Will my Mac work w 802.11ac

Nope. Only 802.11 bgn

 

It will only take full advantage IF your Mac has a 802.11AC wifi card. Option-Click on the wifi icon in the menu bar and see what it says next to PHY Mode.

However, Wireless N devices will receive a nice speed and range boost because of the extra antennas.

It is possible, depending on what Mac you have, that in the future you might be able to find an Wireless AC card for it.

 

I presume you mean buyig the new AirPort Extereme. There is no advantage to you if you already have N capabilities on your current wireless base.

However, if you need a new wireless base, I would buy the new AirPort extreme to allow future devices to run at ac speeds. Which is what I'll be doing if my AirPort Extreme ever dies. It's only 9 years old.

 

Wifi standard changes always have a chicken-and-egg problem. You don't want to buy a new router if nothing you own uses a standard, and you don't really care about the standard being present on something you're buying if your router doesn't support it. It's up to you where to draw the line. Personally, I've found that over the course of 2-3 years after a standard launches, I've come to own enough stuff by happenstance that it becomes worth it to get the upgraded router. Or, my old router just dies and the price for the new standard has dropped a little so I may as well get it for "future proofing".

Generally speaking, most people's internet connection isn't limited by their wireless router. E.g. my Wireless N router gives me up to 450 Gb/s, but my cable modem supplies me with 50 Gb/s. The increased local speeds are most needed for intra-LAN sharing -- say, bouncing a 4K video from your 2013 Mac Pro to your Apple TV 4. Sometimes a new standard also helps with interference / connection drops / etc.

If nothing else you own is using WiFi, it's not going to be worth it for you to upgrade the router right now.

 

Interesting thought - if the WiFi module in the iMac is Mini PCIe compliant, and you can find a suitable 802.11ac replacement with OS X support, perhaps a direct swap would work provided you're on a release of OS X with built-in 802.11ac support.

FWIW, the Wireless N 450 cards have three antennas, which should work with an 802.11ac card, but the antenna spacing may be a problem, don't know how they're laid out within the iMac.

Curious what third party vendors such as OWC may be thinking in this regard.

 

I couldn't have said it better myself, I just recently purchased a timecapsule 2tb with the n standard, all my devices i.e. iphone, macbook retina, wii u, ps3 and soon to be ps4 only support the n standard. So if i get a gadget i.e. iMac that uses the ac standard i will still continue to use the n standard till most of my gadgets support the ac standard which could mean years from now.

 

Yes, every computer with an Ethernet-port can take advantage of this!
My setup:
1 AirPort TimeCapsule 3TB (802.11ac) connected to my internet-providers modem and 1 AirPort Extreme (802.11ac) extending the 802.11ac-traffic via ethernet-cable to my 27" late 2012 iMac.
Voila!

 

yes you can buy this new apple products because i understand even if your products don't have ac chips you get a speed bump. Like 20-30% better downloads speed.

so very close to the wired connection speed

 

Then there is 802.11ad which is due out next year. This promises 7Gbps

 

hey guys, came across this thread and hope you can help. i hooked up a new airport time capsule and am wireless on my macbookpro retina. when i "option click" i see my "PHY" mode is 802.11N. my transmit rate is 450 and im getting about 35 MB a sec (megabyte). so does the information on my macbook showing what my internal card is capable of (why its N only) or is it supposed to show what the information on the timecapsule is? i could have sworn a few days ago it was showing "AC" under the PHY mode, but i think im going crazy.

edit: this is in the 5ghz channel

thanks for the help

 

Will my Mac work w 802.11ac

Yep, this is the answer. No MacBook Pro has yet been released that supports 802.11ac; only the Air has it right now.

 

thanks for the answer. im aware though that nothing but the air has AC on board, but is that what shows up in the option click on the macbook then? its showing the connection speed onboard my mac?

and its really strange, because i have a netgear AC router, and when i hook up the timecapsule to that, and connect through the netgear router, i get 25MB asec. but i can NEVER get higher than 15 MBS connecting directly (wirelessly) to the time capsule. which is strange because they should be the same..

 

Different routers have different algorithms for splitting bandwidth among multiple devices.

 

I have an 802.11n my 21.5 should work with that right? At least according to the Apple Specs page it has a 802.11n unless I am reading it wrong. Hate to have spent this much on a computer and have to get another WiFi box. My Kindle works great on it.

 

well you guys wouldnt believe what i figured out last night.. like always, i asked questions first, then spent 5 hours doing some HARDCORE research of everything appl and wifi related. got my speeds peaking at 30 mBs. averaging out at 23, no lower. excpet the occasional dip.. love it.. ill explain after i get my cup of coffee if anyone cares to hear