Apple’s introduction of Time Capsule is great. While switching to the Mac, you can upgrade your router, and have a complete backup solution… it’s a great product for new Mac owners. I think Apple is going to sell these like crazy out of their stores, and it may even generate enough sales to go into other mainstream retail channels like Best Buy.
But, current-generation AirPort Extreme owners are starting to sharpen their pitchforks. See, Apple announced Leopard Time Machine with a demo of it talking to an AirPort Extreme hooked into a USB disk (AirPort Disk). That feature was later scrapped due to bugs.
Time Capsule includes newer firmware however that makes communicating with the hard drive much more stable. So, AirPort Extreme owners have started to figure this out, and are starting to slant their eyes at Cupertino’s direction.
Hopefully Apple will fix this quickly. Hopefully Apple will drop an AirPort Extreme firmware update at the same time as Mac OS X 10.5.2 is released. That would avert a major PR debacle… I can see the video right now… people happily backing up to Time Capsules, playing right next to a video of Apple demoing and touting Leopard backing up to an AirPort Extreme.