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Time Machine works with USB external HDs on Time Capsule
Over at Macworld, Glenn Fleishman has an initial hands-on report about Apple's new Time Capsule combination Airport Base Station and NAS, and he's confirmed something folks were wondering about: "you can also perform Time Machine backups to drives attached to the Time Capsule via USB." This is interesting, because Apple originally said that Time Machine backups would be possible to an AirDisk (that is, an USB external drive on the regular AirPort Extreme Base Station). Just before Leopard shipped, that feature quietly disappeared, leaving some early-adopters who had counted on that capability in the lurch. The obvious questions now are whether there's any technical reason why Time Machine to AirDisk wouldn't work on the AEBS, and whether Apple is holding the feature back just to promote the Time Capsule. In any case, it's good to know that if you get a Time Capsule you're not limited to the internal storage, perhaps making the smaller 500GB model that much more attractive.
Time Capsule teardown
Apple's Time Capsule hasn't even been shipping for a week yet, and Flickr user "nakedmac" has already dissected his Time Capsule. What may be surprising is that the Time Capsule is no more than an Airport Extreme with a hard drive. But remember when Steve said that the Time Capsule would feature a "server-grade hard drive?" Well, it features a Hitachi Deskstar hard drive. According to the Typical Mac User Podcast blog, the Hitachi hard drive isn't necessarily rated for "server-grade."[via Engadget]
Time Capsule opened despite it not yet being the future
You kind of miss the point if you open your Time Capsule after just a day or two, but at least we now know that future generations can, in fact, expect an active drive cooling system (by way of a blower fan).
Time Capsule first impressions
Okay, so we've got our Time Capsule up and running here -- we'll be back with a full review once our full 516GB backup is completed, but here are some quick first impressions: You can definitely hear the disks spin up and access. It also sounds like there's a fan in there, but there are no obvious vents for one and we can't feel any air coming out, so the drives might just be that loud. The top is getting quite warm during the backup -- we'll see if it cools down once we stop hitting the drive this hard, but if there really isn't a fan we're a little concerned. Hope those server-grade hard drives like being cooked. You can't transfer an existing Time Machine backup to Time Capsule. Sure, it's easy enough to switch back and get at your old data, but it's still a pain -- and now we have a 1TB drive sitting here with months of backups on it that we can't erase and reuse. Time Machine doesn't prioritize network activity on your machine, so it's slamming our network connection right now as it backs up. That's not a huge problem since we're backing up over Ethernet, but we'll see what happens when we try this over WiFi later. We tried to back up a second machine while the first was in progress, and not much happened -- it created the disk image and got to "Preparing..." and then did nothing. We're assuming these can only happen one at a time. The wireless side of things is basically the same as the Airport Extreme, nothing shocking there, although the setup assistant has been substantially revised to make things easier. The setup assistant now asks if you already have a 2.4GHz network and offers to create a 5GHz secondary network, which is interesting. That's about it for now -- there's not much we can try out while this backup is in progress. Anything else you guys want to know?
Engadget unboxes a Time Capsule
My Time Capsule is sitting somewhere in China at the moment, but our friends over at Engadget managed to get their hands on one, and they have even posted some unboxing pictures. They note that the device itself is a little larger than you might think it is based on looking at the pictures on Apple.com. I'm sure they will post more once they put the Time Capsule through the paces.I'll certainly be posting my first impressions once I get my Time Capsule up and running.
Opening the Time Capsule
Right at the buzzer, Apple shipped us a Time Capsule -- and just like we remember, it's a bit bigger than you'd expect. We're about to set it up in our WiFi torture chamber of an apartment building, we'll let you know how it goes -- unboxing in the gallery below. %Gallery-17223%
Time Capsule: shipping now
What a difference a day makes. Yesterday I penned a post reassuring people that the Time Capsule would, in fact, be shipping on time (where on time is 'by the end of February'). We are now getting reports that people who pre-order the Time Capsule are receiving shipping notifications. See? Nothing to worry about.Sadly, my Time Capsule is still being prepared for shipment, but it should ship by tomorrow. Soon I will not have to hang my head in shame when someone asks me about my backup strategy.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Time Capsule shipping this week?
According to AppleInsider, it sounds like Time Capsule customers' orders are in the crucial "preparing to ship" phase about now, meaning credit cards are being charged and units will be loaded onto trucks for distribution as early as tomorrow for some. Apple still hasn't said anything officially about shipping though; just don't be too surprised units start showing up shortly at your doorstep or in your local Apple store.Update: Yep, we've got confirmation from Apple that it's shipping this week (although some users apparently already manage to snag theirs offline -- good for you). The only question now is: will it really last 10,000 years if buried in your back yard?
February is almost over, where is my Time Capsule?
The iPhone SDK isn't the only product that is supposed to be ready for the world by the end of this month (though it looks like we'll have to wait a little longer for our iPhone SDK): Time Capsule should be available by the end of this month as well.Time Capsule, you'll remember, is network attached storage (either 500 gig or 1TB) that is designed to work seamlessly with Time Machine. The idea is that you plunk one of these down on your network (or use it to create a wireless network) and then have all your Macs back up to it.Many readers are asking us where the heck the Time Capsule is. Apple has a few more days before they miss their deadline, and if my order status is any indication those that ordered Time Capsules from Apple fairly soon after the announcement should see them ship on, or a tiny bit before, Feb. 29 (and they may pop up in Best Buy too).I bet there are some people in Cupertino who are very glad 2008 is a leap year.
Time Capsule in this week's Best Buy flyer
Several readers have written to let us know that Apple's Time Capsule is listed in the current Best Buy flyer. It is scheduled for a February release, so this could mean that we'll see it in stores this week. If any TUAW readers visit a Best Buy this week, let us know if you find a Time Capsule on the shelves, and if you buy one!Thanks, to everyone who sent this in!
Airport Extreme owners not happy to be left out of Time Capsule
It's no secret that most of you aren't exactly pleased with Apple's decision to charge $20 to add in Mail, Maps, Stocks, Weather, and Notes to the iPod touch, but there's another segment of Apple users feeling burned by last week's announcements: Airport Extreme owners. Seems like Apple's only enabled network support for Time Machine when used with Time Capsule, not for USB disks connected to the Airport Extreme -- even though early Leopard promo materials promised such support. Of course, it's an easy hack to enable NAS support (although it's probably pretty risky), and who knows what'll happen when 10.5.2. is released, but for now, it certainly seems like Airport Extreme owners just got a raw deal.
Mahalo Daily's 60 second Keynote
Don't have enough time to watch the whole keynote from the other day? Worry not-- our good friends (including Veronica Belmont) at Mahalo Daily have condensed Steve's whole 90 minute presentation (including the musical stylings of Randy Newman) into this quick sixty second breakdown. Thrill to the announcement of Time Capsule! Gasp at the reveal of the MacBook Air! Wonder idly just who Randy is singing to during that song from Toy Story.I of course read our liveblog as it happened, and was planning to watch the video separately, but after seeing this, I've seen all I have to. Now if only we could make the wait to the next Stevenote (and the reveal of the iPhone SDK?) go as quickly.
Reader question: Can you store other files on the Time Capsule?
The new Time Capsule peripheral is an interesting beast: an Airport Extreme with a Frankenstein complex, with an onboard drive for backup storage. What else can you do with that space? According to Apple reps at the booth, the drive appears just as a wireless disk would appear with the original AE base, so you can in fact put other data on there besides the Time Machine backups. Since TM backups tend to grow to consume all available space, partitioning the Time Capsule drive might be a good idea if you can do it in advance. We'll try to get hands-on with the Time Capsule utility later today to verify that you can split it up.As the Time Capsule is otherwise identical to an Airport base, you can hang printers or USB drives off the unit and share those as you would with the older gear.Update: A further conversation at the Apple booth leads me to believe that you will not be able to partition the drive on the Time Capsule. If your purchase decisions are contingent on this capability, please wait until I can get a solid answer from the product manager at Apple on this. You could conceivably 'reserve' space on the TC by creating a disk image to hold your files, but I wouldn't recommend that unless you absolutely have to do it. A couple of contrary reports are saying that you cannot store other files on the TC drive, but everyone I've talked to says that it does mount as a regular wireless disk and you can write to it if needed.Some other concerns: "Can I connect the Time Capsule as an external USB drive, directly to my Mac?" No, that functionality isn't in the Airport Extreme and I wouldn't expect it to be in the TC -- however, with gigabit Ethernet you can transfer data faster than USB anyway. Note that I said AS a USB drive, not TO a USB drive -- the Airport feature of external drives connected to the TC is still there, but the external drives aren't valid backup targets."Can I stream directly from a Time Capsule to my Apple TV?" Probably not; while you can store an iTunes library on a wireless disk, you still need iTunes to mediate between the storage and the Apple TV."If the Time Capsule is the same as an Airport, when will Apple enable Time Machine backups to external USB disks via the Airport?" Could be never. It's been suggested by some (including some of our own) that the combination of the wireless bridge and the USB storage bridge is simply too latency-prone and laggy to provide the needed performance for Time Machine, and that the SATA internal on the Time Capsule is integrated and speedier to allow TM to behave as expected. With no SATA bridge on the Airport Extreme, and no forecast on a fix for the write caching issues, don't count on official support for wireless backups via that hardware."Can I use USB wireless networking devices (Sprint or Verizon EVDO) as broadband connections for Time Capsule?" Nope, not directly connected to the TC -- not a feature of the Airport.
Apple Time Capsule hands-on
Here's the new Time Capsule NAS from Apple. Not much to say about this one. It's a bit larger than we expected, but still pretty well sized for a NAS.%Gallery-13901%
Time Capsule backs up your Macs
Apple has released Time Capsule, a NAS (network-attached storage, I'll admit I'm so far from an IT guy that I had to look it up) unit that will wirelessly sync with multiple instances of Time Machine, all the while also working as an 802.11n base station (there are three included ethernet ports as well). Time Capsule has wireless backup, wireless networking, and even a USB port for networked printing, a networked hard drive, or both with a USB hub.And perhaps most amazing is the sheer size available-- it's $399 for a 500gb hard drive, and $499 for a 1 TB hard drive. Sure, that's a little pricey if you've got only one or two computers at home, but $500 for a complete (and completely wireless) backup solution for a house full of computers is a pretty nice setup. This definitely won't cause as much of a stir as the iPhone updates or the MacBook Air today, but for someone who's been seeking a backup solution for a whole house of computers, Time Capsule has to be pretty good news. It's available for preorder right now, and will release in February.
Apple introduces Time Capsule, a NAS companion to Time Machine
Apple announced a companion to Time Machine today, Time Capsule. Essentially a hard drive and Airport combined -- an NAS from your favorite Cupertino team. The wireless drive will come in 500GB and 1TB configurations, and will feature 802.11n, as well as server grade hard drives. They will clock in at $299 and $499, respectively (Steve says they're aggressively pricing them because they want everyone to backup). You'll be able to backup your notebook or desktop wirelessly from anywhere in your home. Available in February, pre-order now.%Gallery-13877%
CoH tip: Earning your cape
When you train up to level 20 in City of Heroes, you earn yourself a free makeover at Icon, the tailors to the heroes. There's a mission to undertake for Serge, the manager, and you should get to that. Afterwards, however, you're eligible to earn your cape. Problem is, you're not really told that or who to see, and earning it at level 20 is a darn sight easier than waiting until later on. You don't have to wear one right away, certainly, but if you want the option, it's best to do earn your eligibility sooner rather than later. Later it will be much harder to accomplish, and possibly impractical to do solo.
