High-quality photos and notes on Apple's Time Capsule

Outside, Time Capsule is nearly indistinguishable from its AirPort Extreme sibling — the device has only a slightly larger surface area (7.7 inches versus 6.5) and height (1.4 inches versus 1.3), as well as a mirror-finish Apple logo. For standard networking, the device is also virtually identical and provides up to 802.11n Wi-Fi as well as gigabit Ethernet and a USB port for printers or shared storage.

AirPort Extreme is not going away and will cost the same $179 as before, according to Apple. Time Capsule nonetheless appears to have been internally codenamed as a different device, M52. At Macworld, the device also bears an unknown "Wilma" card name.

The new router's storage is, of course, a critical difference. The storage allows one or more Mac OS X Leopard systems to automatically recognize Time Capsule as a Time Machine drive and backup over the network whether it's using Ethernet or wireless. No special software is needed other than Mac OS X 10.5.1, even if the Capsule's disk is shared between systems.

The Mac maker also says the drive works as a standard NAS drive.

Apple hopes this feature will separate Time Capsule from a small but growing field of multi-purpose routers.

While no existing rival offers as simple a backup method, a few manufacturers such as ASUS ship hard drive-equipped routers that also include network services Apple doesn't, such as BitTorrent clients and remote FTP servers. Some also offer remote backup software that allows more fine-tuned backup options.

At one terabyte, however, the top-end Time Capsule is believed to be one of the most capacious devices of its class.

41 Comments

lorre 358 comments · 19 Years

About 16 years ago

It DOES work as a standard NAS drive, from the Apple site:Wireless drive sharing

Time Capsule also works great as a wireless hard drive whether you have a Mac or PC. It sets up in a snap, giving you a networked hard drive you can use for storing and sharing any kinds of files.

amac4me 282 comments · 19 Years

I wish I would have waited. I just bought an external Lacie D2 Quadra 500GB hard drive a few weeks ago. I could have gotten Time Capsule. Oh well.

tetzel1517 160 comments · 22 Years

Any word on whether any ol' external hard drive hooked up to a regular Airport Extreme Base Station will be able to do Time Machine wirelessly?

nofear1az 209 comments · 19 Years

at least the drive in this baby is a 7200rpm SATA drive.

man, I wish they did a dual drive setup with this thing for RAID purposes.

EDIT: I just saw that it still came with a USB port so you can still hook-up an external drive to it. Software RAID if you must.

awal 59 comments · 21 Years

Quote:

Originally Posted by tetzel1517

Any word on whether any ol' external hard drive hooked up to a regular Airport Extreme Base Station will be able to do Time Machine wirelessly?

AMEN! I was wondering exactly that the second this thing was announced....