Wayne Dixon over at Macgasm, about how app data will be backed up with the Mac App Store:
So this leads me to wondering something: how does the application’s data get backed up? Right now within the iOS App Store, your data is backed up when you sync your iOS device and this information is then backed up again when you backup your computer (you do backup your computer, right?). But if your application data is just stored locally and you do have to do a re-install of your computer, even though you are able to download the software itself again, your data may not be easily placed in the correct location, even with backups.
When Apple announced the iOS-like model for the desktop we didn’t really wonder much about how the backup model was going to be carried over to the Mac. Is it going to be carried over at all? On the current version of OS X (and on previous iterations as well) each app stores its data in various folders on the hard disk. Usually it’s the “Application Support” folder inside a user’s library, but preferences, caches and databases may be stored somewhere else. Not to mention the possibility to manually select a different destination for the main database in some applications, think of 1Password, Candybar and DEVONthink. Is the Mac App Store going to change this?
We don’t know. When Jobs and Federighi demoed Lion on stage at the Back to the Mac event, they just focused on how easy it is to install apps by just clicking “Buy” and watching the app icon literally jumping onto your dock. Of course Apple doesn’t want to get into technical details about the location of app data and databases just yet. As things stand right now, we don’t even know if the main way to access “locations” on a Mac, the Finder, will be updated.
On iOS, app data is stored inside a folder containing the application itself, and backups are regularly saved on the computer the device syncs to. With the Mac App Store, the device and the computer are going to be the same thing. It is likely that Apple will continue using the current OS X system (application file immediately visible to the user, data and backups stored somewhere else), but we like to think something new will be unveiled.
The second part of Wayne’s article is where it gets really interesting:
Syncing is going to be key to apps within the Mac App Store. In order to facilitate the ability for a user to download their data upon a complete re-install, it is going to be necessary to include sync within the applications. This would allow a user to quickly upgrade their Mac by re-downloading all of their applications again from the Mac App Store and then launching the program. Upon launch, the initial download would request credentials for accessing their account and then the automatic download would occur, thereby allowing the user to quickly get back to their last synchronized state.
Basically, he envisions a system where apps are stored and sold through the Mac App Store, but app’s data and backups are constantly synced to the cloud. This would enable easy sync of apps on multiple computers and dead-simple restore of previous data on fresh installs on new machines. If you think about it, though, this model would be perfect on iOS as well and it’s something I’ve long talked about here on MacStories: a simple and accessible way to sync mobile and desktop apps.
The only problem is, with apps heavy on resources and libraries (iPhoto, Yojimbo, DEVONthink, you name it) this would be a great risk for Apple. Millions of gigabytes sent everyday to servers and millions of requests from both iOS and Mac apps.
Maybe we’re just going too far with our imagination, but it’s going to happen someday, right? What if that day is sometime next year?
