“To the dismay of what is sure to be many, Apple Inc. appears to have pulled one of the more compelling features of its Leopard operating system last minute: the ability to use its revolutionary Time Machine backup software with wireless AirPort Disks,” Katie Marsal reports for AppleInsider.
“In the months and weeks leading up to this evening’s launch of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple had widely touted the feature under the tag line ‘Effortless meets wireless,'” Marsal reports.
“AppleInsider was able to confirm the absence of any AirPort Disk support in the version of Time Machine due to go on sale at 6:00 p.m. today as part of Leopard, even though earlier pre-release betas of the software had supported the feature. In addition, all references to wireless backup were also removed from the Time Machine help files included with the distribution,” Marsal reports.
“AirPort Disk backup support is not the only feature to have fallen victim to Apple’s self-imposed October launch deadline for Leopard. Last week AppleInsider noted that the ability to sync Mail notes to iPhone had seemingly also been axed,” Marsal reports. “Obviously, the hope is that Apple continues to refine these features — and others that may have missed the cut –with the intention of releasing them in the coming months as part of a Leopard software update.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Looks like those interested in wireless Time Machine backups, Mail notes syncing to iPhone, etc. will at least have to wait for Mac OS X 10.5.1. On a positive note: Apple released the first update to Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.1) on May 16, 2005, a mere 17 days after Tiger’s April 29th release.
What, the outrage, I’m shocked, can anyone say Class Action!!!!! Let the whining begin…
oops, forgot the ®, just love that ®
Well, this is a bummer. Bought a 1 gig USB drive to back up our two desktops and two laptops over our AEBSn. Hopefully we’ll see this feature soon after Apple gets the (apparent) bugs worked out.
Oops – not 1 gig, 1 tb!!
Can we still back up to a AEBSn if we are connected via ethernet? Can someone clarify.
Yeah, this sucks. This was a major selling point for me because it would’ve made it easy to backup the laptops in the house without having to tether a hard drive to them. But, I’m still getting the OS today anyway and can’t wait.
Now watch the Microsoft apologists compare these little snips to the stuff hacked out of Longhorn to make Vista…
The real bummer (according to other posts on the Web) for me is that they dropped the Star Wars-esque ichat gimmick.
I miss cheesy tricks much more than practical tools.
Apple pulls a Microsoft? You can argue all you want, but I have heard plenty of people whine and complain about how Microsoft had to pull features that were planned for Vista in order to get it to the market. I have heard a ton of Mac fans (such as myself) make fun of Microsoft for having to cut features out of Vista.
Now, Apple has done the same thing. They have sacraficed features (regardless of how big or small) in order to get the software done by it’s deadline.
The only two differences are this…
(1) Apple has done so to hit it’s self imposed deadline, whereas Microsoft did it after well over a years delay just to finally get people off of their back.
(2) Apple will add these features back as soon as they are finished with Software Updates. Microsoft just holds onto the features for the next version of Windows.
Those two items right there, are two VERY GOOD reasons that Apple is better than windows.
Still it sucks that apple couldn’t get all the features it was touting into the initial release of the software and that it had to cut them out because they weren’t ready.
But, unlike Microcrap, Apple doesn’t supply software that doesn’t work to the best of it’s potential.
Wow–no wireless time machine really is a bummer. I was excited about that one. Of course, I’m still looking forward to Leopard’s many other great features. Apple brought back a couple of key ones that had been “dropped” since the original announcement (e.g., screen sharing through iChat), so I’m sure these will be back as well once they’ve been fine tuned.
Whats the matter, MDN? Your Spin-o-Matic not working this morning?
Woooooo hooooooo Steve! Dropped features? Whatever Steve says! Still want to suck those hairy toes, Stevie!
Well, I for one would feel better if Apple would say that they will have the feature in an update. They have not said anything.
I DID buy the Airport Express for the purpose of backing up our two laptops to it. I would be dissapointed if it doesn’t work within a few months.
Would be better for Apple to make an announcement, rather than leaving people hanging.
It’s better to not have it and get it later when it works, then to have it and not have it work.
I think the deal is that you cannot back up to a wirelessly networked drive.
I wonder if you can have a drive connected to a desktop mac and use time machine for backing up that machine and any other drives that are networked wirelessly or by ethernet.
A subtle difference but may work.
http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=4387985&postcount=50
There’s a fix to allow this to work.
What a bunch of whiners. It clearly stated on Apple’s Leopard preview page that final release was subject to change. Come on MDN, let the whiners have it.
Also: whine, whine, whine, I really want this feature and have been looking forward to it since I bought my Airport extreme with airdisk.
That´s one of the secret features!
C´mon folks, Leopard is just a new, updated version of the old version. Evolution. Wait a bit and another cat-named update will appear.
In the meantime enjoy and be glad you aren´t tied to Microsloft.
My life is over. I shall now commit suicice. Wireless backup was the answer to all of my dreams.
They are waiting for the Apple AirDisk to finish development… duh.
AirDisk: Apple’s wireless Hard Drive based backup device.
Will also support Firewire, Firewire 800, usb 2.0, and possibly eSATA.
I’m glad technology has made people so lazy as to not want to walk downstairs and plug a laptop into a external harddrive and hit the “time machine” button. Lazy asses.
There are issues with wireless backups using the AEBS that doesn’t involve TimeMachine. I sent a ticket to Chronosync because if I left my network (to go to work) and came back, the backups wouldn’t find my usb disks. According to the chaps at chronosync “when a configuration change is made in the base station, it starts reporting a new creation date for the volume that it is serving. This appears to be the date that the configuration change is made rather than the actual creation date of the
volume.Hence CS can’t recognize it as the same volume anymore.
Boy the trolls are out today. Go play with Vista, kiddies.
A future version will workaround this problem. Or maybe Apple will fix it.
So it seems Apple has yet to fix.
Just keep it stable!
But I was going to backup all my macs through airport.
I hooked up a drive to the new AEBS and it’s pretty slow if you ask me b/c of the USB.
Get a NAS, the Dlink DNS-323 is a good buy from newegg