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January 21, 2008

people

AirPort Extreme users aren’t too happy about Time Capsule

Posted Jan. 21, ’08, 11:01 AM PT by Aayush Arya
Category | Apple » People

Wireless Time Machine backup?So, what exactly is up with Apple these days? First there was the iPhone price drop, then the $20 iPod touch software upgrade and now, Time Capsule. Apple seems to be causing a lot of angst amongst its early adopters lately.

I watched the WWDC 2007 keynote and heard Steve Jobs say that Time Machine would allow users to backup wirelessly to external hard drives connected to AirPort Extreme base stations—I’ve even attached a YouTube video below; you can hear him say it at about the 01:42 mark. Plenty of AirPort Extreme owners were looking forward to that feature, and some probably even bought the base station and an external hard drive in anticipation of it.

From what we’ve heard, this functionality was in developer builds of Leopard, so what happened? I’m guessing that at some point during the development of Leopard, someone was struck with the idea of Time Capsule, so the feature was nowhere to be found in the final release of Leopard. When asked about its disappearance, Apple cited problems related to security issues.

However, we now have Time Capsule, a backup appliance that integrates an AirPort Extreme base station and a capacious hard drive, works in tandem with Time Machine, and does pretty much the same thing that Apple had previously stripped from the AirPort Extreme’s capabilities. I suppose the “security issues” have now been taken care of, but there has been no announcement to let us know whether or not existing AirPort Extreme users will be able to use their AirPort Disks as the backup disk for Time Machine in a future OS X update.

Obviously, a lot of AirPort Extreme users are miffed by Apple’s apparent disregard for the money they spent to buy those base stations and hard drives. They have posted several threads on the Apple Discussion Forums, some of which have been deleted without any explanation (though, that may simply be due to the fact that there were so many threads).

Giving Apple the benefit of the doubt, I’m assuming that Apple will allow Time Machine to backup wirelessly to AirPort Disks with a subsequent Leoaprd update, but a lot of disappointed customers might have sold their AirPort Extremes and shelled out more money for Time Capsules by then. Secrecy has always been a major part of Apple’s modus operandi, but I think this is an example of an instance where it would do the company no harm to open up—and in fact, perhaps even engender goodwill. An announcement right now that this feature is coming in a future update to Leopard might help prevent a huge outcry later.

We’ve all heard the story of the boy who cried wolf. Even if Apple does not have money-grubbing intentions this time round, it’s hard to trust the company when you see iPhone and iPod touch customers getting smitten for being the first to snap up Apple’s products. Some might remark that any publicity is good publicity, but I’m not so sure it’s so for Apple. The company manages to get so much publicity anyway that the negative publicity does not really add anything valuable: it just takes away from their reputation. Let’s see how this one turns out.


17 Comments

krye said:

Give me a break. I got half way through the post and I had to stop.

So you went out and bought hardware a year before the software was released and are now crying sour grapes because the software is not the same as it was touted a year ago? Sorry, not Apple's fault. It's like the old saying "prices subject to change without notice".

January 21, 2008 11:44 AM
wesg Author Profile Page said:

Now that I'm trying to replace my Airport Express, do I get the Airport Extreme or TIme Capsule? So many decisions!

January 21, 2008 11:44 AM
Goobimama said:

@Krye: You mean to say that a product as new as last year has been outdated so soon? And in this case it is not even a hardware issue. The Time Capsule is simply put an Airport extreme with a hard drive. A simple update to OS X could very well fix this problem. Heck, there's even a terminal hack to allow for the same.

It is clearly a way of Apple making money by selling those Time Capsules.

January 21, 2008 12:02 PM
Carsten said:

krye, the author is not complaining about the fact that Time Capsule is doing something that an AEBS + HD couldn't do. He's pointing out that our beloved Steve Jobs explicitly mentions that Time Machine WILL be able to backup your data wirelessly to an HD attached to an AEBS. I agree that Apple should quickly issue a statement saying that previous problems with this mode of backup have now been solved and that 10.5.2 will have this feature enabled, since Time Capsule is no different from an AEBS + HD. Actually, I would advise people NOT to go the Time Capsule route since backing up to a single HD is a disaster waiting to happen. In case nobody has noticed this yet, but HDs tend to fail after a while;-) A RAID storage device, such as Netgear's ReadyNAS or even the (very much overpriced) DROBO would be a much better place to store your backups.

January 21, 2008 12:06 PM
Anonymous said:

totally not apple's fault if people bought their base stations and hard drives before leopards release. kinda dumb if you ask me. and as with all new products, you should expect the price to drop a few months down the road. don't get mad because you didn't wait like some of us. i have an airport extreme and airport express and i'll still get a time capsule

January 21, 2008 12:36 PM
Gregg said:

I wholeheartedly agree with the article. To suggest that people are crying "sour grapes" is simply rediculous. The wireless backup was not just reported in 2007 as an after thought, it was a major selling point in the Keynote for both Leopard and the Airport Extreme. I four one agree that Apple should in fact make this feature work as was promised in the '07 keynote.

January 21, 2008 12:48 PM
Seiken/VMan of Mana said:

On the other hand, AFAIK there is no official word yet that Airport Extreme/Leopard will *not* be updated to support Time Machine backups via Airport Extreme.

There is also the hypothesis that there are real hardware/firmware issues withe current Airport Extreme generation that does not guarantee total data integrity when performing the backups.

If the issues are firmware only and no update is provided then we have reasonable complain. If we have hardware involved, then there is a justifiable need for getting a time capsule. The current concerns are justified, but its still early to jump into a conclusion.

January 21, 2008 1:27 PM
fletcher Author Profile Page said:

No, Krye, you moron. I bought an Airport Extreme just before Leopard was released based on information on Apples Web site which stated that it would work as the destination for Time Machine backups.

This was not some pie in the sky rumor. This was an product page at Apple.com.

I bought a product based on its feature set and the feature set was changed after I bought it! That sucks.

Apple has a bug in their product that they need to fix or they need to refund us our money.

January 21, 2008 1:28 PM
Dave-O said:

There are some underlying assumptions (explicit in some of the comments) to the complaints.
1. Time Capsule is nothing more than Airport Extreme + HD
2. Apple makes more money off Time Capsule than Airport Extreme
3. Apple won't enable Time Machine over Airport Disks

Point 1 is likely true, but Carsten seems to be speaking out of turn. We don't know that there isn't a difference. We know, for example that SMART drive diagnostics don't work over Firewire or USB, maybe there's some limitation that keeps a USB drive from performing adequately (maybe it's SMART). Again, I believe number 1, but we can't assert it as a known fact.

Point 2 is basically complete crap. The prices on the Time Capsule (keep in mind this is no cheapo drive connected to an Airport Extreme, it's a 7200 rpm server-grade HD) are really competitive. My guess is that Apple would be thrilled to sell both the base station and the hard drive, which it would to most people that will buy a Time Capsule.

Point 3 suddenly became fact with the announcment of Time Capsule (remember, it isn't shipping yet), when most people who invested in an Aiport Extreme for the purpose of Time Machine backups were expecting this to be enabled in a future point update as of January 14.

Either point 1 or point 3 is wrong, I'm convinced of it.

January 21, 2008 1:31 PM
Adam Smith said:

Why even limit it to an airport extreme with a hd? Why not any router with an attached hard drive or network share? Why should I need to shell out $$ for an airport or time capsule when I have a perfectly good linksys based network and another computer with a shared disk space.

January 21, 2008 2:36 PM
Walt Author Profile Page said:

I bought an Airport Extreme when I bought Leopard. I'm not crying. I'm still enjoying Time Machine via an external hard drive. I'm still enjoying my extreme. Big deal. When it's time to buy a new airport, It will be the Time Capsule.
So here's an Airport Extreme user who is extremely happy.

January 21, 2008 2:43 PM
Mark 2000 said:

All you olks who are disputing this post are trolls. You have NO idea how much Apple pushed Airport backup before the Leopard release.

This wasn't just some Stevenote blurb a year ago. This was on Apple's site 2 weeks before Leopard came out. It was also vocally pushed by Geniuses and Phone Techs up until launch.

At this point it seems like Apple pushed one solution to make money and then came up with another to force more purchases. I'm mad as hell and no Fan Boy is going to convince me otherwise.

January 21, 2008 3:26 PM
Cygnus X-1 said:

I agree that something is wrong. I think the real story will be told when Time Capsule ships and iFix it opens it up and tells us which chips are inside. If the only difference is the HD controller then we will know that Apple is money grubbing. If there is a difference then it is more open to speculation.

My thought on this has always been that Apple can't control the quality of the HD format with a base station that doesn't format the drive itself. I think if Apple would come out with a firmware update that allows you to format the drive it would fix the issue.

Beyond that the only other issue would be USB controller compatibility. There are some cut rate controllers out there so I can see that as an issue. Maybe if Apple created a list of approved external drives it would help. At least then people could re-purpose their USB drive if it comes up incompatible.

If they are only doing this for SMART control I would be pissed. If the external drive dies the chances of the laptop dying at the same time are slim. Even then, if you put all your eggs in one basket you are asking for it. The best solution will be a full disk image on a regular basis and documents in Time Machine.

January 21, 2008 4:08 PM
Stork said:

iTimeMachine (http://www.xiotios.com/itimemachine.html) is suppose to work with an Airport Extreme disk (AirDisk). I've got this in my To Do stack for trying Real Soon Now.

January 21, 2008 5:49 PM
Anton said:

What are you ranting about? Time Machine backups over network will come with OS X 10.5.2. It is all over the net you know.

January 21, 2008 11:21 PM
Anonymous said:

Given the first comment at the start of this article I was afraid that this was going to be another serious issue that the Apple community weren't going to take seriously. Thankfully, that view appears to be in the minority so that's a win for common sense.

Yes, I was very angry at the announcement of Time Capsule as I had bought an AEBS and USB drive earlier in the year explicitly to use with Time Machine and the 2 laptops in my house after Apple advertised that this is what it can do. In this respect the Leopard release and subsequent Time Capsule announcement leads me to believe that I bought a misrepresented product without even an apology. However, like a few other commenters I am going to wait for Time Capsule's release to see if Apple rectifies this situation.

However, I can't say that I am that impressed with the AEBS overall. The Air DIsk function has always been poor with (depending on the firmware version applied) either the attached hard drive being "lost" or the WAN stops responding during a large data transfer. Both of these problems require a reboot of the router and is a problem still not fixed in almost a year. Recently I also wasted much of a day when it became impossible to connect to the router and that's not the first time that has happened. Despite obvious issues Apple hasn't released any updates for the AEBS for months and now we have Time Capsule instead. Great.

January 22, 2008 12:11 AM
Seiken/VMan of Mana said:

Followup to Anton's post

http://arstechnica.com/journals/apple.ars/2008/01/22/10-5-2-to-add-remote-backup-translucent-menubar-option

So its pretty much confirmed. When Apple announced Time Capsule, most people assumed that Time Capsule was going to be the only way to make backups wirelessly. Apple never said it was going to be that way, they are very secretive, so often its better to wait and see what happens (see iPhone SDK).

January 22, 2008 8:16 AM

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