macnn
03/22/2008, 4:25pm, EDT
Saturday, March 22nd
Airport Extreme supports Time Machine backup
On March 19th, Apple released a nonspecific update regarding its Airport ecosystem and Time Machine – simply stating optimizations and driver fixes – but it is revealed to allow Time Capsule-like functionality with standard Airport Extreme Base Stations. According to Macworld, the update allows users to back up using Time Machine to a standard USB hard drive that is connected to an Airport Extreme Base Station.
The lack of Airport-capable Time Machine backup was a sensitive subject among users, with many lashing out at Apple for denying them such an obvious feature, especially after insinuating the capability to do so during the build-up to Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard's release. Macworld writes that while the feature was not documented in release materials, several users have indicated that the feature is now present in Time Machine.
Filed under: software, upgrades/storage, networking, Apple
Other story tags: AirPort, Time Machine, Time Capsule
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Perhaps the software just wasn't quite ready to support AirPort disk backups for TimeMachine. Software takes a long time to produce. Great software takes even longer. It's amazing what Apple is able to accomplish as it is. Lets not bicker about Apple not doing things fast enough for us. It's not easy to keep everyone happy all the time.
Anyway, I bought separate hard drives for each of my workstations for TimeMachine rather than adding a drive to my Airport Extreme. It's just way too slow to backup over wireless compared to a direct attached hard drive. Even with 802.11n.
I even posted a "news tip" before any other site had it posted as news and MacNN still managed to delay it until now.