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Airport Extreme Air Disk, and 801.11n Upgrades $4.99 [Update]

Maxx Power said:
What the heck are you smoking here ? Microsoft only certifies them. They write drivers, true, but like I said, only compatibility stuff only. Whatever is necessary to install and run windows xp.
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So they release drivers with different version numbers and on different schedules, containing different features than the manufacturer-provided drivers and carrying the Microsoft label. Why would the manufacturer write two different sets of drivers and give one to Microsoft, when their own drivers are WDM-certified?

There is no need for attacking me, that won't prove a point.
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I'm not attacking you; I'm simply commenting on a general statistic I observed based on my experience.

(And trotting out a second account isn't all that helpful to your cause.)
 
matticus008 said:
So they release drivers with different version numbers and on different schedules, containing different features than the manufacturer-provided drivers and carrying the Microsoft label. Why would the manufacturer write two different sets of drivers and give one to Microsoft, when their own drivers are WDM-certified?


I'm not attacking you; I'm simply commenting on a general statistic I observed based on my experience.

(And trotting out a second account isn't all that helpful to your cause.)
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you've ignored my other post to Peace, haven't you ? I've shown you, with the evidence you said you need. I got the Broadcom webpage, and I showed Peace the fact that non of Broadcom's chipsets are advertised or featured to be 802.11n, and then I showed him a mirror for downloading WHQL'd drivers to enable FREE n-support on supporting Broadcom chipsets. That's the one you'd need if you use an iMac with windows xp and need a n-driver, or enabler.

If you've been learning this so called "general statistic", then please, do yourself also a favour, and pony up on your logic and statistics.

(Trotting out a second account, eh ? Can't bear to be wrong, can you ? For your information, 64Bytes is my friend, we're not even of the same ethnicity, much less your idea...)

So, why don't you hold posting for a second, and look at Broadcom's website, and download that driver (or any of the previous versions up to version 4 or so) and see that the history says I'm right, that people have been getting free 802.11n for a while. I'm not sure who makes the wifi chipset for the mini or the macbooks, so I can't take you to their website, but this "hidden-n" functionality has been talked about a lot on the internet back WHEN the technology came out.
 
If anyone is still interested, over at Anandtech, some brilliant quotes regarding this fiasco:

"I'm an accountant and I don't see the accounting issue, since the laptops were sold with 802.11n in it already, just not active, they should be able to record the revenue for it right away. They could have just made the update free and there would be no accounting issues - there is no 'revenue recognition' when the product is free. " -bobdelt

"your/the apple rep's interpretation of sarbanes-oxley is (ridiculously) broad to say the least. s-o is intended to curb stock option misuse, excessive executive compensation and loans, and insider trading. it's not aimed at basic accounting.
" -RamarC

"I'm not an expert in US GAAP/SOX, but I do some work in it and am a professional accountant (I'm in Canada). There is a basis for their argument in revenue recognition because the 802.11n could be thought of as part of the delivery or performance of a contract/arranagement. However, there is an argument against it, namely materiality. It is bizarre that they are marketing it as an issue of GAAP, very strange. If they truly wanted to charge a nominal amount it would be $0.01.
" -gramboh

And incase anyone is wondering about draft-n and apple-n. Neither is finalized and ratified by the IEEE, so expect to have little compatibility with non-apple routers if you use a Mac.
 
Maxx Power said:
"your/the apple rep's interpretation of sarbanes-oxley is (ridiculously) broad to say the least. s-o is intended to curb stock option misuse, excessive executive compensation and loans, and insider trading. it's not aimed at basic accounting.
" -RamarC .
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Not to get into it more, but I thought Sarbane Oxley was also aimed squarely at Enron shennigans, which pretty much WAS basic accounting (creating imaginary profits, which were then used to boost executive pay. Same thing at Worldcomm.
 
gwangung said:
Not to get into it more, but I thought Sarbane Oxley was also aimed squarely at Enron shennigans, which pretty much WAS basic accounting (creating imaginary profits, which were then used to boost executive pay. Same thing at Worldcomm.
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That's exactly what I understood of the SOX idea. Apple has no merit to use it for charging customers. I've shown that broadcom (maker of Apple's n-wifi cards) isn't doing that, and the windows community isn't receiving this kind of treatment, so why should us mac users fork over however amount for this ? The windows driver is free, apple should make their driver free as well.
 
Maxx Power said:
That's exactly what I understood of the SOX idea. Apple has no merit to use it for charging customers. I've shown that broadcom (maker of Apple's n-wifi cards) isn't doing that, and the windows community isn't receiving this kind of treatment, so why should us mac users fork over however amount for this ? The windows driver is free, apple should make their driver free as well.
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Ah, I thought I was talking with someone who's more knowledgeable at accounting than I am. You could be right, but absent a deeper knowledge of the relevant law, an argument by analogy isn't convincing, since I've gotten stung by that before. And citing someone who gets Sarbane Oxley wrong isn't exactly a compelling argument either.
 
gwangung said:
Ah, I thought I was talking with someone who's more knowledgeable at accounting than I am. You could be right, but absent a deeper knowledge of the relevant law, an argument by analogy isn't convincing, since I've gotten stung by that before. And citing someone who gets Sarbane Oxley wrong isn't exactly a compelling argument either.
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You are more correct than I am at accounting. That's something I'm not proficient at. And, yeah, I agree, argument by analogy isn't the most convincing. All I can offer you is what little real evidence I have then, the windows community isn't being charged a cent for upgrades (free driver link I posted) and the fact the feature didn't come with the *most likely* laptop (see broadcom's own products page (who makes apple wifi card chipsets now)). I wasn't citing people over at Anandtech for making a point, I wanted whoever was interested in this topic still to look at some interpretations elsewhere, you probably mistook me on that post.

Beyond this, I'm not into arguing for or against particular laws. If you wish to discuss this with someone proficient in accounting or law, you should take a look at the same posts at Anandtech instead. Ignore the obvious Mac bashing posts (a few anyway) and read a bit on what other people outside of a Mac-forum is saying and what they have to offer (some of them are supposedly accountants and so on).
 
Maxx Power said:
If anyone is still interested, over at Anandtech, some brilliant quotes regarding this fiasco:
Click to expand...
None of which deny the possible need for these steps. The first one said 'they should be able to"--but made no claim that they did. If they hadn't recorded the revenue previously, they'd be right here again. The second quote argues that the interpretation is broad. No one has claimed otherwise. The third quote also point-blank admits a factual basis for the claim, but offers a potential counterclaim.

As you can see, none of the accountants can say "definitely not liable." Apple is being extremely careful here and crossing every t; counterarguments as to why it's not necessary would only be raised if Apple hadn't done this and needed them in court. It was an admittedly strict interpretation of the law (from my first post), and perhaps more strict than absolutely necessary. But the adage, "better safe than sorry" exists for a reason.

As for the Broadcom links, you've failed to grasp the meaning of those pages, much like most of the posts here. Broadcom releases a single driver package for all its products. That does not mean that all of their products are capable of all of the driver features. EDIT: ATI's Catalyst or nVidia's Forceware are quite similar. If you look at their products page, all of the n-capable products are clearly labeled.
 
Maxx Power said:
http://drivers.softpedia.com/get/NE...eless-802-11a-b-g-n-Driver-4100155-whql.shtml

Your windows machine with undisclosed n-capable wifi suddenly becomes n-capable without paying extra cash.

http://www.broadcom.com/products/Wireless-LAN

is broadcom's site for their wireless lan including n-spec solutions. They are used in Linksys (left image on site), which has had the draft-n routers and PCI/PCIE cards for a long time (about a year now i believe).
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So shouldn't people be complaining to Broadcom that they are not providing OS X drivers, rather then ripping Apple for charging $1.99 for them? It's the router manufacturer, not the computer manufacturer, that's making them available.
 
MacinDoc said:
So shouldn't people be complaining to Broadcom that they are not providing OS X drivers, rather then ripping Apple for charging $1.99 for them? It's the router manufacturer, not the computer manufacturer, that's making them available.
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Apple actually writes their own drivers. partly the reason for the poor 3d performance with ATI/NVIDIA cards
 
i want one, but i don't think it's time yet

I'd love to get one of the new airport extreme base stations. I think it is a very good value for the features that it includes (802.11n, airport disk, multiple shared usb devices, etc.) Unfortunately for me, with my current hardware, I wouldn't be able to utilize all that it has to offer. I have a dual core g5 with airport extreme (802.11g), a tibook with airport (802.11b), and when I bring it home from work, a macbook pro core duo (802.11g). I'm also pretty happy with my linksys 802.11b router w/ signal booster. I get very good signal wherever I am in the house, which is the most important thing.

The shared disk/printer/etc. are nice to have, but not essential. IF I could take advantage of the 802.11n speeds, that might make it worth it to do the upgrade, since I'd use that bandwidth if I decided to use a shared disk. Realistically, I think I'd get the airport extreme the next time I upgrade one of my systems, which probably won't be until next year at the earliest.
 
7on said:
Apple actually writes their own drivers. partly the reason for the poor 3d performance with ATI/NVIDIA cards
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There's nothing to stop anyone else from writing a driver. After all, isn't most of OS X open source?

That being said, I agree that not doing this update directly through Software Update sort of flies in the face of Apple's "it just works" marketing.
 
allenhuffman said:
For video editing, I have 11 external drives hooked up using 4 firewire cases. A few of the drives are specifically used for backing up my laptop, and I generally keep them turned off (so accidental/malicious data corruption is less likely to happen). It might be convienient to place my backup drive on the new Airport, allowing me to always have access to them even if my main iMac is powered down.

I'll be curious about the speed (USB 2.0 versus Firewire) over the network, and if it will support multiple drives and any type of Raid. If they build in smarts to allow the Airport Extreme to be a Network Attaches Storage device just by plugging up USB drives, that could be pretty useful. (Much like being able to hook up a printer, and be able to print any time without leaving a Mac powered up.)
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Speed over the network is a moot point (USB 2.0 versus Firewire), since the LAN ports are limited to 100Mbit (not sure why Apple insists on 100Mbit, when ALL of their computers now have gigabit ethernet - this seems like a major shortcoming of the new Airport Extreme basestation) and 802.11n supports a typical datarate of 200Mbps (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#802.11n). Both are well below both USB 2.0 and Firewire's 480 & 400Mbps peak datarates. Even with a max "theoretical" datarate of 540Mbps, it would have very limited impact on the difference in access speed. I think more important is whether the drive enclosure's chipset is inherently fast (not all enclosures are created equal) and whether the drive itself is fast (7200rpm, 8ms access time, etc). If you're serious about video editing, and want network-attached storage, you should be working on at least a gigabit network, if not fibre channel.
 
USB port and scanner

Can I plug my scanner into the USB port of the Airport Extreme and have it available on my network? Or does it only share drives and printers? Specifically, I trying to figure out if I have an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier, if the scanner will be available to everyone on the network or just the printer.
 
macintel4me said:
Can I plug my scanner into the USB port of the Airport Extreme and have it available on my network? Or does it only share drives and printers? Specifically, I trying to figure out if I have an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier, if the scanner will be available to everyone on the network or just the printer.
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I'd vote for just the Printer. I don't think I've seen Airport or a wifi adapter allowing wireless scanning, (the assumption being to scan you will have your scanner and computer right in front of you).
 
macintel4me said:
Can I plug my scanner into the USB port of the Airport Extreme and have it available on my network? Or does it only share drives and printers? Specifically, I trying to figure out if I have an all-in-one printer/scanner/copier, if the scanner will be available to everyone on the network or just the printer.
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Something you might try if you have multiple systems:

Use the Sharing preference in Image Capture to share the scanner attached to one system, then check if the scanner is available in Image Capture on another system.

If that works there may be some chance that a scanner attached to an AE would be shared and available to other systems. Or AE might be restricted to printer and disk sharing, as steve_hill4 suggests.
 
Looks like a lot of nice new stuff (well, OK... other routers have had some of this for awhile, but still) ... like actually being able to see which clients are connected to the router, temporary guest accounts so you that you don't have to give your network key out to friends that are just visiting, etc.

The interface also looks a lot nicer. Yay. :)
 
So reading the manuals I have a few questions...

Page 18-19 - Using Bonjour - "Advertise the base station over the Internet using Bonjour. If you have an account with an dynamic DNS service, you can connect to your base station over the Internet. "

Can someone please clarify what this means. I have an adsl account with dynamic IP. Does this make it easier to connect across the net to my home network?


Page 22. I take it that RADIUS is not something you would ever enable for a home network because it requires a dedicated PC/Mac, or is this doable as a simple App or utility?

"WPA/WPA2 Enterprise: Choose this option if you are setting up a network that includes an authentication server, such as a RADIUS server, with individual user accounts. Enter the IP address and port number for the primary and optional secondary server, and enter a “shared secret,” which is the password for the server. Choose WPA2 Enterprise if you want only computers that support WPA2 to join the network. "

Page 22. "Use Wide Channels: If you set up your network to use the 5 GHz frequency range, you can use wide channels to provide higher network throughput."

So if I have a G network and an N network, this should allow the N to run faster right, whilst still allowing slower G traffic to travel?
 
aswitcher said:
So reading the manuals I have a few questions...

Page 18-19 - Using Bonjour - "Advertise the base station over the Internet using Bonjour. If you have an account with an dynamic DNS service, you can connect to your base station over the Internet. "

Can someone please clarify what this means. I have an adsl account with dynamic IP. Does this make it easier to connect across the net to my home network?
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Oh, that could be cool (assuming that any of the dynamic DNS services use Bonjour). I'd imagine that anytime your dynamic IP address changed, the new AE would update your dynamic DNS record. Yay. No more having to run a background service on my mini for this. :)
 
combatcolin said:
STILL CONFUSED

:confused:

Right, if i buy and Apple TV and the new Apple basestation can i plug my ext Lacie into the Basestation and access it via the Apple TV WITHOUT switching my PC on.

Thanks.
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Apple TV allso has USB2 so wouldn't it be possible to add it directly on the Apple TV? or would that make it impossible to access the files on the drive with anything else than the Apple TV??

and can the Apple TV be used as AirPort Base Station? connect it on the modem with Ethernet & share it trough AirPort???

not that I will buy the Apple TV anytime soon, since my Macmini does what the Apple TV can do and more... (front row enabled on the mini with RF remote control...)
 
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