off a server, and it's sort of hard to expect a desktop backup system to back up files that aren't actually stored on the desktop.

But if he's downloading e-mail to his desktop, that's another thing. Can he not find the folder where those files are stored? Is there actually some problem with Time Machine's ability to recognize e-mails as data? Who knows.

Apple declined to comment on Limbaugh's issues, and Limbaugh never replied to Wednesday's e-mail for comment on the issue.