AirPort Base Stations, 2013
WWDC 2013's keynote presentation included announcement of new AirPort base
stations: a new AirPort Extreme router and AirPort Time Capsule router+disk.
They were expected, needed to deliver new 802.11ac wireless technology
networking for Apple's next computers with such networking, starting with the
MacBook Air.
The new base stations naturally support your older 802.11a/b/g/n devices as well.
These are tower designs, affording space for better antennas, replacing the
former short, wide base design. This also means less desk space taken up.
The internal antenna array allows "beam forming" with 802.11ac connections, to
direct the signal to a device with that networking technology.
With the tower, the connectors are vertically arranged, rather the horizontally
in the old design. There are the same number of connectors, for up to 3 ethernet
(gigabit) cabled devices, plus the required WAN connection to your cable modem.
The color is white and the surface is smooth, with no dust-collecting grooves.
Like the previous design, there is no annoying power "brick" on your electical
power cord, just the cord itself.
Same familiar status light as before, more subtle now.
The new Time Capsule
I acquired one of these, 3 TB capacity, to replace my former 2 TB old-design model.
The first thing that struck me is the weight: this thing is heavy.
That's a good thing for a design that is taller than it is wide, providing
excellent stability on the desk.
Set-up is so simple that it can hardly be thought of as a set-up effort:
plug in the cables, attach the power cord, and give it a name and password in
AirPort Utility (which self-launches in detection of the new unit), and you're
up and running — safely: security defaults to WPA Personal (in stark
contrast to the unsafe WEP security default so commonly found in the Windows world).
I don't have an 802.11ac computer as of yet, so initial experience is with my
home 802.11b/g/n devices.
I definitely see an improvement.
The iMac at the other end of the house could not do parallel downloads wihout
problems in the past, but now can.
Feeding HD video to the Apple TV unit at the other end of the house is now a
smooth experience.
The unit runs cooler than the old one, meaning less energy consumption.
The new Time Capsule is a welcome advance in AirPort devices.
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