Download Twin 1.0 (Final) Backup Solution for Mac

My experience with Twin was a massive failure. Twin used to be called Persistence, before the product was bought up by app4mac.

When I started experiencing core dumps with Persistence, and then with Twin, here is the response from Twin support:
"it's clear that your issues are related to your previous Persistence settings.
Other customers doesn't have issues.

My advice will be to completely restart your backup and no longer use the settings
or data used with Persistence. It will be too complicated and time consuming
for us to solve your issue.


app4mac Support Engineer"

Good thing I hadn't actually been in a data loss situation!

Your customers back up their data precisely because it is *important* to them. A problem with their backup program - one the keeps them from accessing their backups - is therefore an *important* problem.

App4Mac's response above tells me that they do not *care* about the importance of the customers' data, if things get "too time consuming" for them they will drop you in the ditch.

The message they have sent me with that reply is: "App4Mac Twin cannot be trusted with your data - find another backup software to use."

I have the latest (Jan 2010) version of Twin v.1.2.1 and it seems to have come a long way in the last few months (judging by some of the previous reviews). The interface is straightforward yet displays the command line process in the Report tab so its clear what's going on "under the hood"

The AES-256 Encryption and file splitting options deliver what I was looking for (to securely back up to my free 50gb backups user on Dreamhost) and copes with my inconsistent Network connection by automatically suspending upload and retrying (without starting from scratch).

It deals with large uploads (thanks to the file splitting) and its quite flexible in terms of Restoration (eg. can extract single files very quickly if you only need to repair 1 file in a folder). Some of the interface could do with some development love, but it seems that App4Mac have been very hands on addressing user feedback of late and its the only software I can find that offers such an intuitive interface (keeping a user overview of security and folders/exclusions etc.) so I think it does the job well but does has huge potential for development/expansion/polishing

Its not the cheapest but I'm very happy with my purchase and the practical solution it has offered me. I wanted to write a review since some of the older feedback has been quite negative for previous versions. Its also just got a Staff Pick by Apple so hopefully the older incarnations will not deter the new users (it almost put me off buying)