Apple updates Time Capsule and Airport Extreme with internet sharing
A closer look at the gaggle of Apple hardware updates today shows a rather useful change to both Time Capsule and the Airport Extreme base station.MobileMe members can access any file on a hard drive connected to either product via the internet. The older versions allowed hard drive sharing to people on the same network. Now the feature has been extended to allow you to get these files from anywhere.
You initiate the sharing by registering your Airport Extreme or Time Capsule with your MobileMe account. When you are away from your Mac, that hard drive will show up in the Finder sidebar. The drive must be a USB drive -- there is no support for either flavor of Firewire on the AE or TC.
It does not appear that this remote sharing feature has been added to the last generation of these products, although a firmware update might be able to accomplish it. No word from Apple on whether or not this will happen. Update: the Apple Sales internal site (thanks Mr. X) is listing the following... looks like that feature is going to work on the older gear!
Note for existing AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule customersThis update is obviously designed to boost the attractiveness of the MobileMe service, to which Apple has been showing increased attention of late. Apple specifies that Leopard is needed for this feature, so Windows subscribers to MobileMe appear to be out of luck
Existing AirPort Extreme (MA073 and MB053) and Time Capsule (MB276 and MB277) customers can access their AirPort Disk / Time Capsule disk through Mobile Me over the Internet by upgrading to AirPort Utility 5.4.1 and AirPort firmware 7.4.1. Subscription to Mobile Me online services is required for this feature. Simultaneous dual-band Wi-Fi and Guest Networking features are only available to new AirPort Extreme (MB763) and Time Capsule (MB764 and MB765) customers.
Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
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A closer look at the gaggle of Apple hardware updates today shows a rather useful change to both Time Capsule and the Airport Extreme base...
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What about this solution for disc sharing over internet ?!!!!
Does it work ?
http://guides.macrumors.com/Using_Remote_File_Access_to_Save_Disk_Space_on_Your_MacBook_Air#If_You_Have_a_Time_Capsule_or_an_AirPort_Extreme_Base_Station_with_Shared_USB_Hard_Drive
I have installed the firmware 7.4.1. When I am on a foreign network
(also an airport extreme), I can see my see my Airport extreme back home in the finder. I click to connect, but after a while I get the message that I can´t connect. When I "click connect as" I can´t enter any login information. What is wrong?
Just had Airport Utility fire up automatically and offer to upload the new firmware. So if you don't have automatic update checks set in the utility, you might want to use the "Check for updates" menu command now. The MobileMe setup tab is found in the "Advanced" section.
March 05 2009 at 9:44 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyCreated a ruby script to check for a new firmware every hour and spit out a growl/twitter notification when firmware hits:
#!/usr/bin/ruby
require 'rubygems'
require 'osx/cocoa'
require 'growl'
require 'xmlsimple'
require 'net/http'
require 'twitter'
twitUid = ''
twitPass = ''
@GROWL = Growl::Notifier.sharedInstance
@GROWL.register( 'firmware-notifier', ['fw-n-update', 'fw-n-issue'])
file_url = "/Applications/Utilities/AirPort%20Utility.app/Contents/Resources/AirPortUtility.icns"
icon = OSX::NSURL.alloc.initWithString("file:///Applications/Utilities/AirPort%20Utility.app/Contents/Resources/AirPortUtility.icns")
i = OSX::NSImage.alloc.initWithContentsOfURL(icon)
loop do
url = "http://apsu.apple.com/version.xml"
data = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(url)).body
xml_data = XmlSimple.xml_in(data)
current_firmware = xml_data['dict'][0]['array'][0]['dict'][0]['string'][2]
if (current_firmware == "7.4.1")
puts "Zomg New Firmware!!!"
@GROWL.notify('fw-n-update', "Firmware Notifier", current_firmware + " Available!", :icon => i)
twit = Twitter::Base.new(twitUid, twitPass).update("New AirPort firmware available! (" + current_firmware + ") Woot!")
exit
else
puts "Nothing New"
end
sleep 3600
end
Obviously you have to add your twitter info!
I am still new to ruby so if you have any suggestions ... suggest away! :D
So, by 'accessing files over the internet' does that include write access to the drive? It's pretty cool to be able to access files on my home machine (assuming my computer can be asleep at the time?) but if I can then write back to that drive, that would be very cool.
March 04 2009 at 12:10 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyDo the previous generations support the guest network? Or is that a function of the dual band hardware?
March 03 2009 at 10:46 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyCool - I hope its faster than iDisk
March 03 2009 at 5:02 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down ReplyI can't wait for this firmware. I've been beta testing pogoplug and this new feature that allows me to access the drive connected to my AE may kill it for me.
March 03 2009 at 4:36 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Replyit looks like http://nmancer.net/?p=4067 is publishing the same column as yours, word perfect
March 03 2009 at 4:33 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply@Darren
You're right, I don't find the 7.4.1 firmware update neither on Apple website or after updating the Airport Utility to the latest version...perhaps we have to wait a little bit before enjoying this new feature ;-)
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