Teardown of Apple's New AirPort Extreme Reveals Hard Drive Slot, but No Connectors

[roadbloc]

I'm not a fan of this one, not that I really need another Airport. Bizarre design, no USB 3 and a lack of ports doesn't make this product any more 'extreme' than the older designs.

I'd like to see a genuinely extreme Airport Extreme sometime in my life.

 

[bacaramac]

from a pure range perspective, what would be better, 2 express' or 1 extreme?

My bet is on the extended network. I have a Time Capsule and an express. I needed express to get range in my Master. However, I bet AC (once supported on all devices) will match the throughput of an extended network vs the single Extreme.

I plan to buy the extreme once they add USB3 or Thunderbolt. I was seriously expecting Thunderbolt and AC together. I ran out of HD space on my TC for backups. I now have two drives sitting on the back of my iMac. 2tb for iTunes and 3tb for back-up of 1tb drive in iMac and 2tb iTunes drive.

I bought the Seagate drives that are easily upgradable to Thunderbolt and already come standard with USB3, but was hoping to move both drives to the network with Thunderbolt attachment. As long as TC doesn't crap out, hopefully next year this will be Apple's direction with the Extreme and TC upgrades.

 

[locust76]

No it isn't.

802.11ac is 1300Mbps

USB 2.0 is just 480Mbps (much less in reality)

Other manufactures are including USB 3.0 (5000Mbps) in their routers and charging less.

You should have typed:

802.11ac is 1300Mbps (much less in reality)

USB 2.0 is just 480Mbps

Because I guarantee you won't see 1.3gbps of real world performance out of 802.11ac. Most likely ~600 Mbit/s at the absolute best, and on average probably about 300-500 Mbit/s.

 

[litmag01]

I really like the design, but it is almost twice the volume of the predecessor.

That said, I do agree with the engineering decisions behind the form factor.

 

[bacaramac]

I've heard these don't work with PC's anymore, in fact even the Manual is void of any PC reference. It appears these now only work with Macs - anyone else peeved - here's the Manual - http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/airport_extreme_80211ac_setup.pdf

Well, compatibility is relative here. The spec works on all Wi-Fi enable devices. However, not sure about setup.

I would guess if you are buying an Apple branded router you own at least one device that runs OSX or iOS. In that case, setup software is baked into the OS so it should be a non-issue.

 

[cjmillsnun]

I've heard these don't work with PC's anymore, in fact even the Manual is void of any PC reference. It appears these now only work with Macs - anyone else peeved - here's the Manual - http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/airport_extreme_80211ac_setup.pdf

How many people buying an Apple router are going to be running a PC exclusive network?...

Once initial set up is done a PC will be able to connect. Initial setup can be done with an iPad or iPhone if there are no Macs in the household.

 

[Henk Poley]

Has anybody benchmarked the thing in terms of bandwidth? The previous Time Capsule could pull ~82MB/s seq. read and 32MB/s seq. write from it's internal drive over 1Gbit ethernet.

And.. I wonder if it's (technically) faster than the Power Mac G4 Cube. Geekbench, if that's comparable, appears to match the Cube with a 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8.

Edit: The Broadcom StrataGX comes with a Cortex-A9 clocked starting at 800MHz up to 1.1GHz.

So.. yes the 802.11ac Airport Extreme and Time Capsule are faster than their design predecessor

 

[JayLenochiniMac]

Why didn't they use a shorter shell then? It looks strangely elongated.

 

[Matariel]

No it isn't.

802.11ac is 1300Mbps

USB 2.0 is just 480Mbps (much less in reality)

Other manufactures are including USB 3.0 (5000Mbps) in their routers and charging less.

People are connecting SSD USB drives to their Airports now?
Your crappy little USB disk will not max out USB 2.0, and it's a little ridiculous to think that you'll be getting the full bandwidth of 802.11AC all the time to max out the USB 2.0 port anyway. Yeah AC is good, but it's still wireless.

 

[steve-p]

Up to a point, I couldn't really care less what it looks like. It's not something I use up close every day, and it's partially hidden anyway. I need a new TC and have been waiting for 802.11ac to futureproof it a bit, so I'm getting one.

 

[litmag01]

...I plan to buy the extreme once they add USB3 or Thunderbolt. I was seriously expecting Thunderbolt and AC together....

You make a good point. I wonder why they did not go that direction initially. Thunderbolt seems to be the M.O. on their other pruducts. Perhaps it is a BUS issue relating to the board's power consumption and heat value.

 

[Terrin]

You should have put the "much less in reality" next to the WiFi standard.. you'll barely get close to 300Mbps when moving files.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wi-fi-802.11ac-router,3386-10.html

You beat me to it. In reality, you are lucky if you get 300 mbps. Current 802.11 ac routers come nowhere near the capacity of USB 2.

 

[downpour]

I guarantee you won't see 1.3gbps of real world performance out of 802.11ac. Most likely ~600 Mbit/s at the absolute best, and on average probably about 300-500 Mbit/s.

But that's still faster than USB 2.0, so my argument is still valid.

Even if I'm wrong, we should be getting the latest standard, considering the prices Apple charge.

 

[Henk Poley]

802.11ac uses QAM, which means that 802.11ac uses the fact that two signals do not arrive at the same time.

Hmm, but then MIMO is there to modify the impulse signal in such a way that the signal from three antennas arrives at your antennas at same time. It tries to compensate for the different reflections in the slightly different paths of each individual antenna signal.

 

[WilliamLondon]

Thing is though...you expect that from a glass of wine....so you are careful with it. Bad analogy......wireless router and a glass of wine...i don't want to have to be that cautious around my router.

What are all of you doing around your homes<big grin>, dancing the Mexican router dance around these devices, while holding glasses of wine, carefully, so as not to spill *those*??

I'm getting one of these. I've got a gen 1 airport extreme I'd like to upgrade once my new MBA arrives - hoping to see some connectivity and throughput improvement in this new device (which will reside where the current one resides - out of harm's way, on a shelf in the corner, at the back, near the wall, it is wireless after all!).

 

[FrozenDarkness]

nobody is using airport extreme's usb as anything other than a printer server. Connecting a hard drive to an airport extreme IS NOT a pleasant experience.

 

[ChrisA]

The USB 2.0 bottleneck will mean the AirPort Extreme is pretty useless as a NAS.

I think you will find that USB 2 is not the bottleneck. At least on the current router, it uses USB 2 and does not get even close to USB 2 speeds over the network. A faster connection wouldn't makethe device faster.

The disk is for backup not storage. Backups can run slow and no one cares

 

[downpour]

In reality, you are lucky if you get 300 mbps. Current 802.11 ac routers come nowhere near the capacity of USB 2.

What 'real world' speeds do you get on USB 2.0? Is it faster than 300 mbps? Because if not, wouldn't you want the drive connection to be faster than the WiFi?

 

[ChrisA]

nobody is using airport extreme's usb as anything other than a printer server. Connecting a hard drive to an airport extreme IS NOT a pleasant experience.

No one? I have a 2TB USB drive on mine to use as a time machine drive for Macbook. It is not fast but it only has to back up what ever changed in the last hour. So as long as it can do a few megabytes per hour it keeps up..

 

[unobtainium]

Yea USB three is vitally important for printers and backup's while you sleep..

Attached external HDDs for network storage.

 

[hardwickj]

Folks, this thing uses the BCM5301X SoC according to iFixit's teardown. That chip provides support for USB 3.0. So, this means one of two things:

1) Either Apple's documentation is wrong. If someone can get their hands on one of these and actually test it, we'll know.

or, more likely...

2) The BCM5301 supports up to 3 PCIe 1x lanes *IF USB 3.0 ISN'T BEING USED*. Otherwise it only supports 2 lanes. So the USB 3.0 takes up one of those lanes. I'm guessing something about Apple's design, whether it be the HDD (time capsule) or what not, requires that 3rd lane. The same board/firmware/etc is probably shared between AE and TC, so if the TC doesn't have USB 3, neither will the AE.

And for those clowns who are saying this doesn't matter, you clearly haven't made extensive use of some of the TC's more general storage features. In the past this didn't matter because the SoC's used were so horridly bad at I/O that they either couldn't or barely could saturate USB 2.0. But with Broadcom's latest gen of 802.11AC chips thats no longer the case. Anything built with the BCM4708x or BCM5301x (such as this router) is going to be a *nice* upgrade all around, especially the ones that support USB 3 w/ a big and fast USB thumbdrive plugged in!

 

[downpour]

The disk is for backup not storage. Backups can run slow and no one cares.

I thought the whole point of these drives was to make up for the lack of space on SSDs in systems like the MacBook Air.

 

[ChrisA]

Why didn't they use a shorter shell then? It looks strangely elongated.

If the antenna is a geometric point, with no height then you get a sperical antenna pattern. As the antenna arry gets taller the pattern looks more and more like a pancake, it flattens. So I'm sure the engineers at Apple first decided on the shape of the antenna pattern then that determined the distance between the two antenna elements

Then I bet some one said "if the think has to be that tall why not stand the disk on-end and reduce the foot print.

Then some one said, "why not stuf the disk in diagonally and reduce the foot print even more?"

So I thing this is simply the smallest box possable that has the required height AND can hold a disk drive. The shape came out of the function.

 

[sp3k0psv3t]

nobody is using airport extreme's usb as anything other than a printer server. Connecting a hard drive to an airport extreme IS NOT a pleasant experience.

Agree... I have been using, current USB connections with external HD's, as simply a media streaming HD to my TV through the APX and while it usually works, the quality, and usually latency (or literal skipping), is enough to drive me crazy lol.

I know it is not ideal but the option to HAVE the functional use is nice; to me at least for when I feel lazy and just use it "as is."

On a side, as others have noted already, I am a little disappointed that USB3, and/ or TB connections, were NOT added "with" the release of the new AC device.

Maybe in the fall lol

 

[OldSchoolMacGuy]

No USB 3.0, No sale...

http://www.netgear.com/home/products/wirelessrouters/ultimate-performance/R6250.aspx#two

The USB 2.0 bottleneck will mean the AirPort Extreme is pretty useless as a NAS.

It was never designed to be a NAS. If you want NAS, there are lots of great solutions out there. Even if it did have USB 3.0, the Airport Extreme would still be a crappy NAS device.