6 ms·

Although TimeCapsule is more than decade old, it serves nicely with TimeMachine (automatic backups). Sad to see that going away permanently for Apple Silicon.

by pvtmert 6mo ago

goalieca 6mo ago
Given the mtbf of disks, I wouldn’t risk doing backups on a device discontinued in 2018.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]
- kgwgk 6mo ago
  Disks can be replaced.
- swiftcoder 6mo ago
  It may not be the easiest surgery in the world, but you can replace the hard drive in a Time Capsule. You'll probably want to replace the power supply too after this much time
sleepybrett 6mo ago
wasn't it capped at 3tb? is the drive swappable to something bigger? They discontinues them in 2018, the wifi in them is old, single disk (no raid).. better to just pick up a multidrive nas or use cloud backups. What we should be asking for is timemachine backends for cloud providers.
- TimTheTinker 6mo ago
  It's not "officially" supported, but iFixit has a guide for swapping the drive on a time capsule. I used mine with a 4TB drive for years with no trouble.
  - sleepybrett 6mo ago
    Sure, but still just a single drive. My old trusty readynas should still work i think.. probalby. Supports smd for time machine and smb3 generally. If it doesn't I might finally be pushed onto a nas that isn't discontinued.
    - bananamogul 6mo ago
      I had an early ReadyNAS that was a champ for years. I wonder if the fact that it was based on SPARC had anything to do with its longevity.
      - sleepybrett 6mo ago
        the one i have is my second readynas.. its a later one and is x86 but it's still kickin'. The first failed suddenly so i bought the second hoping to migrate the disks, but they changed the architecture so that wouldn't work. I determined that all that happened to the first was that the power supply gave up. Sourced one from ebay and it was back to working but i went ahead and did a migration then gave the old one to a friend. It's apparently also still doing just fine.
    - iAMkenough 6mo ago
      From a risk assessment standpoint, I’ve seen my Time Machine backups corrupted much more frequently than I’ve experienced drive failure. Happened with both my Time Capsule and then my Synology RAID. It’s a “nice to have” automatic backup, but not a primary backup destination for me.
ryandrake 6mo ago
"Dropping support for things just because they are old" is typical commercial software behavior. I can run the latest Linux kernel and still have access to an internal floppy disk drive if I wanted to, yet billion dollar companies can't seem to manage to support 10 year old stuff. I still am sore from when I "upgraded" macOS and suddenly support for my 1080i TV was gone. Yesterday it worked fine, today it's gone. All because they can't be bothered to maintain a code path.
- _verandaguy 6mo ago
  The economics make the reasoning obvious, though. With closed source IP, every bit of support, from bug fixes, to feature requests, to compatibility fixes to integrate with newer mainline/foundational tooling, costs money. With open source projects (and in particular ones like Linux where there's a huge number of contributors and interested parties), support for would-be niche facilities can keep going as long as there's someone with the knowledge and spare time to do it.
  - TheJoeMan 6mo ago
    There's somewhere in the ballpark of 166,000 employees at Apple, just unfathomable scale [1]. It is not unreasonable to ask that someone specific is responsible for each particular small feature and ensuring it keeps working. Trying to apply an economic analysis to such a "free as in beer" operating system does not seem to work well. Consider the question of "how many small holes can you have in your wooden sailing ship"? [1] https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/employees/ https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/employees/
    - akerl_ 6mo ago
      It’s not unreasonable to ask but they can and are saying “no”.
    - laserlight 6mo ago
      Not that it impacts your argument significantly, but for the sake of completeness, Apple employs a huge number of retail employees.

Although TimeCapsule is more than decade old, it serves nicely with TimeMachine (automatic backups). Sad to see that going away permanently for Apple Silicon.

by pvtmert 6mo ago

Although TimeCapsule is more than decade old, it serves nicely with TimeMachine (automatic backups). Sad to see that going away permanently for Apple Silicon.

goalieca 6mo ago

Given the mtbf of disks, I wouldn’t risk doing backups on a device discontinued in 2018.

deleted 6mo ago
[deleted]
kgwgk 6mo ago
Disks can be replaced.
swiftcoder 6mo ago
It may not be the easiest surgery in the world, but you can replace the hard drive in a Time Capsule. You'll probably want to replace the power supply too after this much time

sleepybrett 6mo ago

wasn't it capped at 3tb? is the drive swappable to something bigger? They discontinues them in 2018, the wifi in them is old, single disk (no raid).. better to just pick up a multidrive nas or use cloud backups. What we should be asking for is timemachine backends for cloud providers.

TimTheTinker 6mo ago
It's not "officially" supported, but iFixit has a guide for swapping the drive on a time capsule. I used mine with a 4TB drive for years with no trouble.
- sleepybrett 6mo ago
  Sure, but still just a single drive. My old trusty readynas should still work i think.. probalby. Supports smd for time machine and smb3 generally. If it doesn't I might finally be pushed onto a nas that isn't discontinued.
  - bananamogul 6mo ago
    I had an early ReadyNAS that was a champ for years. I wonder if the fact that it was based on SPARC had anything to do with its longevity.
    - sleepybrett 6mo ago
      the one i have is my second readynas.. its a later one and is x86 but it's still kickin'. The first failed suddenly so i bought the second hoping to migrate the disks, but they changed the architecture so that wouldn't work. I determined that all that happened to the first was that the power supply gave up. Sourced one from ebay and it was back to working but i went ahead and did a migration then gave the old one to a friend. It's apparently also still doing just fine.
  - iAMkenough 6mo ago
    From a risk assessment standpoint, I’ve seen my Time Machine backups corrupted much more frequently than I’ve experienced drive failure. Happened with both my Time Capsule and then my Synology RAID. It’s a “nice to have” automatic backup, but not a primary backup destination for me.

ryandrake 6mo ago

"Dropping support for things just because they are old" is typical commercial software behavior. I can run the latest Linux kernel and still have access to an internal floppy disk drive if I wanted to, yet billion dollar companies can't seem to manage to support 10 year old stuff. I still am sore from when I "upgraded" macOS and suddenly support for my 1080i TV was gone. Yesterday it worked fine, today it's gone. All because they can't be bothered to maintain a code path.

_verandaguy 6mo ago
The economics make the reasoning obvious, though. With closed source IP, every bit of support, from bug fixes, to feature requests, to compatibility fixes to integrate with newer mainline/foundational tooling, costs money. With open source projects (and in particular ones like Linux where there's a huge number of contributors and interested parties), support for would-be niche facilities can keep going as long as there's someone with the knowledge and spare time to do it.
- TheJoeMan 6mo ago
  There's somewhere in the ballpark of 166,000 employees at Apple, just unfathomable scale [1]. It is not unreasonable to ask that someone specific is responsible for each particular small feature and ensuring it keeps working. Trying to apply an economic analysis to such a "free as in beer" operating system does not seem to work well. Consider the question of "how many small holes can you have in your wooden sailing ship"? [1] https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/employees/ https://stockanalysis.com/stocks/aapl/employees/
  - akerl_ 6mo ago
    It’s not unreasonable to ask but they can and are saying “no”.
  - laserlight 6mo ago
    Not that it impacts your argument significantly, but for the sake of completeness, Apple employs a huge number of retail employees.