Clear benefits to Time Capsule?
I'm wanting a personal cloud solution, and I can't find a definitive answers as to whether or not there is a clear advantage to going with an Apple Time Capsule, instead of something like the WD My Cloud, which is half the price, Time Machine compatible, and at first glance, nearly identical in function.
Is there something I'm missing?
Comments
http://www.laptopmag.com/reviews/storage/western-digital-my-cloud-2tb
With an 802.11ac laptop connecting directly to the 802.11ac Time Capsule, you'd get about 85Mbps (1.5 minutes to backup 1GB):
http://www.macworld.com/article/2044247/review-speedy-networking-makes-apples-new-airport-time-capsule-a-good-buy.html
The WD box would probably get over 6Mbps if you have an 802.11ac router but likely still not as fast as the Time Capsule. The older 802.11n Time Capsule can be bought around the same price as the WD Box:
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Time-Capsule-2TB-MD032LL/dp/B0057AVXP4
Even the older one gets decent transfer performance so the performance of the WD box must have been affected by the data going via the external router.
for video I've used air video HD for viewing videos remotely,
If it's file management I've opened AFP up to my Mac.
Share a folder using system preferences/Sharing/File Sharing
On your router port forward port 548 to your Mac. This of course is different for each and every router, so you will need to check this yourself.
Remotely, use another Mac and in finder Go/connect to server/ afp://IPAddress
This is your IP address your provider gives you.
Use IFiles on iOS devices to connect the same way. Ifilesapp.com
With this solution there was no need for a time capsule. If you do want to use a time capsule, you can always share this disk on it and then point the port forward to its AFP port, that works just the same.