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Apple's Time Capsule to Drive Users Mad

AirPort Extreme owners think that the Capsule is an insult
By: Bogdan Botezatu, Hardware Editor | softpedia.com

Apple's Time Capsule has been unveiled during the MacWorld Show & Expo earlier last week. As I have mentioned in a previous article, it is a device that can act either as a backup appliance, or as a printing server. More and more users who already have the AirPort Extreme feel they have been used by the big, bitten apple.

Apple's support forums have been invaded by some aggressive messages from Airport Extreme users. AirPort Extreme is a local area wireless networking router, very popular among the Mac users. The mentioned problems are related to the AirPort Extreme and its AirPort Disk feature, which allows users to attach an external USB drive to the router and access that disk via the wireless network.

The problems began showing up in October, when Apple launched Mac OS X 10.5. The company stated that Time Machine will be able to work with AirPort drives, but the feature was stripped down before the finalization of the Leopard operating system. Apple later admitted bluntly that Time Machine didn't support AirPort drives, and left the customers without any explanation.

The true problems started to emerge when Apple unveiled Time Capsule, a hardware appliance that integrates a wireless base station with a 500GB or even 1TB disk drive. People who had previously bought the AirPort Extreme felt offended and started complaining.

"I was one of the suckers to buy an [AirPort Extreme] and 500GB hard drive when Apple posted that Leopard would be the answer to the back-up problem," said a user identified as John Wolcott. "All you needed was [AirPort Extreme] and USB drive and Time Machine would do the rest. I believed them and look where that got me."

Some users jumped at Apple's neck for not having updated the AirPort Extreme to add Time Machine support, while some others complained about the company removing their complaints from the forums. "This Time Capsule thing is just adding insult to injury," argued Christopher Chang. "Please Apple, update Leopard and the AEBS [AirPort Extreme Base Station] firmware so I can do wireless backups with my MBP and AEBS. For the love of God."

Apple refuses to answer the customers' demands. Moreover, Steve Jobs confirmed that there will be further updates to a range of products, but the AirPort Extreme is not listed among those.

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