AirPort Time Capsule
Time Capsule is a wireless network-attached storage device combined with a wireless residential gateway router made by Apple Inc. It was introduced by Apple's CEO Steve Jobs at the 2008 Macworld Conference & Expo on January 15, 2008. Time Capsule is marketed as a backup device, designed to work in tandem with the Time Machine backup utility, introduced in Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard".[1]
The device includes a full AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n wireless, an Ethernet WAN port, three Ethernet LAN ports, and one USB port. Storage is provided by, according to Apple, a "server-grade" hard disk drive in either 500 GB or 1 TB sizes.[2] Introduced at Macworld Expo 2008 and to be released in February, with pricing announced at US$299 (£199) for the 500 GB version and US$499 (£329) for the 1 TB version.
The USB port can be used for an external hard drive addition or a printer to be shared over the network.
Comparison to the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station
The Time Capsule is quoted as being a full-featured 802.11n wifi base station[3] and supports all the same features as the Airport Extreme Base Station, featuring the same set of ports on the back. Modifications upon the design of the Airport Extreme Base Station include the addition of the storage hard drive for backups and NAS type file storage which will be available to both Macs and PCs (after installing supplied drivers) on the network. The Time Capsule is slightly larger than the Airport Extreme Base Station, resembling dimensions which are closer to the MacMini in volume. This is partly due to the newly included internal power supply which eliminates the requirement for a separate transformer block, enabling a direct connection between the household power supply and the back of the Time Capsule.
Using Time Capsule as a Backup Device
One of the key features of Time Capsule is the ability to wirelessly backup your system and files; eliminating the need for a separate USB external drive to be attached. This feature requires OS X 10.5.2 Leopard or greater as it is only after this release that backing up over a network was officially supported. The backup software being used for this purpose is Time Machine which regularly makes images of the files that are being changed every hour, condensing backup images as they become older, to save space. As this is done wirelessly, even at 802.11n network speeds of up to 300Mbps, this will cause a significant delay in the initial backup of any Mac to the drive and Apple anticipate this process taking "overnight or longer"[4]. Subsequent backups will be quicker as they only backup the changes which would hopefully be of a much smaller size.
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