After reading many complains on the time campuses dieing right outside of warranty, I have considered using the Airport Extreme base station as a "time capsule". Didn't apple just remodel these thing? Why no USB 3.0? Because its wireless backup? Sorry if it's a dumb question, just wondering if it would have made a difference.
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Why no USB 3.0 support for the AirPort Extreme?
- Thread starter jgorinac
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They only remodeled the airport express (which I believe only allows shared printing through its USB port), not the extreme.
I wouldn't be shocked if the next extreme model had USB 3.0.
I wouldn't be shocked if the next extreme model had USB 3.0.
Apple updated the express's form factor, but the extreme hasn't been updated yet. Its surely coming....
Because the AEBS is based on a Marvel (ARM) chipset so integrating USB 3.0 isn't a trivial things.
But the AEBS is also a 4-port Gigabit Ethernet switch so by having a USB3 port would enable you to connect a USB3 disk to it and connect your USB2 Mac by Ethernet and get approx twice the throughput of a USB2 disk connected directly to the Mac which is a big deal when backing up a couple of hundred GBs of data
The Thunderbolt Display will obviously receive USB 3.0, closer to when a majority of the models (if not all) all support USB 3.0. Currently only the laptops support 3.0. When the Mini and/or Pro update with USB 3.0, I would expect the Thunderbolt Display to launch alongside it.
I thought the same.
Unfortunately, the new model was launched this week and it is still USB 2.
I would have upgraded mine...
USB2 operates at a theoretical maximum speed of 480 megabits per second, while USB3 is significantly faster at up to 5 gigabits per second. The wireless-N specification has a theoretical maximum speed of 300 megabits per second.
Therefore, USB3 would be pointless on a wifi device.
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/1...-data-transfer-via-usb-or-wifi/#ixzz2Yn53jbyY
Except that the new routers are 802.11ac which has a theoretical 866mbps, which is faster than USB2.0. With that said, by the time you add in wifi overhead and encryption one generally only gets "half" the speed which puts it in the realm of USB2.0 still.
I will also point out that wireless N is actually capable of 600mbps if used with 4 antennas. Apple gear have a max of 3, so if you pair a previous gen Airport Extreme with a Macbook Pro you get 450mbps.
Don't forget it's not just a Wi-Fi device either - Gigabit Ethernet clients could benefit from USB 3 drives also.
The CPU within the Extreme can't read the disk fast enough to use the USB 3-bandwith. The device's top speed is about 30 MB/s - I'm on my iPhone now, but check out the English Wikipedia page for the Airport Extreme for exact numbers.