Macworld Forums: Time Machine and Star Wars/Star Trek don't mix! ! - Macworld Forums

I've held off using Time Machine all this time.
So I start it and this klunky fill my whole screen Star Wars looking folder system comes up.
The Cancel Button doesn't seem to respond
Anywhere you hit doesn't trigger anything
What's with this Time Machine - any way to bypass this klunky interface?
Why does it have to backup every hour anyway - any way to change this?

The "star wars" interface, as you put it is quite efficient and will make more sense once you have a few back-ups on your system. When you do so, each back-up file is behind the previous one so you can pick the time you want to go back to. It also makes sure you know that you are in time machine. As for the time and frequency of the back-ups, there are several "free" utilities that can alter this. The one I use is Time Machine Editor. I have it set for once a day and at time time I want it done. The program works quite well and as-advertised by Apple.

Is it natural for Time Machine to be so unresponsive? Is there something else going on?
i.e. What do you hit touch or othewise do to get out of the Star Wars interface?

I usually just click on cancel or hit the escape key. And I would call time machine more of a "star trek" than "star wars".

option+command esc is the only thing that gets me out of Time Machine ...

When I select Time Machine and get the TM screen, my 'cancel' button on the bottom left works just fine to return to a regular screen. Sounds like you have something else impeding TM operation.

You can go into the TM prefs and actually turn TM off by sliding the shown button. I do. Then, when I have something I want to create a backup for, or reach my weekly time limit, I move the slider to the right and tell TM to 'back up now'.

I've never actually had to use TM, so I'm happy about that. I also use SuperDuper! weekly and think it's great.

Bob.

Suddenly my Time Machine is working as advertised.
I think maybe it was indexing the time machine drive or something like that.
It's responsive and the Cancel button works now.
I didn't try to retrieve something from a few days ago yet ...