The new Time Capsule and Airport Extreme design look...awful!

I wonder if the antennas have to do with the tall design.

 

I thought during the keynote that they said it was tall to allow the antennas to do the beamforming? Did you see that part?

 

Maybe. I'll bookmark this thread and come back after Anantech and/or Arstechnia do detailed reviews of the product, because I'm pretty sure they'll comment on the antenna orientation.

 

I bet there are antennae at the top and the bottom and the 6ins gives a minimum angle to work with between top,bottom and target device. But I agree the shape is crude. I also guess the disk in the TC version sits vertically ?

 

I have no problem with what the thing looks like. It's not like my router is something I keep out on the coffee table...

 

agreed, but it does look ugly. However, I'd gladly take that if it means better range and real beam forming.

 

I swear to god if someone says "Jobs never would have X" one more time, I'm going to invent a way to strangle them through the internet. Jobs is dead. It doesn't matter what he would or wouldn't do. Besides, we're still in the tail-end of his product influence pipeline, so odds are, Jobs DID approve this design.

People seem to believe that Jobs was infallible. Anybody remember the puck mouse? The Mighty Mouse? The Flower Power and Blue Dalmation iMac? Heck, the 3rd Gen Shuffle was stupid ridiculous.

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It is, there's no other wifi base station on the market that looks like this.

 

I'm excited about AE and TC. I think it's a great design and functional as well. (More so the latter.) This will enable a greater distance from the AP from the already great distance of the older generations.

I might go to the MarketPlace and sell off my older gens to get the newer ones.

 

A flat design is/was terrible RF engineering! To get max performance the vertical design with multiple antenna doing beam forming (like LTE cellular base stations) makes total sense.

Form follows function.

My new 3TB TC will be here early next week. Note they are less expensive than previous generation. So dealers should be putting old ones on clearance.

 

Reason for new design...

Apple site says:


"Designed with performance in mind.
With the antennas at the top of the elevated design, AirPort Extreme now has a higher platform for dispersing the signal. We also increased the number of antennas. There are now six of them — three for the 2.4GHz band and three for the 5GHz band. Together with 802.11ac technology, they let you connect faster, farther, and with more power than ever before."

PS: Lets get over this what Steve Jobs would or would not do. He is dead.... over a year now and no one knows what he would do today. Put it to rest for goodness sakes

 

Its called beam forming. The technology has been around for decades in phased array radars and other industrial/military solid state transmission applications. It permits energy to be directed without the need for mechanical pointing. However, to do so requires "surface face" - vertical area that permit the antennas to generate sufficient energy variances across the surface to actually steer the energy in a specific direction.

Yes it could be done on a horizontal surface but you need to put your computers in the attic to get the most from the directed energy

 

If you go Kickstarter, I will be your first backer!

 

Indeed. I think it should be an immediate ban for those that post that tripe.

 

Seconded!

 

No, reality:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=17408580#post17408580

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It seems you have some personal problems with Apple products. I doubt that this forum can solve your personal problems.

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Same here.

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That is probably a good alternative for our animatedude.

 

Still... the new Airport looks like a big EMPTY box. Without the 3,5'' HDD there is really no point in having such a tall enclosure. I wish they put it in the Airport Express box.

 

Actually, there is a point.... the antenna array. If you care so much about form and don't care about function, just buy the Express. The only point in buying the Extreme is to get the 802.11ac functionality which requires the size.

 

Can you explain that?

See the attached picture. The antenna sits at the very top of the "tower" and nowhere else. The rest is empty space, reserved for the HDD in Time Capsule.

I care about the form AND the function. That is why I buy Apples and not oranges.