Don't think they discontinued them, rather they were pulled until all the retailers had updated the firmware to comply with the ruling.
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AirPort Extreme and Time Capsule Out of Stock at U.S. Apple Stores [Updated]
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We're at least 1-2 years away from seeing even draft 802.11ax equipment. The good news is there's plenty of untapped headroom in 802.11ac, so there's still room to see a substantially upgraded Airport Extreme, along with correspondingly upgraded WiFi capabilities in the next line of Macbook Pros and maybe even the next iPhone. Fingers crossed that we'll see it at WWDC (along with an upgraded Time Capsule).
Update with what?
Current TimeCapsule has TB's of storage, and 3x3 802.11AC.
There are no new technologies for it...
Are you trolling me? The current Time Capsule is over 3 years old and woefully insufficient at the price Apple is charging for it.
Other people up-thread have posted their wishlists. Here's a repost of my Time Capsule wishlist:
HARDWARE:
- SSD drive cache to make Time Machine backups go faster. 4GB or 8GB, either one, I don't mind. 8GB of SSD costs pennies nowadays. Just get that backup done, get off my wifi, then transfer it to the multi-TB drive later. Apple has the Fusion tech to make it happen.
- USB 3 ports. I back up my Time Capsule to (another) external HDD. At USB2 speeds, a multi-TB HDD can take several days to back up which is crazy. I heard that USB3 was left off because it can interfere with AC wifi. However, that seems a solved problem, given the flood of AC routers with USB3 ports.
- Wave 2 802.11ac, with active antennae to boost upstream reception from mobile clients with poor transmit power. This will really help out with FaceTime and other live video upload clients (Skype etc). Wave 2 also has MU-MIMO which helps with multiple high-bandwidth users (eg multiple Netflix streams). Wave 2 routers started coming out last year (2015) so it's time for Apple to incorporate this.
SOFTWARE:
- iCloud caching. I want my photos and stuff available to my local Mac stuff. I don't want to wait for my photos or videos to download before looking through them.
- Photos.app caching. Most Macbooks are 128GB to 256GB. Many people I know are running out of space to store their photos and video clips. The Time Capsule should be able to take some of this on in a smooth way.
- iOS backups direct to TimeCapsule. Currently, iOS can only be backed up to iCloud or a local Mac. This is is crazy now that many home Macs only have 128GB SSDS, sometimes 256GB. That's laughable considering that iPhones and iPads now have up to 256GB storage. How do I back up a 256GB iPad to a 128GB Macbook Air? I'm currently using an external HDD which is crazy considering that sitting 2 feet away from me is a Time Capsule with a vast HDD in it sitting unused and ready for action.
- Maybe incorporate Apple TV into the new Time Capsule? All the gubbins are there, it shouldn't take much extra.
It could work the other way: put a larger storage into the Apple TV (i.e. fusion drive) and allow the Macs into the same network to use it for time machine.
TimeMachine backups aren't slow because of the hardware in the TimeCapsule. They are slow because Apple has intentionally made them slow so that they can be done in the background and not interfere with what you are doing. My NAS is cabable of 110MB/s read/write speeds, yet TimeMachine still takes forever... Even locally attached backups to ThunderBolt drives take forever. Improving the time capsule hardware will do nothing for the speed of Time Machine backups.
I do wish there was a feature in the OS X that allowed you to tell it to perform this backup as fast as possible. I.E. if you hit backup now it should do it very fast, or if it already working on it that option should say something like "complete backup now" and increase the priority and speed of the backup.
Once that feature exists than improving the Time Capsule hardware might speed things up, but adding an SSD to device that has very limited interface (WIFI/Gigabit ethernet) is overkill.
Seriously? You haven't been paying attention then. The Time Capsule (and Extreme) are both AC1750. That means 3 streams for 5GHZ maxing out at 1300mbps and 3 streams for 2.4ghz maxing out at 450mpbs. New high performance routers are even 4x4 with maxes of 2166mbps and 1000mbps and many super speed even allow you to have dual 5ghz radios so you can have a maximum theoretical of 5300mbps (theoretical of course).
http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/wire...-classification-system-for-wifi-products-2015
And those are just mainstream (ie. offered by all major players). TPLink already released the first AD wifi router with touted speeds of 4600mpbs on the 60ghz band (granted this has very limited range since the smaller the waves the worse the distance).
What's the point of any of it unless there are devices that support those new standards? If they release updated Macs/iPads/iPhones with any of those upgrades, until then what is the point?
A well designed wired network with multiple AC1900 access points is still most practical technology on the market. Even the brand new iPhone doesn't support anything that would benefit from this, and highly doubt the redesigned MacBook Pro will either. Even SmallNetBuilder's that you linked to still recommends an AC1900 class router as the newer more expensive one offers very little real life benefit.
The only real complaint I have about their current Airport Extreme is how slow the embedded processors are which results in horrible NAT performance (WAN<->LAN Throughput). We just got municipal gigabit fiber installed, and the Airport Extreme couldn't keep up, essentially cutting our bandwidth in half so we switched to a Nighthawk.
Considering the Airport TC costs considerably more than the Apple TV, I think Apple would be delighted if this happened. Nothing would put a smile on Tim's face more than seeing a more expensive product cannibalising a cheaper product.
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I think you may have it the wrong way around. Time Machine is slow because in operation it changes thousands of small files on the backup HDD. That is the classic worse case scenario for HDDs. Even the fastest HDD in the world will slow to around >1MB/s when dealing with tiny random files (check HDD reviews for 4k random file testing). HDDs are superb at large contiguous files and, like your NAS, will hit 110MB/s easily, but not when dealing with small random files. SSDs excel at small files and can easily hit 50-100MB/s with 4k random files, for a 100x speedup over HDDs.
Hence why I want Apple to put a small SSD in the TC (or a few GB of cheap flash memory) purely for dealing with small files (photo thumbnails, system files etc.)
If you watch your TM doing a backup over ethernet, you'll notice it's very bursty - sometimes it can do nearly 100MB/sec, probably when backing up a single large file, and the rest of the time, it slows to a crawl, dealing with small files.
50-100MB/second is well within modern wifi speeds, especially with AC, which can be almost as fast as wired gigabit ethernet.
Furthermore, in modern houses / small offices, it isn't just you backing up your macbook. If Apple allows iOS to back up directly to Time Capsule, then with 4 people in a house / office, that is potentially 4 laptops, 4 iphones, and 4 ipads, total of 12 devices all backing up a couple of gigabytes of changes and photos each day, all to the same TC. A HDD-based TC is going to struggle trying to back up 12 modern devices at the same time.
If all are sending around 50MB/s (an easy background operation for Macbook SSDs and modern iPhones) over a mix of modern multi-channel AC wifi (- oddly the iPhones and iPads from the 6s onwards have MU-MIMO but the TC doesn't -) and wired ethernet, that's 600MB/s of random files coming in that the Time Capsule has to deal with. A HDD will faint, and a cheap SSD will slow that down to about 300MB/s and then get on with the job of storing it before passing onto the HDD later.
As mentioned in another post above, a better processor would help too. Apple has made huge progress in small cheap processor tech in the three years since the Airport TC came out. The Airport TC currently runs an ARM A9, which formed the basis of (and is slower than) the Apple A5, which was put in the iPhone 4S in 2011. Something more recent would be needed to support the various operations I've outlined in my wishlist.
The iDevices from the iPhone 6S onwards all have MU-MIMO which is specifically designed for multi-user high-speed wifi. That was over a year ago, and the Airport TimeCapsule still doesn't support it, despite the tendency of the typical household (or small office) that has gone to the expense of buying a Time Capsule to contain more and more iDevices.
EDIT: I was wrong on this. Thanks to Weaselboy for the correction, below.
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You are incorrect. My post from the other thread. MIMO is not the same thing as MU-MIMO.
What wireless devices support that?
No decent laptops from Dell/Lenovo/Apple. I can't even find an intel wifi card, probably the most prevalent supplier on the market for mobile devices, that does more than 2x2.
http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/wireless-product-selection-guide.html
Would be nice . . . especially with Time Machine Editor - I do my backups in the middle of the night, so don't really care if my work is impacted (or for that matter if they take a while).
First off, Intel DOES have a chipset that supports AD:
https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Intel_Tri-Band_Wireless-AC_17265_(17265NGWG)
But then there are you know a few other Wifi companies out there like qualcomm....
https://www.qualcomm.com/products/catalog/wi-fi
Oh and Apple is already using Broadcomm and has been for a very long time....
https://www.broadcom.com/products/wireless-connectivity/wireless-lan/bcm4366
Those are just a few examples of companies who have well surpassed 1400mbps 802.11AC.
Frankly the question was "aren't we already at the fastest wifi with the Time Capsules" and the answer is "NO we aren't."
The Intel link shows a card that can't even keep up with the current Airport Extreme 3x3.
"802.11ac 2x2 (867Mbps),"
The Qualcomm link shows a bunch of raw chipsets... nothing I could integrate into a Dell Laptop.
The broadcom link clearly denotes "ROUTER PLATFORM" so I fail to see how this proves existence of client devices.
In conclusion, thank you for providing more proof to my statement. But it wasn't necessary.
First off, while the AC side is only 867mpbs, IT HAS 802.11AD which is almost 7gbps! The Airport express doens't even support 802.11AD.
"802.11ad 60GHz WiGig wireless, combined with a AC 7265 (NBR)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Gigabit_Alliance#Specification
Second, Qualcomm doesn't build cards, they build chipsets that companies integrate into cards you can put into your Dell Laptop. But then again, with tablets, smartphones, ultra portable laptops (even just portable laptops anymore), the days of adding "cards" to your laptop has become a very niche market. Most are soldered to the laptop board anymore.
Third, without faster routers, we wouldn't get Dell, Hp, or Apple to upgrade to these speeds. More often then not, clients (laptops, tablets, etc) do not add additional capabilities for WIFI until there is a significant user base to take advantage of them (i.e. wifi routers).
Apple used to release their routers/wifi access points with the fastest on the market (For example, 802.11AC wasn't officially Published until 12/13/2013 yet the current Extreme and Time Machines were released to market on June 10, 2016). With Apple's push for everything wireless, you would think they would want to continue pushing the envelope with wifi tech. But they have been stagnant now for over 3 years!
Further, the Intel 802.11AD 60hz support, is for special devices like wireless docks.
e.g. Dell wireless dock: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=452-BBUX
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/01/tp-link-unveils-worlds-first-802-11ad-wigig-router/
Apple Airport Extreme... is not a wireless dock, is not a 4K TV with wireless display. I fail to see how it's an appropriate technology.
802.11AD is not an evolution of WIFI. It's not for covering your house or business.
It's for short range devices. Like Wireless display, or wireless docks, within the same room.
Think of it as a high bandwidth alternative to bluetooth.
e.g.: http://accessories.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?sku=452-BBUX
Black Friday (er, Amazon's 2-week Black Friday Sale) is now here and my fingers are itching for a router update.
In the UK, the Netgear R7000-100UKS Nighthawk AC1900 is now on Black Friday Sale, at £99.99 at Amazon, most other places have it around £130.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-R7000-100UKS-Nighthawk-Dual-core-Processor/dp/B00HDK4GAK
Weaselboy's (he knows what he's talking about) favourite router, the ASUS RT-AC68U is £150 at Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-RT-AC68U-Dual-Band-Wireless-802-11AC/dp/B00FB45SI4
Thoughts?
In the UK, the Netgear R7000-100UKS Nighthawk AC1900 is now on Black Friday Sale, at £99.99 at Amazon, most other places have it around £130.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/NETGEAR-R7000-100UKS-Nighthawk-Dual-core-Processor/dp/B00HDK4GAK
Weaselboy's (he knows what he's talking about) favourite router, the ASUS RT-AC68U is £150 at Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ASUS-RT-AC68U-Dual-Band-Wireless-802-11AC/dp/B00FB45SI4
Thoughts?
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I bought the Linksys WRT1900ACS and loving it (4 months now)
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Those two are pretty equal as far as features and such... making it close to a toss up IMO. The only reason I lean toward the Asus is they tend to keep doing firmware updates for longer where sometimes Netgear will abandon an older router sooner than Asus. But for that price on the Netgear, I don't see how you could go wrong.
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