Pros & Cons
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- Wireless-n at 2.4 or 5 GHz.
- Flawless operation with networked Time Machine backups, as well as with USB hard drive and printer sharing.
- Good price.
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- Lacks home media-serving features.
- Printer sharing but no print server.
- No hardware redundancy.
- No easy upgrade path.
Apple Time Capsule Specs
| Device Type: | Fixed Home NAS |
| External USB Hard Disk Expansion: | Yes |
| Hard Disk Configuration: | Fixed Single |
| Hard Disk Manufacturer: | Hitachi |
| Hard Disk Model: | 1TB SATA |
| Maximum Storage Capacity: | 1000 GB |
| Media Server: | No |
| Network Medium: | Wired |
| Network Medium: | Wireless |
| Networking Options: | 802.11n |
| Operating System: | Mac OS X |
| Printer Server: | Yes |
| Rack-mount or Standalone: | Standalone |
| Remote Access: | Yes |
| UPnP Capable: | Yes |
| Wired Network Speed: | 10/100/1000 |
When Time Capsule was first announced, the Apple fanboy scuttlebutt anticipated a NAS to end all NASs—one that would combine fast wireless with networked storage, RAID capability, and software smarts for media serving, remote access, and more. Instead, Apple released a Wi-Fi-and-storage combination aimed specifically at allowing easy networked backup for Leopard users. That's a lot less ambitious than some competing NAS devices, but Apple succeeds at this much narrower goal.
If you're detecting a hint of overall disappointment, you're right. When you compare it with my other recent home-oriented NAS reviews, like the HP MediaSmart Server or the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, the Time Capsule doesn't appear to be in the same category. The Time Capsule ignores what all the other home NAS products are doing in favor of doing just one thing well: backing up Time Machine over a network. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but since it's being billed as a home storage solution with support for more than just Mac clients, I've got to compare it with other products aimed at this space. They don't have the ability to back up Time Machine, but that seems to be of minor import compared with what they have that the Time Capsule lacks.
For example, Time Capsule uses only a single hard disk. While this fits the technical description of "network-attached storage," folks buying NAS devices typically expect at least two disks. That makes it a networked drive rather than a NAS device, as I see it. In fairness, Apple says that the box is aimed mainly at home users, and for them, the lack of redundancy isn't such a big problem, because home data generally isn't that critical. And Time Capsule can certainly back up its contents to something else, it's true. Still, there are plenty of home users buying NAS devices with two disks and RAID 1 capability; and the growth in that market would seem to imply that many of these folks think their data is worth a redundant array backup.
Apple makes a selling point of its use of Hitachi server-grade hard drives, which have a much better mean time between failure (MTBF) rating than standard desktop drives. That sounds good, but I've been around servers long enough to have seen plenty of such drives fail without, apparently, consulting their MTBF numbers. Bottom line: If your Time Capsule drive dies, you lose all its data—unless you've backed it up to something else. That is the risk you run with any single-disk solution.
Time Capsule's network smarts are essentially the same as those in the Apple Airport Extreme (see my review of the
Extreme Simplicity: A Double-Edged Sword
The designers did a good job of updating the Airport Extreme utility. In fact, my MacBook Pro downloaded the new utility, saving me the trouble of using the DVD. The utility makes installation extremely simple, asking only a few questions before resetting the Time Capsule to work on your network. That slick ease of use can be a double-edged sword, though.
First, I took the Time Capsule home for wireless testing, since the Wi-Fi environment in PC Magazine Labs is very crowded. At home, I disabled my SonicWall Safe@Office Internet router and replaced it with the Time Capsule. Everything worked locally—my Mac saw the Time Capsule as both a new shared volume and a Time Machine target. But when I tried connecting to the Internet I was blocked, with the Time Capsule citing nothing more than DNS errors. There's no way to tweak this (that is, manage DNS configuration, find errors, and so on) in the Airport utility. I wound up restoring the SonicWall router and disabling most of the Time Capsule's networking abilities so that I could connect to both the router and the Internet. That's not quite the level of plug-and-playability that users have come to expect from Apple. When I moved the box back to PC Mag Labs in New York, it handled our business-class DSL provider's DNS servers just fine but hiccupped the first time I tried to connect two MacBooks via wireless and wired simultaneously.
Enabling I want to connect via Ethernet in the Airport utility disabled wireless completely, while clicking on I want to create a wireless network seemed to disable Gigabit Ethernet. One reboot later, I was able to create my wireless network with the Gigabit Ethernet ports functioning. These are minor irritations, though. The only real frustration is that Apple has made the interface so simple that to fix any problems, most users just have to retrying the process until everything works.
If the whole process works without glitches, Apple does have all the bases covered. The Time Capsule can be a wireless and wired device, and it can be a home router or just an access point on an existing network. It can even establish its own 5-GHz wireless network on top of your existing 2.4-GHz wireless.—
Time Capsule: Great at What It Does
Other than the Internet problems I hit, the rest of Time Capsule's small feature set worked flawlessly. My primary MacBook Pro saw the box as both another shared volume and as a Time Machine recipient. I stole the new 15-inch MacBook Pro (Penryn) from the bench of laptop analyst Cisco Cheng, and attaching it to the Time Capsule also worked easily. His backups were clearly marked as belonging to his computer while mine were clearly identified with my machine. Both Macs could back up to the Time Capsule using Time Machine. They also could store files, create shared folders, and even set folder permissions just as with any other shared drives.
When I dropped a Dell Latitude D630 notebook running Windows Vista Business onto the network, however, I had to disable the Dell's McAfee firewall so that the system could see the Time Capsule. That made me cranky, but then I had a forehead-smacking moment when I realized that there's a Bonjour for Windows client on the Time Capsule's installation disk. It's there for a reason. Vista Home is pretty good at seeing networked devices and reporting them, but that doesn't mean you're running optimally. Turning off the McAfee firewall, for example, allowed the Dell to access the Time Capsule as a shared drive with no software install. But installing the Bonjour for Windows client gave me the same ability without having to mess with my desktop security. It's worth the extra effort.
Remote access was a problem, too. Apple says that users can connect to Time Capsule's folders via the Internet using a .Mac account. Although the technology is there, this is one area where the interface isn't that simple: Users are asked for both a local and global hostname. Technical folks will be able to handle their own DNS issues, but for the home audience that Apple says it's targeting, this needs to get easier.
The device's USB port worked as advertised. A 160GB external Maxtor OneTouch drive showed up as a separate shared volume and (with more space) could have been used to back up the Time Capsule's primary drive. A USB hub worked perfectly for connecting both the Maxtor and a printer, which quickly showed up on the Macs and the Dell Vista box as shared resources. Just remember that, while the Time Capsule can share a printer, it isn't a real print server—it doesn't spool print jobs. If two users try printing at the same time, the second one to click Print gets an error message. Not a big problem in most homes, but a definite headache in a small office.—
What About iTunes and Apple TV Integration?
Which brings me to my only real question about the Time Capsule: Why so few home-oriented features? Other NAS devices with a home network orientation, such as the HP MediaSmart Server and the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, have download managers, iTunes servers, and even BitTorrent clients built in. For an HP NAS running Windows Home Server to have an iTunes server and an Apple network storage device, ostensibly aimed at home users, to not have one feels just…well…wrong. An iTunes library seems like a no-brainer, as does integration with Apple TV—especially in an Apple product.
The company says it didn't include these features because it wanted only one thing—an easy way to perform Time Machine backups over small networks. Certainly, the product handily fulfills that mission. Apple will let user feedback decide the future of the feature set. My feedback is this: I hope there are upgrades coming in software, soon.
Performance seems disappointing when compared with that of the ReadyNAS Duo, but actually the numbers are about what you'd expect from a single-drive networked storage solution. On the IoZone networked file system tests, the Time Capsule managed an average read time of 14.47 megabytes per second with a 32MB file size, dropping to 11.7 MBps when using 1GB files. Write performance started at 11.41 MBps with 32MB files and dropped to 7.47 MBps with 1GB files. Nothing to write home about, but since the Time Capsule lacks media-serving capabilities anyway, there's no pressing need for much faster performance. For standard networked hard drives, these numbers are middle-of-the-road and certainly enough to do the job. One note: I definitely recommend doing your first Time Machine backup using wired Gigabit Ethernet rather than 802.11n wireless. Even at wired speeds, backing up my 65GB of data was an overnight job.
If easy, networked Time Machine backups are what you're after, the Apple Time Capsule is for you. The lack of a second hard drive—or even the ability to easily upgrade the existing drive—shouldn't bother most home users, but you should definitely back up critical files to a second USB-attached drive. As a home-oriented network NAS, however, the Time Capsule doesn't have all the features of even the Netgear ReadyNAS Duo, and this did bother me somewhat. Considering that Apple already has all the pieces, continuing to wait for them is just plain frustrating.
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