Got To Glow

Updated September 2026: still no way to point Time Machine at iCloud. What has changed is that the alternatives are better, so this post now covers what to use instead.

My MacBook Pro has died twice. Both times Time Machine got my files back, and both times I got lucky, because the backup that saved me was sitting on a drive in the same room as the laptop that failed.

That is the flaw. Time Machine on macOS backs up to a disk you own and can touch. An external drive over USB, or a network volume such as a NAS or another Mac sharing a folder. There is no option to send a Time Machine backup to iCloud, and after all these years there still isn't one.

Why a local-only backup is weaker than it looks

A backup protects you from the thing that destroys the original. Local backups only protect you from one of those things.

Drives fail on their own schedule. A spinning external drive that has been knocked off a desk once is a drive you should not be trusting with the only copy of your documents. Mine has been dropped. I still used it for another year, which was daft.

Then there is the interrupted backup. Unplug during a write, or let the Mac sleep mid-pass, and you can end up with a backup set that appears in Time Machine and fails when you actually ask it to restore. You find this out on the worst possible day. That is the category of failure people never plan for, because a backup that exists feels like a backup that works.

And the obvious one. Fire, flood, theft, or a house move gone wrong takes the laptop and the drive together, because they live in the same bag.

The travel problem

Accidents happen away from home more than at home. That is when the laptop is in a bag, on a train, on a desk that isn't yours. It is also exactly when the backup drive is sitting at home, plugged into nothing.

So the period of highest risk is the period with no recent backup. If you travel for work with a Mac and your only backup is an external drive in a drawer, you are carrying the risk without the cover.

What iCloud actually does, and what it doesn't

This is where a lot of Mac owners get caught, so it is worth being precise.

iCloud Drive with Desktop and Documents Folders turned on keeps those two folders in sync across your devices. That is sync, not backup. If a file is deleted or corrupted on the Mac, the change syncs up. You get 30 days to recover deleted files from iCloud.com, which is a real safety net but a short one, and it does not hold months of versions of a document the way Time Machine does.

iCloud also does not carry your applications, your system settings, or anything outside the folders you have chosen. Restoring a dead Mac from iCloud gives you your files back eventually. It does not give you your machine back in an hour, which is the thing Time Machine is genuinely good at.

So the two are not substitutes. Apple has never claimed they were. The gap is that Apple sells cloud storage, sells a backup tool, and will not let one write to the other.

What I do instead

Two copies, two kinds, and I test one of them.

Time Machine to a local drive stays. It is still the fastest way back from a dead Mac, because Migration Assistant can rebuild a new machine from it, applications and settings included. Nothing cloud-based restores a working Mac that quickly.

Alongside it, an off-site backup that runs without me remembering anything. Backblaze and Arq are the two most people end up on. Backblaze runs unlimited continuous backup from one Mac for a flat subscription and needs no thought after setup. Arq is a licence you buy once and point at storage you already have, including iCloud Drive, Dropbox, Google Drive or an S3-style bucket, which is the closest thing to the feature I originally asked for.

Check the prices yourself before you commit. Both change them, and a stale figure in a blog post is worse than no figure.

The part people skip is the test. Once a quarter, restore one file you actually care about from each backup. Not a screenshot. A real document. A backup you have never restored from is a theory.

If you only change one thing

Get the second copy out of the building. Any method. An off-site service, a second drive at a relative's house that you swap every month, even a folder of your genuinely irreplaceable files in cloud storage.

The local drive is not the weak link because it might fail. It is the weak link because it is in the same room as the Mac.

My own MacBook failure and what it cost me is written up in this account of the 2012 MacBook Pro breaking down, and the machine that replaced it is covered in the 14-inch MacBook Pro write-up. Both of those stories end better because a backup existed.

Keep reading

• My recommendation: Why OneDrive for Mac Is Worth It
• Apple Numbers vs Excel: the gaps that still send me back
• Buying an Apple device in India: what a repair really costs

Updated September 2026: this 2021 post described my wife's phone screen shattering during the Covid lockdowns, when shops were shut and the only option was a nearby mobile store. I have rewritten it into what to do in the first hours after a phone screen breaks.

My wife had used her Android phone for a couple of years without trouble until one drop shattered the screen completely and left it dead. With lockdown restrictions in place, we went to the nearest mobile shop, which recommended a screen replacement as the only option. That decision had consequences I wrote about separately. Here is what I would do first today.

What should you do immediately after the screen breaks?

• Stop using it if the glass is splintered, to avoid cuts and further damage. A strip of clear tape over the cracks helps temporarily.
• Check whether the phone still responds: does it ring, vibrate or connect to a computer? That tells you whether data is reachable.
• Back up if you can. If the screen still partly works, start a cloud backup; if not, a computer connection or an existing automatic backup may be your route.

How can you get data off a phone with a dead screen?

If automatic backup to Google or iCloud was on, most photos and contacts are already safe. Otherwise, some Android phones can be controlled with a USB mouse through an OTG adapter, or mirrored to a computer, if USB debugging or screen mirroring was set up earlier. When nothing works, an authorised service centre can often replace the screen first and then give you your data back intact.

Should you check warranty or insurance?

Yes, before paying for any repair. Accidental damage is not covered by the standard manufacturer warranty, but it may be covered by a damage protection plan bought with the phone, by a card or bank benefit, or by home insurance. Claims usually require repair at an authorised centre, so check before visiting a local shop.

Original screen or duplicate?

An authorised service centre fits the original part, which costs more but keeps features such as in-display fingerprint sensors working. A local shop may offer a cheaper copy screen, which can mean flicker, lost fingerprint unlock and a shorter life. For a phone you intend to keep, the original part is usually worth it.

When is it time to replace the phone instead?

When the original screen costs close to what the phone is worth today, or the phone is old enough that the battery and software updates are also running out. Get the repair quote first, then compare it honestly with a new phone.

Lockdown left us with very few options. With time to choose, a backup check and an authorised quote are the two steps worth taking before anything else.

Keep reading

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Updated September 2026: pivot tables arrived in Numbers after this post first went up, so the list below has been rewritten around what is still missing rather than what has since been fixed.

I moved my spreadsheets off Microsoft Excel and on to Apple Numbers because the Mac came with it and Excel did not. Five years later I still open Excel two or three times a month. Not for the big jobs. For three small ones that Numbers either does badly or does not do at all.

This is what actually stops a full switch, written from the position of someone who has tried to make it work rather than someone testing both for a week.

What changed since I first wrote this

My original complaint was that Numbers could not summarise data the way an Excel pivot table does. That is no longer true. Apple added pivot tables to Numbers on Mac, iPad and iPhone, and they now have their own chapter in Apple's Numbers user guide. You select the source table, choose Pivot Table from the toolbar, then drag fields into rows, columns and values.

They are not as fast to build as Excel's, and refreshing behaves differently. But the feature is there, it works, and anyone repeating the old advice that Numbers has no pivot tables is working from a stale article. Mine was one of them, which is why this one says so at the top.

Sort and filter still cost more clicks than they should

Numbers has both. The problem is where they live. In Excel the filter arrows sit on the header row, one click away, and you work inside the sheet. In Numbers you open the Organise panel on the right, add a rule, pick a column, pick a condition, then read the result back in the table.

That is fine for a filter you keep. It is slow for the thing people actually do with filters, which is to try six of them in a row while they work out what the data is telling them. I still catch myself exporting to Excel for that, then bringing the answer back. Bad habit. Real reason.

No paste with transpose

This is the one that has never been fixed and the one I would fix first. In Excel you copy a range, then paste it with rows and columns swapped. In Numbers there is no equivalent paste option.

The workaround is the TRANSPOSE function, which Numbers does have. You select an empty range, enter TRANSPOSE with the source range, and you get a live copy that is flipped. It works. It also leaves you with formulas rather than values, so you then copy the result and paste it back over itself as values if you want plain numbers.

Three steps to do one thing. For a spreadsheet full of data pulled out of a bank statement or a payroll export, where rows and columns almost never arrive the way you need them, those three steps repeat all afternoon.

The toolbar complaint was mine, not the app's

I used to say Numbers would not let you set up the toolbar the way Excel's ribbon works. That was wrong, and it is worth admitting. View, then Customise Toolbar, lets you drag the buttons you want into place and drop the ones you never press.

What Excel has is not a better toolbar. It is a ribbon that surfaces functions you did not know existed, which is a genuinely different thing. Numbers hides its depth behind panels, so you tend to use the twenty features you already know about. If you want to find out what a spreadsheet can do, Excel teaches you more. If you already know, Numbers gets out of the way.

Where the gap is widest

Automation. Excel has macros and Power Query, so a repetitive monthly clean-up can be recorded once and replayed. Numbers has neither. You can drive it from Shortcuts and AppleScript, which covers opening files and exporting them, but not the in-sheet transformations that take the time.

If your spreadsheet work is the same shape every month, that difference will decide it for you and nothing else on this page matters.

File exchange, and the part nobody warns you about

A .numbers file is not a spreadsheet anyone else can open. Send one to a colleague on Windows and it is an unreadable bundle. Numbers exports to .xlsx from File, Export To, Excel, and the export is honest about structure but loses some formatting and any Numbers-only feature you have leaned on.

So if you share files, you are not really choosing Numbers. You are choosing Numbers plus an export step forever. Worth knowing before you migrate a folder of live documents rather than after.

What I would tell someone deciding today

Numbers is the better app for spreadsheets you build, read and keep. Its canvas model, where a sheet holds several small tables instead of one endless grid, matches how most household and small-business documents are actually laid out. Budgets, quotes, stock lists, a running log of repairs. It is genuinely nicer for those.

Excel is still the better app for data you receive. Anything that arrives as an export from someone else's system, in the wrong shape, needing the same clean-up every month, is Excel's job.

I keep both. That is not the tidy answer, and I would rather not need it. But paying for one Microsoft 365 licence to handle a handful of jobs a month has been cheaper for me than fighting the app that came free with the Mac.

If you are weighing up which Apple hardware to run any of this on, my notes on living with the 14-inch MacBook Pro cover the machine side. And if you are moving documents between machines, read what I learnt about Time Machine and off-site backup first, because moving files is the easy half.

Keep reading

• What I got wrong about my slow 2012 MacBook Pro
• Apple Watch Battery Drain: Find the Cause Without App Data
• iPhone mute switch to Action button: what actually changed

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Updated September 2026: in 2021 I explained why I chose Amazon Music with my Prime membership over Apple Music, despite Apple's new lossless and Dolby Atmos features. I have rewritten it with what Amazon Music with Prime offers in India and who it suits. Plans change often, so check the current details before deciding.

I listen on AirPods Pro, and when Apple Music added lossless audio and Dolby Atmos in 2021 I was tempted to switch. I stayed with Amazon Music for two reasons: it came with the Prime membership I already paid for, and its catalogue of older and regional music suited what I listen to.

What do you get with Amazon Music on Prime in India?

Prime members in India get Amazon Music at no extra cost, alongside Prime Video and delivery benefits. That makes it the default music service for many households, simply because it is already paid for. Amazon also sells a separate Amazon Music Unlimited tier in some markets with a larger catalogue and extra features, so check which one your membership includes.

What are its main advantages?

• Value: no extra subscription if you already have Prime.
• Older and regional music: a broad mix of Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and other regional catalogues, including older film music.
• Alexa integration: it works naturally with Echo speakers and Fire TV.
• Offline downloads: useful for travel and weak mobile networks.

Where does it fall short?

Recommendations and playlists are generally considered less sharp than Spotify's, and the app is less polished on Apple devices than Apple Music. Apple's lossless and spatial audio features are included in its standard plan, whereas Amazon's high-quality audio options depend on the tier and region. If you are an audiophile with high-end headphones, compare the audio options carefully.

Who should use Amazon Music?

• Prime members who listen casually and do not want another bill.
• Listeners of older film music and regional songs.
• Households with Echo speakers or Fire TV.

If your priority is discovering new music, Spotify is usually stronger. If you are all-in on Apple devices and care about spatial audio, Apple Music fits better.

Is the Prime-included option enough?

For my listening in 2021, a mix of older and regional music on AirPods, it was. The right test for anyone is simple: use what Prime already includes for a month, note what you miss, and pay for another service only if that list is long.

Keep reading

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Updated September 2026: in 2021, during the COVID-19 pandemic, I explained why I was planning to buy a smartwatch to track heart rate and blood oxygen. I have rewritten it with a clearer view of what these features can and cannot do.

I had wanted a health wearable for a long time. During the pandemic, heart rate and blood oxygen tracking seemed like good reasons to buy one. At the time I wrote that heart rate monitoring was accurate enough to be worth having, and that blood oxygen readings could help people notice problems early. Looking back, the first point has held up better than the second.

How accurate are smartwatch heart rate readings?

For resting and everyday heart rate, reasonably good on major brands, though readings can lag during intense exercise. Some watches can also flag an irregular rhythm and take an ECG reading, which is useful as a prompt to see a doctor, not as a diagnosis.

Can a watch measure blood oxygen reliably?

Less reliably. Wrist readings are affected by fit, movement, skin and temperature. Most smartwatch blood oxygen features are sold for general wellness, not as medical devices. If you need to monitor oxygen for a health reason, a fingertip pulse oximeter, used as your doctor advises, is the better tool.

What else are wearables good for?

• Activity tracking: steps and exercise minutes encourage regular movement.
• Sleep patterns: useful for trends, less so for exact numbers.
• Fall detection and emergency calls: valuable for older users on some models.
• Notifications: fewer reasons to pick up the phone.

What should you check before buying?

Compatibility with your phone, battery life, which health features are enabled in India, and how the company handles your health data. Some features available abroad are switched off in certain countries.

Is a wearable worth it?

For fitness and everyday awareness, often yes. For medical decisions, rely on a doctor and proper devices. The watch is a nudge, not a clinic.

Did I buy one in the end?

The original post set out my reasons for buying. If you are weighing the same choice, try a watch in a shop for comfort and check the return policy, since fit affects both comfort and sensor accuracy.

Keep reading

• Apple Watch Battery Drain: Find the Cause Without App Data
• Comfortable Walking Shoes: Your Health Depends on Them
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Updated September 2026: in May 2021 I described an onsite handover call where the onsite lead criticised our offshore team for working on the manager's side tasks instead of the activities they had listed. I have rewritten it into a guide to running an offshore-to-onsite handover that stays focused on what the client needs.

After the kickoff of a large opportunity, my manager gave me five new tasks within minutes, none of them on the onsite team's list. I spent the day on them. At the evening handover call, when my manager walked through what offshore had done, the onsite lead was furious: they had wanted only the activities they had listed, and those were not done.

What is the purpose of a daily handover call?

To pass work across time zones cleanly: what was finished, what is in progress, what is blocked and what the other side needs to pick up. It is not a showcase. A handover that opens with extra work nobody asked for, while the requested items are unfinished, will go badly however good the extra work is.

How do you keep offshore work aligned with onsite priorities?

• Treat the onsite list as the baseline. Anything else waits until it is done.
• When a manager adds tasks, ask where they fit against that list, and get an answer before starting.
• Share a midday status with onsite, so a drift in priorities is caught before the evening call.

How should the handover itself be structured?

Start with the onsite team's own list, item by item: done, in progress or blocked, with a one-line reason for anything not done. Only then mention additional work, briefly, framed as optional input. Share a written version before the call so the onsite lead can read it rather than hear it for the first time.

What if you are criticised for decisions that were not yours?

Do not argue on the call. Acknowledge the gap, confirm what will be done by the next handover, and take notes. Afterwards, speak to your manager privately about what happened, with the onsite list and the day's tasks side by side. If your manager directed the work, the fix has to come from them, and a factual comparison is the easiest way to make that clear.

How do you prevent a repeat?

Agree at the start of an opportunity that the onsite task list is the source of priorities for offshore, and that any additions go through the onsite lead. Put it in the kickoff notes. It protects everyone, including a manager who wants to add value, by making sure extra effort goes where the client wants it.

Keep reading

• Two Leads, Two Task Lists: Handling Conflicting Instructions
• Scoping a Service Request When Requirements Keep Changing
• When the Client Changes the Plan: Handling Rework

Updated September 2026: the original 2021 post gave a short list of what a project team does in an IT implementation. I have expanded it into a clearer explanation of who is on the team, what each role owns and how the team relates to project governance.

Whatever the methodology, IT projects succeed or fail on the people doing the day-to-day work: capturing requirements, building and testing the solution, and fixing issues quickly. That group is the project team. It sits beneath the governance structures that set direction and approve decisions.

Who is on an IT project team?

• Business users or subject matter experts: people from the client organisation who know the processes being changed.
• Business analysts: they turn business needs into documented requirements.
• Functional consultants: specialists in the product being implemented, such as an ERP or CRM system, who configure it to fit the requirements.
• Technical consultants and developers: they build integrations, reports and customisations.
• Testers: they confirm the solution works as specified.
• A project manager: they plan the work, track progress and manage risks.

What does the project team own?

Four things, broadly. Documenting business requirements clearly enough that everyone agrees what is being built. Executing assigned tasks and reporting status honestly. Meeting the project's quality standards. And building and testing a solution that actually meets the requirements, not just the letter of the specification.

How does the project team relate to governance?

Most larger projects have a steering committee of senior sponsors who set priorities and approve major changes, and a project management office or group that sets standards, tracks progress across work streams and escalates issues. The project team executes within those decisions. When the team finds that a requirement cannot be met as agreed, the right route is to raise it upward for a decision, not to change scope quietly.

What makes a project team effective?

• Business users who are given real time for the project, not squeezed around their day jobs.
• Clear ownership of each requirement and decision.
• Honest status reporting, including bad news early.
• A shared place for requirements, decisions and issues that everyone uses.

Where do project teams usually struggle?

Most often when the business side is under-staffed, so requirements arrive late or change after build, and when status reports are kept green until problems are too large to hide. Both are fixable with early, visible tracking, which is why good project managers spend more time on communication than on plans.

Keep reading

• Scoping a Service Request When Requirements Keep Changing
• Running an Offshore to Onsite Handover Call
• When the Client Changes the Plan: Handling Rework

Updated September 2026: in 2021 I cancelled an AirPods Pro order after forgetting my coupon and seeing the price move, then found and placed a better deal minutes later. I have rewritten it as a guide to cancelling and reordering online to get a lower price, and when it is not worth it.

After placing my AirPods Pro order in early 2021, I realised I had not applied my coupon, and the listed price had changed slightly. I was also waiting for an iPhone 11 price drop that had not come. I cancelled the AirPods order, and within minutes found another deal within my budget, with a coupon applied, and ordered straight away.

Can you cancel and reorder to get a lower price?

Usually, yes, as long as the order has not shipped. Most large Indian shopping sites allow free cancellation before dispatch. Some sellers also allow cancellation after shipping, with the item returned to them, but this takes longer and is subject to the site's policy. Check the cancellation window on your order page before you rely on it.

What should you check before cancelling?

• Refund timing: card and UPI refunds can take several working days; your money is locked up in the meantime.
• Bank offer eligibility: instant discounts often apply once per card per period; cancelling may not restore the offer.
• Stock: popular items at sale prices can sell out between your cancellation and reorder.
• Coupon reuse: single-use coupons are sometimes consumed even by cancelled orders.

Is there a safer way to catch a price drop?

Place the new order first, then cancel the old one once the new order is confirmed. That way you never end up with neither. Price trackers and wishlist alerts also help you see whether a "drop" is real or the normal price after an inflated listing.

When is it not worth the effort?

When the difference is small compared with the hassle, or when you need the product soon. For a few hundred rupees on a high-value item, a delay of a week while a refund processes may not be worth it. For a significant saving, a new coupon or a better bank offer, it usually is.

What about products tied to other devices?

Part of my hesitation was that AirPods Pro work best with an iPhone, which I did not have yet. That is worth thinking about before buying accessories ahead of the main device. AirPods work with an iPad too, as they would have in my case, but the full convenience comes once the whole set is in place.

The deal I found that day was better than the order I cancelled. The safer habit is simply to secure the new order before cancelling the old one.

Keep reading

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