I don't want to pick on you, but where you're in a hole, stop digging.
(a) NO-ONE is talking about using phones as routers (I assume you mean base stations). The issue is that, even if your phone's 802.11ac doesn't benefit you at home, it benefits you if you visit other environments that offer ac and that simultaneously serve a large number of users.
Right, the topic is concerned with the iPhone 6 and how ac will impact the day to day user. Not ac technology in an enterprise environment (I'm sure there is a WiFi forum on another site, though).
An ac router can still work with my iPhone 5S' chipsets. Still not sure how having an ac chip versus n changes MY iPhone experience, barring beam-forming, depending on how it's real world improvements actually are. It can't possibly provide faster speeds, because unless you're in an environment with hundreds of users plugging at a single base station, bandwidth is never going to be an issue (unless your company has a useless IT department). Every company I've consulted at, has various base stations on each floor, with important hardware hardwired. Bandwidth saturation is last on the list of their issues.
(b) MU-MIMO IS a feature of 802.11ac. The spec (something produced by a quasi-governmental organization) contains a few optional features. To co-ordinate the use of these optional features (which are useless if no-one uses them) the WiFi alliance (a trade organization) organized the introduction of ac chips in two stages. The first (which has already passed) incorporated all the mandatory features. The second stage (called 802.11ac Wave 2) is currently under way.
Right, well aware. Wave 1, which would be in the iPhone 6 (should it receive ac, as it likely will), is not going to have MU-MIMO. In Wave 2, MI-MIMO is marked as an optional feature, which isn't due out until 2015 at the earliest. Please see press release from Qualcomm (who is pretty much guaranteed to provide the chipset in the next iPhone):
https://www.qca.qualcomm.com/thewir...-wi-fi-capacity-via-802-11ac-multi-user-mimo/
EVERYTHING in technology happens in stages. And because of that, you can ALWAYS whine, if you're a short-sighted idiot, that some new feature is useless because it isn't universal. But you know what --- in five years it WILL be universal. My first iPhone only had 802.11g. Does that mean that it was stupid to add 802.11n because, at the time it was added, most base stations were 802.11g only?
No need to be condescending or call people idiots. Again, I'm not saying iPhones shouldn't have ac, I'm just trying to make a point that ac chips aren't going to change real-world experiences for consumers today. From upgrading to a 5S to a 6, WiFi performance won't change - period, with the exception of beam-forming, as discussed above. I understand technology must progress for the sake of technology, but the last thing we need is more ignorant Apple fans running around praising a standard, without understanding it.
(c) If you are in an environment where the existing tech (by which I assume you mean 2.4GHz rather than 5GHz) works better for you, then WTF are you complaining about. Keep using the existing tech. But don't imagine that the world revolves around you and that nothing should ever be changed even if it improves things for other people because it doesn't solve YOUR personal problem.
The difference between n and g is more than 2.4GHz and 5.0Gz, but surely as you know everything about ac, you also know this to be the case. Also not sure where "personal problem" comes into play here.
"ac really won't make a difference to iPhone users on WiFi"
Are you truly so damn egocentric that you cannot see the stupidity of this claim?
It's one thing to say "ac really won't make a difference to MY iPhone use"; it's another to claim (even after I have given you a list of reasons why ac help a certain set of users) that EVERY iPhone user uses their device in exactly the same way that you do, that your experiences represent the experiences of 300 million people.
Please provide a real-world example of how ac will benefit a consumer who purchases an iPhone 6. We've pointed out beam-forming, which I do agree should be an improvement, but I'd really like to see real-world test results before praising it as the second coming of christ. We've already established MU-MIMO isn't part of Wave 1, so that's off the table until the 6S at the earliest. And we have discussed that due to extra bandwidth throughout, enterprise environments can deploy less ac base stations.
