

As an unusual hybrid, Time Capsule did not earn the confidence of some Mac users as a reliable backup device. The Time Capsule acted as a destination for automatic, hourly Time Machine backups from Mac computers on the same network. In other words, it was a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device, though Apple never described it as such. (If you have to remember to connect a drive for backup, the backup system is no longer fully automatic.)Īpple answered the need for ongoing wireless laptop backups in 2008 with its AirPort Time Capsule, a Wi-Fi router with a hard drive inside. But, speaking from my experience as a consultant, I find that the vast majority of laptop users, myself included, are unlikely to plug in a drive regularly.
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Since its introduction in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple’s Time Machine has become one of the Mac’s most essential features, providing transparent, fully automatic, full-machine backup to an external drive, with retention of backup history limited only by the external drive’s capacity.įor desktop Macs, it’s easy to keep an external Time Machine drive permanently connected.

Network Time Machine Backups: Moving on from the Time Capsule
