1. Time Capsule

Steve Jobs took the stage just after 9 a.m. Tuesday morning to the usual thunderous applause and with Feist’s “1234” setting the stage as background music. The “1234” theme was a setup for Jobs’ announcement that he had “4 things” that he wanted to talk about before the crowd.

1. Time Capsule
2. iPhone and iPod Touch Updates
3. iTunes and Apple TV
4. The MacBook Air

The first was “Time Capsule”, a new wireless backup device designed to work with Leopard’s Time Machine backup software. Jobs commented that “For notebooks, it [Time Machine] doesn’t work so well”, due to the need to keep it plugged into a backup drive.

Time Capsule solves that problem by combining a wireless N base station with a 500 GB or 1 Terabyte hard drive. “Bring Time Capsule home, plug it in, click a few buttons on your Macs and voila-all the Macs in your house are being backed up automatically, every hour of every day.” Jobs said.

In addition to its wireless port, Time Capsule features two dual-band antennas (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz frequencies), three wired Gigabit ports, a USB 2.0 port, data encryption, and a built in firewall. Time capsule will be available in February and will sell for $299 (500 GB model) and $499 (1 Terabyte model).