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Smaller size, better signal, reduced price would be nice.

As a side, it'd be useful to have the AirPort products on MacRumors' Buyers' Guide.
 
How tightly packed is the airport express? A couple things I'd like to see...

Change the form factor to a flatter (against the wall) design that could more easily be tucked behind furniture.

Airplay support

And I wonder if there would be a benefit in adding a couple of flash chips. Or maybe I'm just asking for an AppleTV? ;)
 
Isn't that called an AppleTV? :)

Well yes, and no. It should STILL at as its own router. And it is not supposed to have an interface of its own... like the AppleTV does.

It should just stream the desktop akin to the way the current Airport Express streams music... without any interface etc to speak of.
 
Would be nice to have both combined, though. Instead of buying 2 products, you'd have to buy only 1. Unfortunately, not a good business move, though.

I was thinking the AppleTV would still have the ability to watch videos independently (without AirPlay that is), but then I realized that probably wouldn't be a big loss for most people.
 
Crap, i just about my 3rd one last week. They dont seem to last longer than 1,5 years but i rely on them as i cant figure out how to set up others lol
 
Halleloo!!!

This little fella is one of my favorite pieces of Apple stuff. Although the five that I have throughout my house are tucked away behind furniture or speaker systems, I would like to see a new form factor. As much as I love the AirPort Express, I think it looks rather dated.

Also, if they'd lower the price and offer an AirPlay-only version (drop the router functionality), I'd be even happier, since I only use them for streaming audio.

Airplay only would be perfect. I've acquired 5 via craigslist and the like, because $110 just to stream music is too high. Can't figure out why anyone would pay the outrageous prices for built in airplay speakers when you can pick up an AE for <$50 used.
 
The Airport Express Needs Fixing

I bought a 802.11n AExpress to extend my N AExtreme. I'm disappointed by the Express. The bandwidth on my Extreme is excellent; the bandwidth on my Express is very poor. My network struggles to stream music between the Extreme and an AppleTV wiht an Express in between (lots of skipping; sometimes completely dropping the connection). These network components aren't that far away from each other either. It's possible I haven't set up the components correctly, but I was careful to set them up exactly as described in the documentation.
 
Hopefully it's 3x3 MIMO like the last two gens of the Airport Extreme have been. I was just about to buy an Airport Express to replace an old draft-N gaming adapter that struggles to deliver >20Mbps throughput (whereas my iMac and MBP are easily >110Mbps sustained on wireless-N). Looking forward to this update!
 
Nothing to see here people. The current Airport Express IS the second generation. There was an 802.11b/g only Airport express, with no n.
 
I love my AE - still going strong after 5 years!

The are 2 requested improvements I would like to see: a USB port that I could attach some drives to, not just a printer.

I'd also like to see Apple tweak iTunes/AE so that when I play anything other than music (like movies) I can stream audio. Note that one time I found a third-party program to accomplish this but it was both buggy and there was a horrible delay that made the second set of speakers I was using unlistenable.
 
I love my AE - still going strong after 5 years!

The are 2 requested improvements I would like to see: a USB port that I could attach some drives to, not just a printer.

I'd also like to see Apple tweak iTunes/AE so that when I play anything other than music (like movies) I can stream audio. Note that one time I found a third-party program to accomplish this but it was both buggy and there was a horrible delay that made the second set of speakers I was using unlistenable.
Hopefully it is a feature they will enable in the next iTunes version as iOS devices can already do this.
 
Nothing to see here people. The current Airport Express IS the second generation. There was an 802.11b/g only Airport express, with no n.

Yes but this specifically says that this is the 2nd gen of the 802.11n.

"Adds support for the AirPort Express 802.11n (2nd Generation) base station"
 
I'd love to be able to send all system wide sound to the airport express, not just content played via iTunes.

Now that would be amazing (unless it is already, in which case how do I it?!)
 
Damn, why didn't they upgrade the USB 2.0 port to something more beefy in the last update to the AirPort Extreme Base Station?! It would've made such an awesome router + NAS solution in one.
 
hopefully it's the speed

i recently bought one of these things - biggest waste of money ever! the wifi transit speed from 6 feet away is less than ⅓ the speed of my cable modem if directly connected. i've done everything from apple support to cable company visits and this thing just plain sucks! it's useless!

i hope the refresh offers some sort of fix for newly purchased items less than 3 months old as well.
 
I love my AE - still going strong after 5 years!

The are 2 requested improvements I would like to see: a USB port that I could attach some drives to, not just a printer.

I'd also like to see Apple tweak iTunes/AE so that when I play anything other than music (like movies) I can stream audio. Note that one time I found a third-party program to accomplish this but it was both buggy and there was a horrible delay that made the second set of speakers I was using unlistenable.

I like to plug them into the sockets on my wall but they keep falling out due to their weight and shape, I hope they will fix this design problem also.
 
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