Apple airport time capsule software#
Apple airport time capsule series#
Apple airport time capsule windows#

You cannot extend those terms specifically for the Time Capsule, but if you choose to extend the coverage for another Apple device, those extra terms will also apply to the Time Capsule. If you demand features like port-forwarding, Web traffic metering, or other more-advanced network management options, you should look to another router.Īpple's default warranty plan covers the Time Capsule out of the box with a yearlong warranty and 90 days of phone-based support.

Apple airport time capsule series#

Setting up a guest network, for example, is easy to do thanks to a series of intuitive setup screens that let you provide Internet access to visitors without exposing your own network and connected data. With regard to the configurability of its wireless network, the Time Capsule has some useful basic features, but more-advanced users will wish it offered more options. Apple has said the Time Capsule offers a server-grade hard drive, and while we won't rehash the recent, seemingly debunked controversy regarding this claim, we will say that if you require more robust backup stability, you'll need to either spend more for a higher-end enterprise hard drive, or look into 2TB of cloud storage space. In tandem, the two essentially offer care-free system restore point logging, and make it simple to revert to a particular state. The Time Capsule also deserves credit for working seamlessly with Apple's Time Machine application that allows for automated system backups.

Apple airport time capsule windows#

The one drawback we found with networked hard drive: while a Windows system can read and write to a drive that's formatted in OS X's HSF+ drive format, an OS X-based system on the network won't be able to detect the drive connected to the Time Capsule if it's in Windows' NTFS format. You can also use a USB hub to expand the number of ports and connect multiple shared devices at once. The USB port on the back lets you add an external hard drive or a networked printer for use in OS X, Windows, or both. Other than the updated performance and storage capacity, this new Time Capsule has the same positive and negative characteristics as previous models. If you need a low-cost storage device to transfer large files between systems, such as in a multi-workstation video-editing environment, you'll save transfer time if you opt for a standalone NAS drive. That signals to us that Apple sees the Time Capsule as primarily a backup device and for consumer-oriented local file sharing. The Time Capsule boasts reasonably competitive write speed compared with the 2TB Western Digital, Iomega, and Seagate drives, but it can't offer even half as much read performance as those drives that all cost less than $200. Its performance against dedicated NAS drives is less clear-cut.

The Time Capsule outperforms all of its Wi-Fi-enabling competition in terms of basic data read and write speeds, regardless of whether competing devices have an internal hard drive, like the Wireless Space, or an external drive like the others. The results of our read and write performance tests allow us to draw less equivocal conclusions than our networking tests, at least compared with devices that are also routers. Compared with several leading standard routers, the old Time Capsule, as well as LaCie's competing router/back up device the Wireless Space, the Time Capsule posts respectable performance at both the 2.4GHz and 5.0GHz wireless bands. In addition to those updates, we found that Apple has taken some very noticeable steps to improve the Time Capsule's wireless networking performance.

Apple airport time capsule software#

Apple's AirPort Utility controls the wireless network for both OS X and Windows, the hard drive appears as a standard networked storage device, and on OS X, you use Apple's Time Machine software to manage software backups. Setting up and managing the Time Capsule are also the same as before. It has the same array of ports: a WAN input, three Ethernet jacks, and a USB input, as well as the same minimalist design as the previous model. Where before Apple offered dual-band networking and 1TB of network storage in the $299 Time Capsule, Apple now offers 2TB for the same price, with a 3TB model going for a harder-to-understand $499.Īside from the hard-drive capacity upgrade, it might seem as if Apple hasn't changed much with the new Time Capsule. If you're familiar with Apple's Time Capsule line, you will find few surprises in this updated version.