Can an Airport Time Capsule (7.9.1) provide reliable wifi connectivity for a 2024 MacBook Air M3?

Good question, and SSDs are all superior to hard disk drives in all respects, but their enormous speed advantage is completely lost on Time Machine. There is so much "overhead" involved with TM backups that SSDs won't be any faster.

One arguable advantage of old, slow, spinning, mechanical hard disk drives is that their common failure mode — usually — results in a lot of warnings before they fail completely: They tend to get progressively slower with age, TM will eventually start to throw warnings that it couldn't back up, and you can often restore their function by reformatting them until that need becomes too frequent. On the other hand SSDs tend to fail completely with no notice at all. Neither one of those concerns is a show-stopper because when a drive fails, we simply throw it out. They can't be fixed.

HDDs are also cheaper, but the dollar to byte difference has been diminishing for years. There is every reason to believe SSDs will eventually become cheaper than spinning HDDs, and then they will disappear from the market. No one will miss them.

None of my Macs use hard disk drives for any purpose whatsoever — except for backups. For that they're ok.

dubwisedude wrote:

John, now that we're at it and if you don't mind, I have one more related question:

I've seen that one can still buy the Airport Time Capsule in mint condition or even as a factory-sealed item for around the price it cost initially. What's your take of such a purchase? Or would you rather opt for another device considering that the Airport TC is dated and no longer supported?

You’re buying decade-old or older gear, long unsupported, and which means decade-old lubricants in the motor, and whatever corrosion or thermal or environmental conditions might have been endured during that decade of storage.

And you’re getting comparatively small storage (3 TB max), and with old and slow Wi-Fi support.

Coincidentally, I have a factory-sealed end-of-the-era 3 TB TC here, and it’ll likely remain factory-sealed.

I’ve switched over to Time Machine server on Synology network-attached storage, usually connected to an AP or mesh network. Newer gear, and gear that’s still getting vendor support. And Synology with features TC never had, too.

Yeah, the Apple AirPort Wi-Fi was very nice gear for its time. But I wouldn’t choose to install new-old-stock TC nowadays.

No, I don’t consider selling tht factory-sealed TC. Two reasons: I don’t want to deal with packaging and shipping and then potentially dealing with an unhappy buyer that got a factory-sealed flaky or failing or failed device (see my previous reply here), and because Apple frowns upon posting offers to buy or sell products or services around here.

As for alternatives, the Synology NAS boxes I’ve dealt with have all worked well, and the Synology NAS, and the Synology storage-connectable Mesh routers are all quite capable. (The Time Machine server setup was a Synology support article.)

Though it will be much more capable than what most here might need, I expect to prototype Ubiquiti UNAS NAS gear over the next year or so, as Ubiquiti is one of the locally-preferred networking vendors. UNAS supports Time Machine server, which is one of the prerequisites. (Ubiquiti hardware and software options and capabilities are far past what Apple had offered. Apple didn’t offer even a fraction of the networking gear that Ubiquti and a few other vendors now offer. Apple focused elsewhere.)

You're very welcome!

When considering what works best for backups, there are at least two very important factors to consider:

1. Is the data critical to you?, and
2. If it is, that the overall backup strategy NEVER relies on only one backup solution ... it should include on multiple drives (locally attached and/or network,) multiple locations (onsite, offsite, cloud,) & multiple types (clones, incremental, etc.) Ref: macOS Backup Strategy - Apple Community

dubwisedude wrote:

I know but so far I haven't consider the data critical enough to justify more than one backup solution. Stuff for thought, though...

So if you lost all your files, photos, music, etc. for good, for ever, never to be recovered, then you wouldn't care? Any number of events can take out your Mac and your backup drive at the same time - fire, theft, flood, lightning strike, bodged house move, ...... etc.

I run two methods (Time Machine and a plain copy) on a multitude of discs (Time Capsules, NAS, external hard drives) and keep two of them outside my house - one in a metal shed in the garden and one at my folks'.

So, indeed, if I lost it all now, it would not be a devastating blow to me.

👍

That is a refreshingly sound attitude.

I surmise our sensitivity to backups is due to the fact so many people post questions here along the lines of "my Mac crashed / got stolen / lost all my work / data / music / movies / pictures / etc which meant the world to me and how do I get it back" etc. Upon asking, we don't like hearing they had no Time Machine or equivalent backup only to tell them no, in all likelihood, it's gone forever and there is no recourse. This happens every single day on this site, multiple times a day. It's sad.

Sadder still is when we learn they may have used Time Machine in the distant past, but read somewhere on the Internet that it's no good / trash / Apple s*çks / so they stopped using it. That is by far the biggest problem with Time Machine — not using it.

But even one backup is better than none, accepting the fact if everything becomes lost anyway, it's not the end of the world.

Late 90s? Steve Jobs learned twenty years before that: https://corecursive.com/remote-developer/#ammo-can-backups

Tom Clancy learned a few years later.

I surmise even Herman Melville wasn't the first. Back then they probably used punch cards though.

I just had a look at the Dream Router. There's bugger-all information on the site with superficial tech-specs and no downloadable manual - indeed there's no manual at all apparently. Contrast that with the 760-page manual that's online for my Draytek router. Also, it's not clear from answers on various websites whether or not a Ubiquity account is needed to operate the router. That's a huge red flag for me. So, no manual and possible mandatory account means that I wouldn't buy anything from Ubiquity.

That would be a red flag for me too. Probably a show-stopper.

My research has been very cursory. As much as I would like something as reliable as Apple's networking equipment, there simply isn't anything.

Whatever I eventually decide upon would need to be a mesh network, but mine can be primarily wired since that's how most of its access points are connected anyway.

I will remain personally biased against anything Synology has or will ever have. You don't blame the customer for your own problems, especially after the customer goes above and beyond doing everything you asked them to do for several weeks, in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to fix them. Then, blame Apple for your own product's compatibility problems? How about no. Perhaps they fixed their problems. I imagine they must have by now, but I don't care. They're on my "never again" list.

It's mostly a cosmetic feature, but all those competing wireless products bristling with antennas scream "look at me! I am powerful!!!" No thanks again. Aesthetics are one indication a designer pays attention to detail. Not necessarily a deal breaker, but details matter.