While macOS 27 introduces lots of new features, it does have a few drawbacks. One of these appeared to be that it bricked Time Capsules.
A Microsoft engineer has found a way to maintain compatibility, but it really just leads me to renew my belief that Apple needs to revive the product …
It’s a full decade since we first saw the writing on the wall for Apple losing interest in the Time Capsule. It was in 2016 that the company disbanded the division responsible for routers, reallocating employees to other products.
It therefore came as no surprise when Apple officially exited the wireless router business in 2018. That was the last opportunity to buy any AirPort device from the company.
Some people are still using Time Capsules even today, but we had a year’s notice that this would no longer be possible under macOS 27. Macworld notes that situation has now changed, thanks to Microsoft engineer James Chang.
His TimeCapsuleSMB project is a “modern Samba setup” for the AirPort Time Capsule that essentially lets the device run as a Samba 4.24.3 server. This allows for Time Capsule to be seen by macOS 27 on networks via Bonjour. You can then use the Time Capsule on the network for Time Machine backups.
To me, Time Capsule was always one of the most Apple-esque of devices. It took something that was largely the domain of techies – ensuring continual, versioned backups of a Mac – and made it accessible to everyone. Operating over Wi-Fi, Mac users didn’t even need to connect a drive to their machine in order to ensure it was always backed up.
This put it into a very different category from a conventional external drive, which relies on users remembering to connect it to their Mac on a regular basis. It’s no exaggeration to say that many non-tech users were able to recover lost files thanks to the fact that they never had to think about backups.
Top comment by thawk9455
While I'd love to see Apple return to making a modern version of the Time Capsule, I'd also be happy if they released a mechanism to do the same full Time Machine backup to iCloud as part of their services. A local backup protects if you have a hardware issue but does nothing to help you recover from a fire, etc. Putting it in the cloud would allow backups (and restores) from anywhere. They could really do it right and allow the backups to be configured as immutable, or at least with a mandatory delay, to allow time for a compromised account to be recovered before deletion occurs, etc. I'm already paying for iCloud storage, why not allow me to use it as backup too (rather than just cloud sync/storage).
It never ceases to both amaze and horrify me how many Mac users (and computer users in general) I know who do not regularly back up their machines. Since there are only two types of people in the world – those who have experienced major data loss and those who are going to – this is a very serious issue.
It’s one that Apple can and should fix, firstly by offering a product that requires zero effort to maintain up-to-the-minute backups, and second by providing visibility to the issue. In other words, by making a new Time Capsule product and promoting it as a key Mac accessory.
It should of course be a thoroughly modern product, supporting the latest Wi-Fi standards, having mesh capability and with built-in Matter and Thread support.
What’s your view? Do you think Apple should make one or more all-new Time Capsule products? Please take our poll and share your thoughts in the comments.
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