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Apple Quietly Updates Time Capsule (2TB and 3TB) and AirPort Extreme

sdiesel619 said:
I just spoke with the Live Chat people on the Apple website and the only thing that changed with the AEBS is the part number. Thats all she said.
Click to expand...

I believe she just doesn't know...

According to the FCC reports, there is a significant difference in the power output of the g/n radios at both 2.4 and 5ghz...

Previous Version...(follow the link, then click on the "Report" link)
http://goo.gl/B8PIu

New Version...
http://goo.gl/3yKRl


Previous Version...

freqency range mode output power dbm output power watts
2412-2462 802.11b 24.57 286.42
2412-2462 802.11g 21.56 143.22
2412-2462 802.11n(ht20) 21.17 130.92

5745-5825 802.11a 23.07 202.77
5745-5805 802.11n(ht20) 22.17 164.82
5755-5795 802.11n(ht40) 21.44 139.32


New Version...

2412-2462 802.11b 24.10 257.04
2412-2462 802.11g 24.88 307.61
2412-2462 802.11n(ht20) 24.11 257.63

5745-5825 802.11a 25.14 326.59
5745-5805 802.11n(ht20) 25.28 337.29
5755-5795 802.11n(ht40) 25.94 392.64



This should mean a fairly significant increase in range with the new model.
 
Last edited:
Batto said:
The price is crazy. You can get with 2/3 of the money a full home NAS that supports Time Machine, DLNA, has itune server, bittorrent/ed2k service, remote access, IP camera support and dozen more features with 4 TB storage (or 2TB in raid1) with ~275 GBP:

Synology DS211J - 155 GBP

2 x Samsung 2TB HDD - 60 GBP

You can use the rest 125 GBP for a wireless router or beer :)
Click to expand...

You are comparing a product that is ready to use with something where you have to do research, put together stuff from different companies, where you can be guaranteed that two companies will give you the runaround when you can't get it to work. Then you are comparing someone's marketing blurb with a proven product. So are you betting that this will do what it claims when you put it all together?
 
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MagnusVonMagnum said:
So much for the rumors of the much NEEDED iTunes server (so one wouldn't have to keep a computer on 24/7 to make their full libraries available to all their AppleTV units....

Between this and the no physical media Lion distribution that means you have to install and old operating system before you can install Lion I can only say one thing.

Apple is really starting to suck.

I think I'll keep Snow Leopard on my MBP and I'll think twice before buying a Mac again in the future.

I wonder what I can get to replace AppleTV since it'll apparently never work transparently with a UPnP/DLNA server or NAS device.
Click to expand...

Wow. What a truly foolish thing to say. Apple just revolutionized the industry with iCloud. They are about to release a major update to OS X, and they are about to release a major update to iOS. They are releasing new hardware all the time, and they about to release a new major version of the iPhone. They have the best tablet and phone on the planet.

And Apple "sucks" because they didn't release some piece of hardware that you *IMAGINED*?

Cry babies. I'm literally disgusted by you.
 
i hate phones said:
i appologize for my technically challenged question...

What is the difference between a TC with a thunderbolt port and an external hard drive with a thunderbolt port?

I guess I was viewing the TC as both a router and an external hard drive and thought with a thunderbolt port you'd have the option of bypassing the limitations of wifi/ethernet for doing major backups/restores. But after reading all these comments I'm guessing i'm wrong.
Click to expand...

TC is Airport Extreme + internal hard drive for network storage. An external hard drive with TB port has to be connected to a computer with a TB port. It’s like any other external drive with USB 2.0 or firewire ports. The difference is that TC can be used with any computers on the network because it is accessible from the network. An external drive is restricted to the computer it is connected to (unless you share the drive on the Mac with other Macs).
 
djrobsd said:
Apple needs to just get out of the wireless router business and leave it to Cisco and Netgear. At one point, the Apple products were ground breaking, but these days they are a total joke compared to what the competition offers. I won't even begin, but for starters, let's have 4 gigabit ports + 1 WAN port, instead of the 3+1 that Apple is offering?

Second, the Apple products are lacking enhanced functionality such as bandwidth monitoring/metering, QOS, etc...

Plus, the USB port on the Airports is NOTORIOUSLY SLOWER then MOLASSES...

And Apple continues to charge a premium for their sub standard product. No thanks.
Click to expand...

Do you own one? I ask, because I've tried every single manufacturer of wireless router, including business grade cisco routers, and the Apple Airport Extreme has had the highest throughput out of any of them. It's been my most reliable router yet, and the bonus features you get from having an Apple ecosystem make it more than worth it. I don't use the USB port because I have a proper NAS device, but what "professional" router has a USB port anyway?

$179 for dual channels AND a guest network? Check around... most routers that feature 3 discrete wireless networks on one device charge about the same or more. At least do your homework before you spit hate. Or, you know... actually TRY ONE OUT.
 
djrobsd said:
Apple needs to just get out of the wireless router business and leave it to Cisco and Netgear. At one point, the Apple products were ground breaking, but these days they are a total joke compared to what the competition offers. I won't even begin, but for starters, let's have 4 gigabit ports + 1 WAN port, instead of the 3+1 that Apple is offering?

Second, the Apple products are lacking enhanced functionality such as bandwidth monitoring/metering, QOS, etc...

Plus, the USB port on the Airports is NOTORIOUSLY SLOWER then MOLASSES...

And Apple continues to charge a premium for their sub standard product. No thanks.
Click to expand...

I am so glad you're wrong and that Apple continues to make Airport hardware. I love my Time Capsule, so go buy your Netgear router and leave these products for those who want them and don't wish upon them to get the shaft just because these products don't meet your specific needs.
 
gnasher729 said:
You are comparing a product that is ready to use with something where you have to do research, put together stuff from different companies, where you can be guaranteed that two companies will give you the runaround when you can't get it to work. Then you are comparing someone's marketing blurb with a proven product. So are you betting that this will do what it claims when you put it all together?
Click to expand...
I have 2 of these as i have already written, i don't need to bet anything.

You have to do a small bit of research on everything you buy, from a toaster to a cell phone and a computer, unless the whole world revolves around what an apple store has available and what the "genius" will offer to you as your best and only option.

Also, regarding the marketing blurb, Synology is a proven company with quality products on the NAS market. There is no need for marketing language to overhype a product.
On the other hand, you have apple marketing writing "a leap forward for backup" and they only thing they changed was the capacity of the included HDD. They say "TC includes a server grade HDD" while it's a normal HDD that they just market as server. Who is spewing marketing blurb really?
 
Order Placed

Like I said on previous post, I was on the fence.
Not anymore as my TC 2 TB should be here no later than Thursday the 23rd.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8J2 Safari/6533.18.5)

Has anyone got one yet? I went to the apple store in San Francisco and they don't have it yet.
 
Are the power supplies on these TC's been fixed? I went through 3 different 500gb TC's a couple years back before Worst Buy decided to just refund my money as the power supply kept burning out. OTOH my AE has been rock solid for 2 years.
 
smakus said:
Do you own one? I ask, because I've tried every single manufacturer of wireless router, including business grade cisco routers, and the Apple Airport Extreme has had the highest throughput out of any of them. It's been my most reliable router yet, and the bonus features you get from having an Apple ecosystem make it more than worth it. I don't use the USB port because I have a proper NAS device, but what "professional" router has a USB port anyway?

$179 for dual channels AND a guest network? Check around... most routers that feature 3 discrete wireless networks on one device charge about the same or more. At least do your homework before you spit hate. Or, you know... actually TRY ONE OUT.
Click to expand...

Another uninformed Apple fan here? For real information about the throughput of different wireless routers go to a "real" source here. You'll see that Apple offers just another mediocre product with total throughput of 414 (in whatever they measured it) vs 1268 for ASUS Black Diamond Dual-Band Gigabit Wireless-N Router (RT-N56U). Apple is on 13th place in their chart and every major manufacturer (Cisco, ASUS, NETGEAR, D-link etc.) has a better model than Apple.
 
OllyW said:
After the well documented 18 month Time Capsule failures they have been using slower WD Green drives on account of the lower heat emitted by these drives.
Click to expand...

Wow! Thats some really false advertising right there, how can they possibly defend branding Western Digital Green Power hard drives as "server grade"? Even Western Digital themselves specifically tells customers to avoid using many of their green power line hard drives in network storage environments because they are simply not designed for this and might die out on you quite early, this is the main reason for companies like Qnap and Synology telling people to avoid many of these hard drives.

For Apple's own sake I really hope they are at least using Western Digital RE4-GP (RAID Edition 4 Green Power series) otherwise this is just plain stupid advertising.


EDIT:

From the link you provided they seem to just use plain WD10EADS hard drives which are certainly not remotely close to being server grade, nor is it a product Western Digital themselves recommends for this kind of usage.
 
determining the difference between the 4th and 5th gen

I need to buy a new APE, my first gen one is showing it's age and I also want something with a stronger signal strength then 5 feet....

However I do not want to buy a 4th gen one by mistake.

the model number quoted here for the 5th gen is MD031LL/A

when I look online on the NZ apple store I get MD031X/A, and if I look on the US website I get MD031LL/A.

My question is, are the model names MD031LL/A and MD031X/A the same 5th gen machine, with different locational purposes or is the model number MD031X/A a 4th generation machine, because the 5th gen one hasn't been released in NZ yet.

Anyone with a 4th gen that can enlighten me?
 
lilo777 said:
Another uninformed Apple fan here? For real information about the throughput of different wireless routers go to a "real" source here. You'll see that Apple offers just another mediocre product with total throughput of 414 (in whatever they measured it) vs 1268 for ASUS Black Diamond Dual-Band Gigabit Wireless-N Router (RT-N56U). Apple is on 13th place in their chart and every major manufacturer (Cisco, ASUS, NETGEAR, D-link etc.) has a better model than Apple.
Click to expand...

There is more to the story though...

Firstly the chart you're linking to is showing total routing (wired) throughput. The APE does perform in a mediocre manner in this department - I hooked up a gigabit switch to it as a remedy (cost $50 and is as fast as the fastest on that chart).

The wireless performance on the other hand is very good indeed. In 2x2 mode it is OK - nothing special but OK. But in 3x3 mode it is in position to be the fastest (or one of the fastest) in the market. Unfortunately not many review sites have gone back and retested in 3x3 mode.

Check out this thread where I was doubting whether it could even do 3x3 and lo and behold it can: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1148765/

Someone even posted their throughput of 14MB/s (112Mb/s). Which as a rough guide is faster than the fastest on snb in both 2.4gHz and 5gHz (both in wideband):

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/62-2_4-ghz-dn-40

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/lanwan/router-charts/bar/67-5-ghz-dn-40

This isn't totally apples v apples because of the different testing conditions.

I own quite a few routers on that chart (several running dd-wrt - which is very cool - go to www.dd-wrt.com) and even though the APE is not the best in every category it is a reliable piece of hardware that performs above average and is easy to configure. Most people would be pretty happy with that.
 
dawnrazor said:
I need to buy a new APE, my first gen one is showing it's age and I also want something with a stronger signal strength then 5 feet....

However I do not want to buy a 4th gen one by mistake.

the model number quoted here for the 5th gen is MD031LL/A

when I look online on the NZ apple store I get MD031X/A, and if I look on the US website I get MD031LL/A.

My question is, are the model names MD031LL/A and MD031X/A the same 5th gen machine, with different locational purposes or is the model number MD031X/A a 4th generation machine, because the 5th gen one hasn't been released in NZ yet.

Anyone with a 4th gen that can enlighten me?
Click to expand...

The MD031x/a is the 5th gen model for you. Likely the difference is the power plug. The 4th gen model was MC340ll/a for the US. 4th gen = "MCxxxx," 5th gen = "MDxxxx."
 
Glad I opted for NetGear

I upgraded my WLAN system last week with a NeTGear N600 3700 - I did this after trying to find a decent priced used 2009 4G AEBS in Hong Kong for which if available, sellers were asking stupid prices - US$100 up for what essentially is old technology.

Having been warned to wait on these boards, I was able to purchase my NetGear top of the current range router for US$108, some US$70 cheaper than the AEBS and nearly the same price as the Airport Express.

I now have a reasonable WLAN system that suits my requirements and can always link my media centre, a Mac Mini, HTS and Xbox360S Kinect via GB LAN - it has lots of bells and whistles, comes with a two year warranty and touch wood, is working without a glitch currently.

As for a 3T TC, forget it, I'd rather put a 3T USB2 External HDD onto the NetGear USB Port, or invest in a 6T WD My Studio Raid 1 system - this costs currently US$400 in HK - do the maths folk, but for what Apple is offering the alternatives are not only better, but significantly cheaper.

Its one thing paying a premium for high quality class leading computers, quite another to pay premium prices for what in reality are substandard products when compared to the competition.
 
I love all you guys who get all pissed off that a RUMOR posted on an internet board doesn't come true....and then BLAME APPLE! They didn't start the rumor, they made no promises, but yet, it is Apple's fault somehow?

Love the guy that went and sold his 2TB TC yesterday "before the prices dropped on used ones" in anticipation of the new TC to be released...all based on rumors. Guess that was Apple's fault, and more directly Steve Job's fauly and Apple should give him a free TC....
 
I just ordered a 2 TB from the Canadian store, MD032AM/A (4th generation) but when I received my confirmation e-mail, I cancelled the order because I wasn't sure if this is the updated model. Shouldn't the update be 5th generation?
 
bacan1 said:
I just ordered a 2 TB from the Canadian store, MD032AM/A (4th generation) but when I received my confirmation e-mail, I cancelled the order because I wasn't sure if this is the updated model. Shouldn't the update be 5th generation?
Click to expand...

I don't think you should just depend on the part number. When you make the purchase in the online store there should have an option for you to choose the size of the TC.

If the option is 2TB & 3TB, then should be safe it is the latest model. Unless apple really crap and just update the 3TB with latest parts and reuse the old 2TB TC with just price reduce to the old 1TB TC pricing.

For my country, I could safetly say my order is the latest model cause on the online store as it put up this message "Pending for agency approval" cause this is a regulation needed by my country for every new wireless equipment.
 
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