The exact same workflow works pretty much the same way in hg, with shelve (stash) and histedit (rebase -i). There is even a better way nowadays with hg evolve, but it's still beta.
Hows the backup story with Hg nowadays? Git uses an immutable storage solution, so rebasing or other commands to alter history doesn't delete anything. Hg doesn't have the same architecture, so how does undoing histedit work? Genuinly interested, not trying to start a flamewar.