The AirPort Time Capsule (originally named Time Capsule) is a

wireless router A wireless router or Wi-Fi router is a device that performs the functions of a router and also includes the functions of a wireless access point. It is used to provide access to the Internet or a private computer network. Depending on the m ...

which was sold by

Apple Inc. Apple Inc. is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Cupertino, California, in Silicon Valley. It is best known for its consumer electronics, software, and services. Founded in 1976 as Apple Comput ...

, featuring

network-attached storage Network-attached storage (NAS) is a file-level computer data storage server connected to a computer network providing data access to a Heterogeneous computing, heterogeneous group of clients. In this context, the term "NAS" can refer to both th ...

(NAS) and a residential gateway router, and is one of Apple's

AirPort An airport is an aerodrome with extended facilities, mostly for commercial Aviation, air transport. They usually consist of a landing area, which comprises an aerially accessible open space including at least one operationally active surf ...

products. It is essentially a version of the AirPort Extreme with an internal

hard drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

. Apple describes it as a "Backup Appliance", designed to work in tandem with the

Time Machine A time machine is a fictional or hypothetical device that allows time travel. Concept A time machine is a device that makes time travel possible. The ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' distinguishes between two different types of time ma ...

backup software utility introduced in Mac OS X 10.5. Introduced on January 15, 2008 and released on February 29, 2008, the device has been upgraded several times, matching upgrades in the Extreme series routers. The earliest versions supported

802.11n IEEE 802.11n-2009, or 802.11n, is a wireless-networking standard that uses multiple antennas to increase data rates. The Wi-Fi Alliance has also retroactively labelled the technology for the standard as Wi-Fi 4. It standardized support for multi ...

wireless and came with a 500 GB hard drive in the base model, while the latest model, introduced in 2013, features 802.11ac and a 3 TB hard drive. All models include four

Gigabit Ethernet In computer networking, Gigabit Ethernet (GbE or 1 GigE) is the term applied to transmitting Ethernet frames at a rate of a gigabit per second. The most popular variant, 1000BASE-T, is defined by the IEEE 802.3ab standard. It came into use in ...

ports (3 LAN ports, 1 WAN port) and a single

USB Universal Serial Bus (USB) is an industry standard, developed by USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), for digital data transmission and power delivery between many types of electronics. It specifies the architecture, in particular the physical ...

port. The USB port can be used for external peripheral devices to be shared over the network, such as external hard drives or printers. The NAS functionality utilizes a built-in "server grade" hard drive. In 2016, Apple disbanded its wireless router development team, and in 2018 the entire AirPort line of products was discontinued without replacement. AirPort Time Capsule backups will no longer be supported starting with macOS 27 in 2026.

History

In early 2009, Apple released the second-generation Time Capsule. It offered simultaneous 802.11n dual-band operation, which allows older devices to use slower wireless speeds, without affecting the overall performance of devices that can use higher 802.11n speeds. The second-generation model also included the addition of Guest Networking, a feature which allows creation of a separate wireless network for guests. The guest network uses different authentication credentials, ensuring the security of the primary network. The hard disk storage space of each model was doubled: capacities were 1 TB and 2 TB, while the prices remained unchanged. In October 2009, several news sites reported that many first-generation Time Capsules were failing after 18 months, with some users alleging that this was due to a design failure in the power supplies. Apple confirmed that certain Time Capsules sold between February 2008 and June 2008 do not power on, or may unexpectedly turn off. Apple offered free repair or replacement to affected units. The third-generation Time Capsule was released in October 2009. The only change was a reconfiguration of the internal wireless antenna, resulting in an Apple-reported 50% increase in wireless performance and 25% increase in wireless range when compared to previous models. The fourth-generation Time Capsule, released in June 2011, increased the range of Wi-Fi signals. The internal

Wi-Fi Wi-Fi () is a family of wireless network protocols based on the IEEE 802.11 family of standards, which are commonly used for Wireless LAN, local area networking of devices and Internet access, allowing nearby digital devices to exchange data by ...

card was changed from a Marvell

chip to a better-performing

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American multinational corporation, multinational designer, developer, manufacturer, and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data cen ...

BCM4331 chip. Apple time capsule g5 out

Discontinuation

In approximately 2016, Apple disbanded the wireless router team that developed the AirPort Time Capsule and AirPort Extreme router. In 2018, Apple formally discontinued both products, exiting the router market. Bloomberg News noted that "Apple rarely discontinues product categories" and that its decision to leave the business was "a boon for other wireless router makers." AirPort Time Capsule backups will no longer function in macOS 27, set to be released in 2026, because of Apple removing support for Apple Filing Protocol (AFP).

Features

The fifth-generation Time Capsule includes a fully featured, 802.11ac,

access point including simultaneous dual-band operation. The Time Capsule supports the Sleep Proxy Service. The software is specially built by Apple and is not user modifiable. While the firmware has been decrypted, a suitable

privilege escalation Privilege escalation is the act of exploiting a Software bug, bug, a Product defect, design flaw, or a configuration oversight in an operating system or software application to gain elevated access to resource (computer science), resources that ar ...

exploit to run custom firmware is not developed for the latest firmware. However, the device runs a

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...

standard platform. The Time Capsule up to the fourth-generation runs on the

ARM In human anatomy, the arm refers to the upper limb in common usage, although academically the term specifically means the upper arm between the glenohumeral joint (shoulder joint) and the elbow joint. The distal part of the upper limb between ...

port of operating system

NetBSD NetBSD is a free and open-source Unix-like operating system based on the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD). It was the first open-source BSD descendant officially released after 386BSD was fork (software development), forked. It continues to ...

4.0, while the fifth-generation model runs NetBSD 6. One of the key features of Time Capsule is the ability to

back up Backup is the computing function of making copies of data to enable recovery from data loss. Backup may also refer to: Information technology * Backup (backup software), Apple Mac software * Backup and Restore, Windows software * Backup softwa ...

a system and files wirelessly and automatically, eliminating the need to attach an external backup drive. This feature requires OS X 10.5.2 Leopard or greater on the client computers. The backup software is Apple's

, which, by default, makes hourly images of the files that are being changed, and condenses backup images as they become older, to save space. Even when using an 802.11n wireless or Gigabit Ethernet connection, the initial backup of any Mac to the drive requires significant time; Apple suggests that the initial backup will require "several hours or overnight to complete". The hard drive typically found in a Time Capsule is the Hitachi Deskstar, which is sold by Hitachi as a consumer-grade product—the Hitachi Ultrastar is the enterprise version. Apple labeled the drive as a server-grade drive in promotional material for Time Capsule, and also used this type of drive in its discontinued

Xserve The Xserve is a discontinued series of rack-mounted servers that was manufactured by Apple Inc. between 2002 and 2011. It was Apple's first rack-mounted server, and could function as a file server, web server or run high-performance computing ...

servers. Apple states that the Hitachi Deskstar meets or exceeds the 1 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF) recommendation for server-grade hard drives. The 500 GB, first-generation Time Capsule shipped with a Seagate Barracuda ES-series drive; or subsequently, other hard drives such as the Western Digital Caviar Green series. The Time Capsules up to the fourth-generation measure square, and high. The June 2013 release of the fifth-generation models features a name change to AirPort Time Capsule, and a redesign with measurements square, and high. The square dimensions echo the size of both the latest AirPort Express and

Apple TV Apple TV is a digital media player and a microconsole developed and marketed by Apple. It is a small piece of networking hardware that sends received media data such as video and audio to a TV or external display. Its media services include ...

s (second generation onwards), just with the height being significantly higher. The 2013 models feature the same ports on the back as previous generations, and come in the same capacities as the fourth-generation of 2 TB & 3 TB, but have introduced the newest Wi-Fi standard 802.11ac. The AirPort Extreme released at the same time is exactly the same in dimensions and I/O ports, just without the internal harddrive of the AirPort Time Capsule. 2013 models feature faster download speed,

beamforming Beamforming or spatial filtering is a signal processing technique used in sensor arrays for directional signal transmission or reception. This is achieved by combining elements in an antenna array in such a way that signals at particular angles ...

improvements and wireless or desktop network control with iCloud integration. Airport is compatible with devices using the 802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g, 802.11n and 802.11ac specifications. Also improved, Airport Utility has added one click Time Capsule format from the utility's Airport Time Capsule, Edit, Disks menu, allowing easy and rapid Erase Disk and Archive Disk to start over or configure Network. Disk Erase includes up to 35 passes and device includes encrypted storage plus optional WAN sharing, making Airport extremely secure and flexible for home, class and office environments. Airport Utility is a free download.

Comparison chart

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References

External links