I hear that. When I built my new house, I put 10Gb Ethernet to all the rooms. My fixed devices (desktops, TVs, and Mesh nodes) are all hardwired. If I’m using my MacBook Pro (M3) on my desk, I usually plug it into the Ethernet through Thunderbolt. If I am transferring large amounts of data between my Mac Studio and my MacBook Pro, I use a Thunderbolt 4 cable between the two.
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Unlike iPhone 16 Models, Apple's M4 Macs Lack Wi-Fi 7 Support
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I hear that. When I built my new house, I put 10Gb Ethernet to all the rooms. My fixed devices (desktops, TVs, and Mesh nodes) are all hardwired. If I’m using my MacBook Pro (M3) on my desk, I usually plug it into the Ethernet through Thunderbolt. If I am transferring large amounts of data between my Mac Studio and my MacBook Pro, I use a Thunderbolt 4 cable between the two.
The reality for most users is that they don’t exploit their internal local network. (Many, maybe most, would be surprised to learn they have a lan.) Each person in the house has a personal device or two. Their use is focused on internet content and services. They rarely if ever exchange data directly between devices, using instead a cloud-based intermediary (e.g., iCloud). So, ISP speeds are the relevant bottleneck for the vast majority of users.
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That is kind of special. 1.4Gbps!
How far away from the router is the device, out of interest?
You can just connect a Thunderbolt cable between two systems and transfer data?
The main reason for Wifi 6E or Wifi 7 is to connect an PC or Mac flawless to the Vision pro or to a Meta Quest 3 for remote Desktop. A second reason is to connect an other Mac or PC - both also via some kind of remote desktop software. A third reason is an external disk array.
May be Wifi 6E is good enough for the moment. But the next generation of AR will use Wifi 7.
May be Wifi 6E is good enough for the moment. But the next generation of AR will use Wifi 7.
Significant advantages no, some advantages in 5 years for sure. The thing is a lot of features of wifi 7 have not been implemented into consumer devices yet. How many will be implemented via firmware updates and actually work is a mystery at this stage. How many will need actual new hardware is also unknown. What is certain is that in 5 years, the wifi 7 chips in routers and clients will be advanced designs that are much more capable and reliable than those in devices today. Will the majority of people notice the difference, probably not.
Well in your case it isn’t for sure, but you are a very fringe case. Not many people rock 40Gbps fiber networks. Then again all that speed is wasted on a wifi 7 connection as your max theoretical rate currently is 4.8Gbps due to you available clients. Running all that fibre I’d assume your NAS and server run full SSD setups and have transfer speeds in the GB/s range.
I already wondered why those 40Gbps cables even exist. I only bought them because the price difference to 1Gbps was very little.
I never heard of more than 10Gbps Ethernet before I found those cables on Amazon when I just wanted to buy a long cable to my router with at least 1 or maybe 2.5Gbps because it's the maximum supported speed for in (2.5) and out (1).
That's really great and fast. I used it to copy very much data from my almost dead 2017 MBP to my 2023 M2 Pro MBP.
Yes. You can configure the Thunderbolt connection as an Ethernet connection in the Network settings. You can then transfer things through shareable folders that you mount.
Haven't decided whether to upgrade or not, though the majority of the time my work & personal machines are on a hardline. Wi-Fi 7 would be better for long term value and when traveling.
For traveling? You aren’t going to find many hotels or commercial businesses rushing to upgrade to WiFi 7 routers. But even if they do upgrade, those routers will still connect to WiFi 6/6E phones just as WiFi 7 phones will connect to WiFi 6/6E routers.
If you are happy with your current phone and WiFi 7 would be your main reason for upgrading, I’d say you should wait to upgrade. Future WiFi 7 implementations will be better than that in the iPhone 16.
Likewise, not having WiFi 7 shouldn’t be the reason you don’t upgrade to an M4 MacBook Pro. All the other aspects of the MacBook Pro are far more important than a WiFi standard that won’t be fully implemented and rolled out for a number of years.
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Speculation on my part, but consider that some people have homes built and have ethernet cables run through the walls, or have them added later (more of an ordeal), and either way, making changes years later could be daunting.
So if you get the change to run ethernet cables through the walls, it stands to reason you may want to 'future-proof' big time. I'm talking data transmission wants and needs 15 years from now.
it wont be tooooo much different. 10gbit/sec is extremely fast. and today's tech is even faster.
most 'normal' users dont know the difference between local transfers and their wan connectivity. and most dont do enough local multi hundred gigabyte file transfers regularly enough for them to understand the benefits (and bottlenecks of other devices) of a super fast LAN.
i think if you have a 10gbit lan 10 years from now, youll be fine.
that said i agree with the assessment, the in wall cabling may as well be as fast as you can reasonably get within your budget
It a distinct possibility that Apple needed to use up WI-FI chips which they either had on hand or had committed to purchasing.
Apple introduced new Mac mini, iMac, and MacBook Pro models this week, adding faster and more efficient M4 chips, along with some other updates like Thunderbolt 5 and nano-texture display options for some models. One upgrade we thought we might see was support for the latest Wi-Fi specification, but the new machines did not get a Wi-Fi 7 upgrade.
All of the new M4 Macs continue to offer Wi-Fi 6E, and while it does allow for access to the 6GHz band on supported Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 routers, it's not the latest and greatest technology.
It is surprising that Apple opted out of updating the new machines with Wi-Fi 7 because all of the iPhone 16 models that came out in September feature Wi-Fi 7 chips from Broadcom. The iPhones support the 802.11be Wi-Fi 7 standard with 2x2 MIMO, but there is a caveat with the iPhone 16 models that takes a little bit of the sting away from not getting Wi-Fi 7 in Macs.
Apple's Wi-Fi specifications page confirms that the Wi-Fi 7 chips in the iPhone 16 models have a maximum physical layer data rate of 2400Mb/s and a maximum channel bandwidth of 160MHz, which is the same performance as the Wi-Fi 6E chips in the iPhone 15 Pro models and the M3 Mac models with Wi-Fi 6E on 6GHz networks (Apple's chart hasn't been updated for M4, but presumably the Wi-Fi 6E chips have not changed).
Wi-Fi 7 in the iPhone 16 models does up the maximum data rate when connected to 5GHz bands compared to the Wi-Fi 6E chips used in Macs and iPads, but Apple does not support the full 320MHz bandwidth with its Wi-Fi 7 implementation. Wi-Fi 7 offers up to 320MHz bandwidth to accommodate more devices, but Apple has limited bandwidth to 160MHz, so iPhone 16 models don't take full advantage of Wi-Fi 7 despite having a Wi-Fi 7 chip. That limitation has been a disappointment, but the iPhone 16 models do support Multi-Link Operation (MLO) for connecting to multiple bands at the same time for faster data transmission and lower latency on supported networks.
Apple certainly could have opted for a Wi-Fi 7 chip without limitations in the M4 Mac models, especially for the more expensive M4 Pro and M4 Max machines, but that didn't happen. Given that people often keep Macs for several years, it is curious that Apple opted not to offer this bit of future proofing in the Mac line. MLO would have been nice to have for gaming applications, streaming, and video conferencing, especially as people upgrade their networks in the coming years.
Customers who plan on purchasing one of the new M4 Macs should know that these machines continue to offer Wi-Fi 6E features and lack the faster speeds and the latency benefits that come with Wi-Fi 7.
Article Link: Unlike iPhone 16 Models, Apple's M4 Macs Lack Wi-Fi 7 Support
I never knew that, I honestly never even thought to give it a try. Good to know for the future!
The iPhone having wifi 7 is because it’s expensive and more likely to implement in large public multiuser environments where the iPhone is more likely to connect.
Wifi 7 is 2-3x more expensive to deploy than 6E right now. In a home environment 6E makes more sense for most people.
In an office environment, mission critical hardware that needs maximum bandwidth is going to be hardwired.
Wifi 7 is 2-3x more expensive to deploy than 6E right now. In a home environment 6E makes more sense for most people.
In an office environment, mission critical hardware that needs maximum bandwidth is going to be hardwired.
The maximum speed of Wi-Fi 6E is 9.6Gbps, while Wi-Fi 7 offers up to 46Gbps.
I'm noticing a difference there.
I have a Paypal account.
Just curious. What use case do you actively use where you experience that difference and what is that difference from your user perspective? I do think it's unfortunate that they didn't include wifi 7 but I think the group that needs 10Gps or more would likely use a wired ethernet. I know that none of these wifi standards get anywhere near their published speeds unless you are in the same room as the router (6GHz hates walls) and if you are that close to the router you have access to ethernet 9 times out of 10.
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I personally notice a BIG difference on my phone between T-Mobile’s 5G and Verizon’s LTE.
Both very plausible reasons and I am a very cynical person, especially when it comes to Apple.
Another likely scenario is Apple assessed WiFi 7 chips and being that the chips have just started being certified under a standard that is yet to receive the final tick of approval, it was too much of a gamble to risk being a hardware beta tester for a chip supplier while running first generation firmware loaded with bugs and missing parts of the standards features. Most macbook pro’s actually get used for productivity so it wasn’t worth the risk and fallout of a poor implementation.
But it’s in the iPhone 16 you say. Well the iPhone has 4g, 5g and LTE to fall back on and can work with all prior WiFi standards. No public, small business or enterprise would be rolling with WiFi 7 AP’s yet, especially the latter where reliability trumps latest technology by a massive factor. The only place currently you’ll connect over WiFi 7 is your own router supporting it or maybe somewhere else privately. Even then you are still locked to 4.8Gbps max and don’t have the cool new features as most aren’t enabled in firmware and are unproven in anything but a lab environment. If you follow tech, it’s a bit like when 8k TV’s were released with absolutely nothing to watch on them at native resolution. Next year is a decade since the first commercial release, where is all the content?
Which leads to why did the iPhone support it…. Marketing. The iPhone is Apple’s cash cow (nearly 50% of its revenue vs about 8% for all macs combined) and when you charge as much and more than a fully fledged computer system or laptop you need selling points. It was a business decision made by marketing and bean counters as it would maximise return, thats it. As we’ve found out the implementation is crippled already as it cannot do 320MHz and likely lacks other WiFi 7 features as the firmware for them doesn’t exist yet, but hey that marketing material sure looks cool with WiFi 7 written on it.