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

I'm thinking about getting a new MacBook Air, but with the SSDs being so small I need some kind of fast wireless access to more storage. The trouble is the Time Capsule is way too expensive :(

I currently have a large USB 3.0 drive, but my WiFi router is just Wireless N.
I'm going to be editing home movies in HD quite a bit, so I need fast access to a big drive. I'll probably copy the files to the local SSD when I'm actually working on them, but I don't want it to take forever when I moving them back onto my network drive to free up space.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a cheap solution?
 
Brian Y said:
To all those that think a router needs USB 3 - check what the actual transfer rate of a hard drive is - it will come nowhere close to saturating USB 2, let alone USB 3.

Unless you're connecting an SSD to this - but what would be the point of that?!?
Click to expand...
That's not really true. Just about any SATA hard drive that is made today can transfer data at 100MB/s or better and in the real world USB2 tops out at something around 40MB/s (although raw bandwidth for USB2 is 480Mb/s or about 60MB/s). In any case, wireless transfers will be even slower than what you'd get with a directly attached USB2 drive, so for WiFi access USB2 is probably okay even with the faster 802.11ac devices.
 
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FirstNTenderbit said:
Tee to fairway... nice
Fairway to green... excellent shot!

The Putt (bolded portion of your comment)... missed it by that much.

Pretty hard to lend any credence to your argument when you state you didn't even try to find a router with USB3.;)
Click to expand...

I was at work. I simply looked at the first 3 that came up in a google search , as representative (if small) sample of similar items by 3 competing and well known companies.

As it was nothing more than a cursory search, which i stated in my reply, i left it to others to find a counter example. Hardly an argument, just a passing observation.

Oh, by the way. Did you find any?

PS i can't play golf for the life of me.
 
The Netgear unit at least appears to be twice the volume of the Apple one. It is roughly 8x8x2.5 as opposed to 6x4x4.

The large surface area of at least one dimension would allow for jnterference mitigation techniques that are less likely in a smaller device.

I've noticed that some recent Linksys routers are designed to be vertical (as these units are all pictured) yet whenever I see one in real life it is flat on the table.

Perhaps this is another reason Apple went with this form factor. Less likely to be misoriented...

B
 
Got one - 1st hand info

I purchased an Extreme online (with Education Discount) and picked it up at the Florida Mall Apple Store.

The manual states that it supports an external drive for Time Machine, so it's officially supported now.

I had a 1st gen Time Capsule. I transferred my cables and USB hub to the new unit and powered it up. I left the old unit plugged in. I fired up Airport Utility 6.3 on my MacBook Pro and wirelessly connected to the new unit. Somewhere along the process it updated the firmware on the new unit. It detected the old unit and transferred all the settings automatically.

I named the new unit and network the same as the old one. All my devices connected to the new unit without having to change anything. These include iPhones, Macs, Buffalo WiFi adapters with DirecTV and a Slingbox attached, a Blu-ray player, an HTC phone, etc..

My MacBook Pro took a small amount of prodding, but it recognized the 2TB drive I have attached to the USB hub on the Extreme and resumed my Time Machine backups. I was using the old Time Capsule to back up two other Macs so I will have to decide whether I am going to use the 2TB or attach another drive for those. I haven't tried the printer attached to the hub yet, but I'm confident it will work as before.

I felt a little disappointed that I didn't have to troubleshoot anything!

I bought the Extreme because my Capsule was the original version that did not have simultaneous 2.4 & 5GHz. I didn't have a problem with speed or reception with my old setup, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to have newer technology and better antennas. I will also be ready for when I start getting ac devices.

I won't comment on aesthetics. That's just silly.

- Ted Gocal
 
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tedgocal said:
My MacBook Pro took a small amount of prodding, but it recognized the 2GB drive I have attached to the USB hub on the Extreme and resumed my Time Machine backups. I was using the old Time Capsule to back up two other Macs so I will have to decide whether I am going to use the 2GB or attach another drive for those.
Click to expand...

2 Gigabyte???? :eek:

What are you backing up, rtf files?

I'm guessing you meant 2 Terabyte. :D
 
MrCubes said:
Well, not really a benchmark, but my personal experience has been very promising.

I just picked one up yesterday (a 2TB Time Capsule) and replaced my older Airport Extreme (generation before last) last night.

Now I know that the last gen AEs made a big thing about improved range and coverage too, so this may not be a fair comparison. But it's all I've got.

Previously, from my living room - which has almost line-of-sight to the router - I was getting about 50Mb/s from my internet connection (I haven't benchmarked the LAN speed - but I have a 100Mb internet connection so I was a long way short of that).

From my bedroom I would typically get only 10-20Mb/s.

With the new device I'm now seeing 101Mb/s from my bedroom!

This is from my rMBP, which has only 802.11n, so I seem to be getting full capacity from a historically awkward location - and, I believe, I'm not even taking advantage of beamforming (IIRC that's an ac feature?).

A single datapoint - but a happy one for me :)
Click to expand...

can you test the file RW speed via wired lan? then we could see the full IO power of the TC processor.
 
downpour said:
Does anyone have any suggestions for a cheap solution?
Click to expand...

I've been pretty happy with my WD MyBook Live. At $129 for a 2TB NAS on GigE with decent performance it fits the "cheap" part of the bill. Compared to my TC (1st gen) it's a speed demon!

B
 
Any proof this gives more range and bandwidth to non ac macs? I have 2012 cmbp.
 
lannisters4life said:
I highly doubt they don't work with PCs, a wireless client is a wireless client.
Click to expand...

At this point the issue is not that it won't work, it is just that there does not appear to be a way to configure it since the Windows Airport Utility has not been updated to support the new routers. I suspect Apple will release updated windows apps soon though.
 
balamw said:
I've been pretty happy with my WD MyBook Live. At $129 for a 2TB NAS on GigE with decent performance it fits the "cheap" part of the bill. Compared to my TC (1st gen) it's a speed demon!
Click to expand...

Yeah I was just looking at those, but I may just end up struggling by with my current drive plugged into the USB port on my router. At least until I've recovered from the cost of buying a new MacBook Air upgraded with a 512GB SSD.

A few months down the line, I'll probably just get the 802.11ac Time Capsule.
 
For anybody who is replacing a previous gen AExtreme, can you comment on the change in coverage if any?

I currently have a patchwork of Extremes and Express's around the house. If I can get the extra range out of this new device and drop the extenders, it would be worth an upgrade. Otherwise I'm considering an Asus with external antennas.

tedgocal said:
I purchased an Extreme

- Ted Gocal
Click to expand...
 
Why all the complaints about the choice of USB2.0 instead of USB3.0? Unless this new Broadcom SoC is significantly faster compared to the previous revision your external hard drives connected by USB is bottlenecked by the SoC anyways rendering the use of USB3.0 completely useless.

Pulling up theoretical numbers like 480mbit for USB2.0, 4Gbit for USB3.0 and 1.3Gbit for 802.11AC is utterly pointless without taking the possible limitations of the SoC into mix.


Looking at routers like the Asus RT-AC66U only being able to toss around 7-12MBps I see no real reason to think that the new SoC in the Apple AirPort Extreme / Apple Time Capsule should be able to double or triple those numbers. As USB2.0 should be capable of providing 22-30MBps transfer speed we are far away from hitting that limit with todays SoC so why even bother with the USB3.0 in the first place when it's utterly pointless to include it other than being able to brag about it on the retail box.


Apple even offers a vastly superior solution with the Time Capsule model which utilise a on-board SATA connection which is much easier for the SoC to handle providing you with much better transfer speeds than you will ever see with todays SoC limitations.
 
lotzosushi said:
They really should have made a smaller profile design instead of wasting space with the Extreme version... I'm hoping there will be 3rd party connectors for sale later on that will let us add our own hard drives.
Click to expand...

If they make it slimmer, it would be physically less stable. If they make it shorter, the signal wouldn't be as strong. But I still think the empty space is such a 'waste'.


wschutz said:
This just confirms my thoughts as soon as I saw both new Airport and Time Capsule.
They redesigned the Time Capsule to make it smaller and re-using the ideas from the new Mac Pro, and then, in order to provide with an Airport, they just removed the hard-drive.

In the end, Apple is just saving a lot of money with the manufacturing process because it won't need two molds but rather one for the main case, and pretty much the same for everything else. Like any other company, they realized they have to optimize and converge into the same shapes for the devices.
Click to expand...

What about shipping costs? Does using less moulds save more money than using less space for shipping?
 
downpour said:
I'm thinking about getting a new MacBook Air, but with the SSDs being so small I need some kind of fast wireless access to more storage. The trouble is the Time Capsule is way too expensive :(
..
Does anyone have any suggestions for a cheap solution?
Click to expand...
Fast access to storage and cheap: Synology DS213j, a few disks and A CAT6 ethernet cable?

And the old Time Machine's are currently sold as refurb for about $/€100 less.
 
RamGuy said:
Apple even offers a vastly superior solution with the Time Capsule model which utilise a on-board SATA connection which is much easier for the SoC to handle providing you with much better transfer speeds than you will ever see with todays SoC limitations.
Click to expand...
iThink™ that the limitation is in your head. The Broadcom-SoC in the new AE supports USB 3.0.

Regarding USB 2.0:
Yeah, let us use then years old interface standards in 2013. That's progress! :rolleyes:
 
iSee said:
The focus is on wireless.

No USB 3.0 because USB 2.0 is faster than the bandwidth of a wireless connection anyway.

The profile is to provide better wireless range and performance.

And only three wired ports because that's a secondary, edge case for this device.

I don't understand the one USB port though. This thing should be a hub for your shared printer and time machine backup drives.
Click to expand...

This is just stupid. It's perfectly common to have a mixed network, with laptops using WiFi and desktops connected to the Airport Base Station via gigE. That's why the thing comes with 3 gigE ports. Crippling the system with USB2 just makes that port essentially useless for a shared drive.

Your argument is no different from all the justifications for Apple's first 802.11n base station which shipped with 100M ethernet, likewise a stupid decision which crippled the product for many uses.
 
downpour said:
I'm thinking about getting a new MacBook Air, but with the SSDs being so small I need some kind of fast wireless access to more storage. The trouble is the Time Capsule is way too expensive :(

I currently have a large USB 3.0 drive, but my WiFi router is just Wireless N.
I'm going to be editing home movies in HD quite a bit, so I need fast access to a big drive. I'll probably copy the files to the local SSD when I'm actually working on them, but I don't want it to take forever when I moving them back onto my network drive to free up space.

Does anyone have any suggestions for a cheap solution?
Click to expand...

To solve a similar problem I found the (physically) smallest lightest external SSD I could and taped it to the back of the screen of the MBA, connected to the USB3 port. Yeah, it looked clumsy, but it worked and wasn't that inconvenient.

Just make sure that whatever SSD you buy has a low power draw when performing a whole lot of random writes. Some are very close to the edge of the USB3 spec and occasionally go over it, meaning they will randomly freeze up because they require more power than is available. When you buy, look at the maximum power draw first, not the performance, not the price. (AnandTech's reviews always have the power draw.). A super fast drive which locks up once a week is a lot less useful than a 20% slower drive which never freezes.

If your MBA only has USB2 this power limit is even more important. The maximum power rating for USB3 is 4.5W, the maximum for USB2 is only 2.5W
 
Still no good

Picked one up from my local Apple store last night in Burlingame. So sadly the same problem as the previous model as the coverage compared to my current Buffalo router is terrible. Especially out to my garage/office where I have the latest Airport Express and an old Airport Extreme hooking up my Mac Pro. I had high hopes with the new design and wanted to replace the Buffalo router as some of the Apple devices will drop occasionally when I turn on WPA2.

Speedtest records almost no loss with the Buffalo router but with new Extreme is as bad as the old one with almost no signal.

Will try some more testing tonight but this may be a return to store.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
iThink™ that the limitation is in your head. The Broadcom-SoC in the new AE supports USB 3.0.

Regarding USB 2.0:
Yeah, let us use then years old interface standards in 2013. That's progress! :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

What difference does that make exactly? Even though the SoC supports USB3.0 it doesn't mean there is enough power to benefit from it in anyway.

The performance data from the new Asus RT-AC68U, which utilise the exact same Broadcom SoC and comes equipped with USB3.0 is still showing transfers speeds way below the USB2.0 threshold of 22-30MBps.

So what do you really want the USB3.0 for? Just for show? Just so you can brag with your "2013-tech" router even though it makes no sense whatsoever. You aren't one of those who believed 7200RPM hard drives with SATA3 would get higher speeds compared to SATA2 ones as well, are you?
 
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