I want a Time Capsule Extreme
With Time Capsule Apple has pretty much silently entered the external storage arena for consumers.
I think they should take things a bit further.
TCX would have these features.
4 SATA drive bays
4 Gigabit Ethernet LAN
2 Gigabit WAN ports
802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz radios can operate concurrently)
1 USB 2.0 port
Time Capsule Management Utility- Combines Airport Utility with enhanced management.
So the gist of this box is to become a central gateway for your network.
It would run ZFS for the file system and be based on an embedded version of OS X 10.7. There would be an API that comes along with it to allow for 3rd party extensibility. In fact there would be embedded SSD memory for caching files as well.
For instance there would be a feature that would allow "Back to my Mac" features for remote file access and a feature that would allow you to stream Audio or Video content to your iPhone over the internet.
iLife X and iTunes X would allow you to store library data on the server (non Time Machine) and it would keep metadata synchronized. This way you would finally have the centralized iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie data yet each client accessing the data would maintain its own unique local metadata and access control. A Spotlight server would be included to manage files.
Storage could be pooled or JBOD (this would allow says a 2TB Time Machine drive and a 6 TB section of pooled storage before overhead of course)
So I envision a future where there's the single box from Apple that functions as a not only a network gateway but storage gateway as well. With cloud storage and access via MobileMe what's needed is a storage device that makes managing and handling media simple.
Every device in the home would be able to access the TCX either wired or wirelessly. The TCX would be able to access MobileMe directly so you could easily have iDisk send data to your computer or the TCX.
The benefits are obvious.
It removes the need to have large storage in your local computer, phone or Apple TV yet it acts as a conduit for accessing files remotely. And most of the features would be beneficial in a cross platform manner.
I think they should take things a bit further.
TCX would have these features.
4 SATA drive bays
4 Gigabit Ethernet LAN
2 Gigabit WAN ports
802.11 a/b/g/n (2.4Ghz and 5Ghz radios can operate concurrently)
1 USB 2.0 port
Time Capsule Management Utility- Combines Airport Utility with enhanced management.
So the gist of this box is to become a central gateway for your network.
It would run ZFS for the file system and be based on an embedded version of OS X 10.7. There would be an API that comes along with it to allow for 3rd party extensibility. In fact there would be embedded SSD memory for caching files as well.
For instance there would be a feature that would allow "Back to my Mac" features for remote file access and a feature that would allow you to stream Audio or Video content to your iPhone over the internet.
iLife X and iTunes X would allow you to store library data on the server (non Time Machine) and it would keep metadata synchronized. This way you would finally have the centralized iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie data yet each client accessing the data would maintain its own unique local metadata and access control. A Spotlight server would be included to manage files.
Storage could be pooled or JBOD (this would allow says a 2TB Time Machine drive and a 6 TB section of pooled storage before overhead of course)
So I envision a future where there's the single box from Apple that functions as a not only a network gateway but storage gateway as well. With cloud storage and access via MobileMe what's needed is a storage device that makes managing and handling media simple.
Every device in the home would be able to access the TCX either wired or wirelessly. The TCX would be able to access MobileMe directly so you could easily have iDisk send data to your computer or the TCX.
The benefits are obvious.
It removes the need to have large storage in your local computer, phone or Apple TV yet it acts as a conduit for accessing files remotely. And most of the features would be beneficial in a cross platform manner.
Comments
Drobo + Drobo share?
It's the template along with Drobo apps
the key ingredient is WAN support and wireless routing along with
leveraging the much faster SSD in a couple of years 32 GB of NAND
storage will be dirt cheap and the SoC chips needed to power one of
these storage bays will be cake.
Having removable drives means Time Machine offsite storage and of course
flexibility. Having ZFS means low cost snapshots with only delta changes being
sent.
Having an 10.7 core means metadata, extended attributes and more.
Having music and movie streaming to the iPod is a killer feature and one the
industry will approve of because you are not recording anything to playing back
a stream.