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Excellent. Already got my 802.11ac router and I'm hoping to get an 802.11ac equipped rMBP next month to go with it :D
 
This isn't useless at all: granted 802.11ac provides speeds greatly in excess of most people's or computer's requirements/needs but that's not the only thing it has going for it. It brings with it beaming, so your router can locate your laptop in space and pick a frequency which provides you with the least interference from outside sources and the most coherent signal. Forget speed - 802.11ac is all about the range. When your list of WiFi signals extends most of the length of your screen and your walls are thick beaming is unbelievably useful at providing a reliable signal.

Source!

How can you get directional beaming from a omnidirectional antenna?
How can you get directional beaming from a MBP which is almost all aluminium?
Front and rear maybe, but not to the left and right!
 
Maybe, perhaps, for a new Mac Pro (ducks)

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Time Capsule and other Airport devices will definitely see an upgrade to 802.11ac this year or next. Perhaps it may even be revealed at WWDC to compliment new Haswell line-up! Fingers-crossed.

This would be amazing, I could use a boost in my WLAN, speeding up access to my media server. Bring it on! :)
 
If they use this with the MacPro, will they

a) put the antenna on the outside

b) If the Pro gets too many iMac parts, will they hold it together with tape?
 
So the new chip will increase speed but will it improve the wifi coverage and strength.

Yes, it will include beamforming, which means it can focus the power to the location of the devices to give you more strength.

Huh. Didn't think 802.11ac was getting standardized until the end of this year or the beginning of next year. Interesting, interesting indeed.

Companies are grabbing the chips now with firmware updates planned to support the final draft. Same thing happened with 802.11n, we adopted it years before the draft was standardized.

Source!

How can you get directional beaming from a omnidirectional antenna?
How can you get directional beaming from a MBP which is almost all aluminium?
Front and rear maybe, but not to the left and right!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beamforming

You don't get beamforming from a single antenna. 802.11n and 802.11ac products have a lot of antennas, they divert power to specific antennas that devices are "connected" to, thus increasing the strength of the connection and makes it slightly faster.

MBP has 6 antennas, 3 on transmit and 3 on receive, they can be adjusted to focus its beam to the router your are using rather than other routers in the building that you don't use.
 
Could we please stop it with the 802.11 AC hype because quite frankly you'd swear that people here actually think they'll reach said speeds in normal conditions. Check out the following article on 802.11 AC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac

I'd sooner an adoption of a lower frequency that provides better coverage than having the sort of showing off of technology that rarely meets the hype on which the marketing department seems to be hell bent on pushing.


I do not even know what to say to the two of you :confused:

Current theoretical Speed of 802.1n = 300-450 Mb/s ~ 30-50 MB/s
Real World Speed Approximately(lets say half) = 150-225 Mb/s ~ 15-25 MB/s

Theoretical Speed of 802.1AC = 850 Mb/s - 1300 Mb/s ~ 85-130 MB/s
Real World Speed Approximately(lets say half) = 425 - 650 Mb/s ~ 42-65 MB/s


How can you not see the difference? More than double the speed?

Not to mention the 450 Mb/s on n is only if you have the 2-3 antennas and the high end routers. Bring the actual speed of the current standards down to less than 10MB/s

The difference is HUGE for those that have a NAS at their home. Wifi AC makes NAS useable over Wifi, not to mention computer to computer transfers amazingly faster. Especially useful on Mac's with Airdrop.

Useless to most. You'll never see real world usage above 802.11n, and hard drives need to move to solid state before this is really taken advantage of.


Standard HDD Read Theoretical = 80MB/s
Actual = 60MB/s

SSD Theoretical = 250-500 MB/s
Actual = Varies to much between drives

Current theoretical MAX of Wifi n = 45 MB/s
Actual = 30 MB/s

Starting theoretical speed of AC = 85 MB/s
Assuming actual will be half = 40 MB/s +

Wifi AC makes standard HDDS Useable over Wifi
 
Huh. Didn't think 802.11ac was getting standardized until the end of this year or the beginning of next year. Interesting, interesting indeed.

They do this a lot, 802.11n wasn't finalized for a while after it was introduced in Apple products.
 
Mega...

Could we please stop it with the 802.11 AC hype because quite frankly you'd swear that people here actually think they'll reach said speeds in normal conditions. Check out the following article on 802.11 AC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ac

I'd sooner an adoption of a lower frequency that provides better coverage than having the sort of showing off of technology that rarely meets the hype on which the marketing department seems to be hell bent on pushing.

Kind of like Megapixels in cameras. The makers were, and still are to a certain extent, pushing higher and higher pixel counts even though after a point picture quality does not really improve and there are other things that can be changed about the sensor that are more important.
 
Kind of like Megapixels in cameras. The makers were, and still are to a certain extent, pushing higher and higher pixel counts even though after a point picture quality does not really improve and there are other things that can be changed about the sensor that are more important.

This doesn't make any sense since ac is a HUGE improvement over n.
 
Already fearing the cancer coming from this. I mean imagine how intense the signal must be... All that information traveling through your body, your cells. Eeek.
 
Sounds to me....

as a good and promising news in the side of better I/O options for Macs. Would like to see this especific upgrade to materialize in the iMac offer. And heck, even in the Mac Pro (if someday we will see it updated)....!.....:D


:):apple:
 
Kind of like Megapixels in cameras. The makers were, and still are to a certain extent, pushing higher and higher pixel counts even though after a point picture quality does not really improve and there are other things that can be changed about the sensor that are more important.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/17296856/

Except increasing the speed of wifi is actually useful and is desperately needed in order to truly go wireless.

HDD Current Max = 110MB/s
SSD Current Max = 500 MB/s

Wifi AC Current Max = 130 MB/s

WiFi is lagging behind a LOT as you can see, I would much rather have them push the speed of wifi than find new ways to expand coverage.
 
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https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/17296856/

Except increasing the speed of wifi is actually useful and is desperately needed in order to truly go wireless.

HDD Current Max = 80MB/s
SSD Current Max = 500 MB/s

Wifi AC Current Max = 130 MB/s

WiFi is lagging behind a LOT as you can see, I would much rather have them push the speed of wifi than find new ways to expand coverage.
I can pull ~110 MB/s sequential on my mechanical drives. I did not really get that earlier comment that Wi-fi would oversaturate drivers either.
 
With 802.11ac my guess wireless streaming like movies to apple tv will get better.

Now i have an 2012 iMac which i dont use wifi diectly on but ethernet cable to an time capsule. If apple release a time caspsule with 802.11 ac will i be able to utilize the perks of 802.11 ac with my iMac not having it itself?
 
Current theoretical Speed of 802.1n = 300-450 Mb/s ~ 30-50 MB/s
Real World Speed Approximately(lets say half) = 150-225 Mb/s ~ 15-25 MB/s

Theoretical Speed of 802.1AC = 850 Mb/s - 1300 Mb/s ~ 85-130 MB/s
Real World Speed Approximately(lets say half) = 425 - 650 Mb/s ~ 42-65 MB/s
Except you overlook a critical factor: It uses the 5GHz band, which very rapidly loses range. AC is not 2.4ghz compatible (which is virtually what everyone uses).

Furthermore, to reach the new advertised speeds - the extremely power intensive and highly vulnerable QAM256 modulation is used. N actually uses the same modulation range as the old A spec.

The theoretical value is harder than ever to reach, and requires even more power to function. (energy per increases dramatically)
 
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Kind of like Megapixels in cameras. The makers were, and still are to a certain extent, pushing higher and higher pixel counts even though after a point picture quality does not really improve and there are other things that can be changed about the sensor that are more important.

With respect to you I disagree completely with your comments.

Faster WiFi is very important to me. I store all my media be that Movies, TV Shows or Music on a NAS, it's easier to backup that NAS and access my media on all my devices and my wifes devices.

WiFi, specifically 802.11n is good for this activity but it's not great. HD 1080p video requires large buffer pools on the client side. It is not possible to directly stream 1080p without a 20MB or larger buffer due to the slow speed of 802.11n WiFi, the problem is exasperated by distance and interference.

Many of us do not keep our Wireless Routers in the same room as our HDTV's.

And there is another thing too, Backups. Time Machine Backups that require GB's be transferred per day dependant on how many files changed take a long time over WiFi.

Keep this in mind although 802.11n is 300Mb/s to 450Mb/s (dependant on radio generation) that is only Mb - Megabit speeds. Not MegaByte. The difference is huge because we don't store files on our PC's in Megabit sizes. A MegaByte is 8x larger than a Megabit.

So when you see 300Mb/s it sounds impressive. But it isn't. That is just 37.5MB/s - Slower than a USB Hard Drive.

This means that even if you were able to get the full 300Mb/s transfer speed (which is unlikely in the real world) you would still only manage 37.5MB/s file transfers within your home network. This is incredibly slow for performing an initial Time Machine backup or even daily backups and forget about moving large files from PC to PC without waiting 10-20 Minutes.

This is where AC comes in. It boosts speeds to between 900Mb/s and 1.3Gb/s - This pushes MegaByte speeds to between 112MB/s and 162MB/s - That is a huge difference and even if we don't get those speeds in the real world we can expect at-least a 2x increase over 802.11n - We are talking 75MB/s on a bad scenario, just 600Mb/s transfer speeds.

So I hope this helps you understand why some of us are excited about 802.11ac some of us don't want to plug 1Gb ethernet in to our notebooks, some of us want to go fully wireless without any drawbacks like heavily buffered video with slow scrubbing, file transfers that you need to plan your workflow around due to their completion times and backups that strain or saturate your wireless connectivity.
 
Aren't all the apple computers using the same mobile parts... except the mac pro?

So ya this card could likley be in anything from a mini, to air, to imac.. earth shattering.
 
Except you overlook a critical factor: It uses the 5GHz band, which very rapidly loses range. AC is not 2.4ghz compatible (which is virtually what everyone uses).

Furthermore, to reach the new advertised speeds - the extremely power intensive and highly vulnerable QAM256 modulation is used. N actually uses the same modulation range as the old A spec.

The theoretical value is harder than ever to reach, and requires even more power to function. (energy per increases dramatically)

That is the thing, I care more for the speed and a doubling of speed is a HUGE difference. If I need more coverage then I wire another router in another part of my house or business.

AC will behave similarly to that of N, correct? Hence, If I am getting 1/2 of the theoretical speed on N then I will get half of AC. Either way, the speed I am getting is double of that right now.

Yes it may cost me a little bit more to operate my router and laptop, but sometimes convenience outweighs $.

No doubt, AC routers wont reach the everyday consumer level for a while but there is still a large community open to it.

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I can pull ~110 MB/s sequential on my mechanical drives. I did not really get that earlier comment that Wi-fi would oversaturate drivers either.

Thank You, edited my post and that strengthens my point even more.

What I am saying is, with the introduction of Wi-fi AC I am able to use the HDD's in my NAS to it's fullest potential wirelessly because of the extra bandwidth
 
Will speeds ever become so fast that we would actually be able to see things before they happen?

That would require FTL communication. We're not quite there yet.

Anyway, I'm sort of annoyed that 802.11ac is coming out just a year or so after I completely redid my entire wireless network with new routers and such. Not that it really matters. I can think of only a handful of use cases where gigabit wifi would come in handy, and none of them are even terribly time-sensitive. 802.11n is plenty fast for streaming high bitrate video content around the house, and I don't have an internet connection fast enough to take advantage of ac speeds.

Until internet infrastructure in the country improves dramatically, or possibly 4K video content is the norm, I really don't see a need to upgrade to ac yet.

Not that it's a bad thing for Apple to get this hardware in their devices now. Future-proofing is always nice. Really I suspect they're adding it now because the chips use less power.
 
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