Having followed the MacWorld news (go look at Maholo’s fantastic 60-second summary of the keynote), I’m left feeling a little annoyed.
Maybe the feeling will pass, but the implication is that you need a Time Capsule in order to do over-the-air backups using Time Machine. When Leopard came out I got myself an Airport Extreme… currently I plug a USB disk into the side of the Macbook in the evenings, but it would be far neater if the machine automatically found an Airport disk and backed up to that (in a supported manner).
So the question is, have Apple killed the “backup to an Airport disk” feature originally touted for Leopard in order to sell Time Capsules, or will they now release some kind of Time Machine and/or Airport Extreme update to support the use of disks attached to AE base stations…
Very good question. I would expect them to support both, otherwise they are going to be treading on the toes of a lot of partners…
I agree with Jonathan. But then again… maybe this is a way to take more of the business themselves.
this is a great question. i just bought a 1TB WD Premium MyBook drive and will be annoyed if I can’t use it for the same purpose with Time Machine.
I’d guess that’s why they killed it.
I’m not trying to be negative, but I guess that’s why they disabled remote disk. I can see why it makes sense, but buying stuff because of features that were supposed to be in a product was never a good idea with any company š
Thanks for all the comments, folks.
Gerhard, I agree that buying due to features that were scheduled is not a winning strategy. I think the Airport Extreme is a lovely product anyway… I just think that it’s terribly cynical if they now don’t upgrade it to support base Time Machine.
@Andy: I agree. The possibility to do Time Machine to any networked drive would be great. Maybe it comes back. After all, Time Capsule is only a consumer product.
Sadly, TUAW are predicting otherwise š
I covered the Airport Disk with Time Machine feature in my Leopard Book. It worked. Then Apple changed the feature so it wouldn’t. I posted a correction on my Maria’s Guides site. A reader commented with a supposed fix:
My Post: http://www.mariasguides.com/2007/11/08/time-machine-airport-disk/
The link in his comment:
http://www.bos89.nl/1220
I haven’t tried it. My AirPort base station is of the flying saucer variety and I know this won’t work. But you might want to check it out.
Good luck, all.
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