Apple Time Capsule allows wireless backups

Apple's Time Capsule isn't as round or cylindrical as you might expect.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced a back-up device called Time Capsule at Macworld 2008 in San Francisco on Tuesday, which automates the Time Machine backup application in Mac OS X Leopard.

Time Capsule, which was one of four major announcements from Jobs's keynote speech, is basically an 802.11n wireless router with a 500GB or 1TB hard disk drive, which follows the design of Apple's Airport Extreme.

"We want people backing up their content," Jobs said.

Once set up, Leopard's built-in Time Machine software can automate the backup of data from all Macs on a single network to the Time Capsule.

Wired connectivity options include three Gigabit LAN ports, one Gigabit Ethernet WAN port and a USB 2.0 port. Security-wise the Time Capsule supports WPA, WPA2 and 128-bit WEP encryption.

The Time Capsule costs AU$429 for the 500GB model and AU$699 for the 1TB version.

The rear end of the Apple Time Capsule.

At Macworld 2008, Apple also announced its MacBook Air, iTunes Movie Rentals (in the US), and updated software for its iPhone, Apple TV.

CNET.com.au's Jeremy Roche travelled to San Francisco as a guest of Apple.