Time Capsule (2008)
An AirPort Extreme base station with a hard drive inside: automatic wireless backup for every Mac in the house, built for Time Machine.
© Malabooboo · CC BY 2.0 ↗ Resized, no crop or retouching.
Specs
| Connectivity | 802.11n Wi-Fi · 3× Gigabit LAN · USB 2.0 |
| Price | $299 (500 GB) · $499 (1 TB) |
| Key feature | automatic hourly backups, no cables |
Launch
Apple announced it on January 15, 2008 at the Macworld San Francisco keynote, the same event that introduced the first MacBook Air. The official release pitched it as "wireless backup for all your Macs": an 802.11n base station with a server-grade hard drive inside, in 500 GB and 1 TB models, available in February. Jobs summed up the idea saying you just plugged it in, clicked a few buttons and every Mac in the house backed itself up, every hour of every day. It worked with Time Machine, the headline feature of Mac OS X Leopard, and doubled as a full Wi-Fi base station, with three Gigabit LAN ports, one WAN port and a USB port for sharing a printer on the network.
Marketing
No dedicated ad campaign is on record: its showcase was the Macworld keynote and its argument was the integration with Time Machine. Apple sold it as Leopard's natural companion: scroll "back in time" to find a deleted file, or restore an entire Mac without plugging in any drive. It also targeted multi-computer homes: one Time Capsule covered them all, with a secure network for up to 50 users and access limits for children's computers, according to the official release.
Flaws and fixes
Some early units died suddenly after about 18-19 months of use, and suspicion fell on the power supply's capacitors, stressed by heat. Developer Pim van Bochoven opened the Time Capsule Memorial Register, which went on to log 2,500 dead units, and a Guardian investigation in October 2009 brought the case to light. In July 2010 Apple quietly published a support document: units sold approximately between February and June 2008, within a range of serial numbers, qualified for free repair or replacement; according to The Guardian, about 20% of the registered dead units fell outside that range. Apple had revised the product in July 2009 without acknowledging the problem. The line kept selling with refreshes until April 2018, when Apple exited the router business and withdrew the entire AirPort family, Time Capsule included, according to 9to5Mac.