New Airport Extreme? Worth It? ...turns out Oh Yes!

[robgendreau]

But it is the best in design and usability. IMHO, other routers I have to deal with were a pain.

Having said that, I liked more the old design (MacMini style) than the new tower style, but it still beats other networking gear.

Usability? I beg to differ. Sure, Apple has a sorta nice looking little interface with their proprietary Airport Utility, but when you run into problems you realize just how limited it is. And those of us with older AE/AEBS equipment found to our detriment that Apple deprecated the much better Airport Utility 5.6; it won't even run on Mavericks. Most other router manufacturers use the simple old web interface, and standard terminology. An ancient Linksys in some ways is easier to use than equivalent Apple equipment for this reason. It may be years before you run into this problem, and maybe your equipment is semi-disposable, but then again maybe not.

And remember a router is just a radio, or pair of radios. The lack of external antenna connections is a severe limitation if you really care about reception. But it looks nice that way, if you like that sort form over function.

 

[johnmacward]

Of course nobody knows for sure... but when we went through this with 802.11N a few years ago, Apple released a product with the draft N spec then later updated firmware to bring it to the full spec once it was certified. I think it is reasonable to assume the same will happen this time around.

Let's hope so, thanks for the response WeaselBoy.

 

[donlab]

Usability? I beg to differ. Sure, Apple has a sorta nice looking little interface with their proprietary Airport Utility, but when you run into problems you realize just how limited it is. And those of us with older AE/AEBS equipment found to our detriment that Apple deprecated the much better Airport Utility 5.6; it won't even run on Mavericks. Most other router manufacturers use the simple old web interface, and standard terminology. An ancient Linksys in some ways is easier to use than equivalent Apple equipment for this reason. It may be years before you run into this problem, and maybe your equipment is semi-disposable, but then again maybe not.

And remember a router is just a radio, or pair of radios. The lack of external antenna connections is a severe limitation if you really care about reception. But it looks nice that way, if you like that sort form over function.

It has 6 antennae inside the plastic rectangle column. Not a limitation, reception is quite good.