Apple working to adopt 802.11ac 5G Gigabit WiFi this year

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  • Reply 81 of 124
    Assuming any of this report is true, I'm looking at this not for a new technology for iPads and iPhones (at least not in 2012) but for the upcoming Apple TV. If you think about it, an Apple TV is going to be a device designed to deliver online 1080p content quickly, efficiently with high quality. Since most homes don't have wired ethernet available, you need quality wireless networks with more speed that ever. 3-antenna 802.11n is good, but if you can get double or triple speed out of it, you can solve a lot of problems in a modern home.



    Let's say you have two Apple TVs in your house, both watching online streamed content in 1080p. Add to that someone doing the same on an iPad 3 and maybe a Macbook surfing the web at the same time and all of a sudden you have a pretty congested network. In order to provide consistent streams without frame dropping, you need something like 802.11ac.
  • Reply 82 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Sevenfeet View Post


    Let's say you have two Apple TVs in your house, both watching online streamed content in 1080p. Add to that someone doing the same on an iPad 3 and maybe a Macbook surfing the web at the same time and all of a sudden you have a pretty congested network. In order to provide consistent streams without frame dropping, you need something like 802.11ac.



    Yep. Bingo. And whether you think the Apple TV means a plausible tiny box or a laughable HDTV, this is exactly what you need to succeed with a multi-location household. You'll need 11ac to push the 1080p around.
  • Reply 83 of 124
    andysolandysol Posts: 2,506member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jahonen View Post


    I'm pretty sure that there are more people than the population of the US that would strongly disagree with your very obnoxious statement about "Anyone else in the world". there are several reasons why I wouldn't want to raise my kids in the US even though it would be relatively easy for me to come and live there. Canada for example is much more desirable from my point of view.



    Regs, Jarkko



    Canadians come to America much more than Americans go to Canada. Just sayin...

  • Reply 84 of 124
    andysolandysol Posts: 2,506member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jragosta View Post


    Yes, there are always 'rules' that the 'purists' put out and expect people to follow. In reality, everyone is different and has different goals. I have a 55" TV that I watch from about 12 feet - and I enjoy it just the way it is. Moving forward to about 9 feet would make me feel claustrophobic. And for all the people who brag about how great 1080p is and how easy it is to see the difference, I say that you should be watching movies that make you more excited about the movie than about the number of pixels on the screen. The difference between DVD and Blu-Ray is quite small - even on my 55" set and even if I sit closer. Can I see a difference? Sure. But Avatar is every bit as enjoyable on DVD as on Blu-Ray. Content is more important than specs.



    It's really no different than the home audio stuff that used to be the big bragging rights thing. Could you actually hear the difference between a $1000 cable and a $20 cable? Maybe. Barely. Under precisely controlled conditions. Is it something that mattered in the real world? Not a bit.



    Cables are proven to have no difference. But the difference between component and hdmi is noticeable. That's an equal comparison between 720 and 1080. True, content makes a movie good or bad. But quality of picture and sound is can make a good movie better and a more immersive experience.



    Something about sitting in a media room with lossless audio in 7.1, and 100" of 1080p @ 12' is fantastic. It feels like you're at the movies 55" can still create that at the appropriate distance, but if that isn't for you, that's cool. But it's not a placebo effect that we (who prefer it) dont notice in "real life" as you related it to overpriced cables.



    Maybe ya just need a new setup.
  • Reply 85 of 124
    paxmanpaxman Posts: 4,729member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Tallest Skil View Post


    Of COURSE, having just bought the most recent revision of AirPort Extreme?



    Ditto, inc AppleTV.
  • Reply 86 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by I am a Zither Zather Zuzz View Post


    Unless you have a 55 inch tv and sit too close, nobody can tell the difference.



    Video Pros certainly can tell the difference between 720 and 1080. There are a lot of us on Macs, at least as long as they keep making Mac Pros. A lot of consumers can tell as well. They have to get to 1080 to be competitive, eventually.
  • Reply 87 of 124
    ssquirrelssquirrel Posts: 1,196member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Haggar View Post


    And Thunderbolt currently runs at 10 gigabits per second. This goes to show that contrary to what many Mac users are thinking, a single Thunderbolt cable is nowhere near ready to replace expandable tower computers. Thunderbolt would need to run at hundreds or even thousands of gigabits per second in order to support the full bandwidth of a Mac Pro with every slot being utilized.



    Uhm...no. Not even close. If you think the Mac Pro moves hundreds or thousands of Gb/s over their 3 PCIe slots you are smoking something. A Ma cPro has 1 PCIe 2.0 x16 and 2 2.0 x4 slots. That is a total of 24x or 12GB/s aggregate speed. That is one way as well, not bi-directional. Thunderbolt is 10Gb/s or 1.25GB/s bi-directional or 2.5GB/s simultaneous. Thunderbolt can replace the expansions slots of the Mac Pro when it is 5 times faster than current speeds. If you insisted on it being capable of those speeds one way, then 10 times faster than current.



    Also some of the TB controllers are 4 lanes which get turned into 2 channels of 10Gb/s bi-directional, so those controllers are already pushing double standard speed. I believe the MBA uses the 2 lane/1 channel design and the MBPs have the 4 lane/2 channel. So really, all we need to do is produce TB interfaces w/more channels at current speeds or boost the speed per channel. I'm sure both will happen over the next couple of years.
  • Reply 88 of 124
    foljsfoljs Posts: 390member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sflocal View Post


    What's the rush to wirelessly connect your phone to an access point at gigabit speeds to the Internet that is probably real-world 5-10mb/s unless you're at a Starbucks with a bunch of other people which will drag it down even more?



    While improvements are always welcomed, it cracks me up reading how people want this technology now when in the real world, they will nitice little or no improvement.



    But we gotta have it now.



    What do you plan on doing on that tiny phone that necessitates gigabit speeds of bandwidth?



    Local sync with my iMac? How about it?
  • Reply 89 of 124
    jahonenjahonen Posts: 364member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Andysol View Post


    Canadians come to America much more than Americans go to Canada. Just sayin...





    Hmm. Don't the Americans realize how good a place there is up north? ;-)



    Just to clarify in case someone misinterpreted: I'm not anti-american, I just wanted to prove a point to the original poster.
  • Reply 90 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Eideard View Post


    Great. Means I'll finally replace my dead Gen 1 AppleTV with something that supports 1080p. It's why I've been waiting.



    Been able to download and play 1080p IPTV content from DirecTV for months, now - but, there's much more outside of the movies D* offers that we've been restricted to watching on my iMac.



    Apple TV 2 w/ Firecore= play most file types in 1080p

    Mac w/ Plex= play most file types in 1080p



    Done, enjoy watching all your movies on either or.
  • Reply 91 of 124
    It's a better video than the one embedded above. Airport intro starts at about 55 minutes in.



    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgoUM...e_gdata_player
  • Reply 92 of 124
    frankiefrankie Posts: 381member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Andysol View Post


    Canadians come to America much more than Americans go to Canada. Just sayin...





    I agree with him. As an American, Canada is looking pretty desirable right now with the conservative and corporate morons running this country in the ground.
  • Reply 93 of 124
    tipootipoo Posts: 1,141member
    Nice for some future-proofing, I guess, but I've never been dissatisfied with a 3x3 antennae Wireless N connection. What I really want them to adopt at long last is USB 3.
  • Reply 94 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by mstone View Post


    Your internet speed is determined by the slowest hop you have to pass through to get to the webpage or data storage you are trying to reach. The bottleneck could be your wifi or router or your Internet provider or any other router along the way to wherever you are going.



    More importantly, 802.11 is a shared medium, and there are only a small finite number of non-overlapping channels available to run "physically separate" networks.



    What I've always wondered about is why nobody has yet introduced "coordinated peer-to-peer" extensions to Wi-Fi to increase both bandwidth-efficiency and latency ? except in certain cases, there's no real reason every packet sent between my MacBook and Mac mini needs to pass through my AirPort Extreme, and the latency introduced by doing so can be fatal to applications like network MIDI.



    Sure, I can set up a peer-to-peer network manually, but this means I must disconnect from the shared network. Automating this seems like it could be a huge win, especially for a company like Apple who so actively promotes "unmanaged" Wi-Fi applications beyond mere Internet connection sharing.
  • Reply 95 of 124
    solipsismxsolipsismx Posts: 19,566member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by tipoo View Post


    Nice for some future-proofing, I guess, but I've never been dissatisfied with a 3x3 antennae Wireless N connection. What I really want them to adopt at long last is USB 3.



    I think better WiFi options are needed, most importantly in the form of more robust AirPort routers, but I would expect USB 3.0 in the next Mac updates that include Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. Currently there only option was an additional chip to support USB 3.0 where they are already low on space due to their design choices. I'm sure some will argue that Apple is pushing Thunderbolt blah blah blah but they aren't really competing for the same peripheral connections so I think it's unlikely that is the reason they haven't added it yet.
  • Reply 96 of 124
    jfanningjfanning Posts: 3,398member


    Wow, it didn't take someone long to bring out that old, tired, chart, there is nothing to backup those figures other than they are the authors ideas, that's all.
  • Reply 97 of 124
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by dagamer34 View Post


    As great as WiFi is, if you want speed, you have to go wired. And it doesn't help that the MacBook Air Ethernet adapter is limited to USB 2.0 speeds, which is maybe 30MB/s in the best case scenario. Hopefully we'll get something better.



    Wow, everything in this post is wrong. Congrats!
  • Reply 98 of 124
    tipootipoo Posts: 1,141member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by SolipsismX View Post


    I think better WiFi options are needed, most importantly in the form of more robust AirPort routers, but I would expect USB 3.0 in the next Mac updates that include Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. Currently there only option was an additional chip to support USB 3.0 where they are already low on space due to their design choices. I'm sure some will argue that Apple is pushing Thunderbolt blah blah blah but they aren't really competing for the same peripheral connections so I think it's unlikely that is the reason they haven't added it yet.



    True, Panther Point chipsets will support USB 3 natively, so I don't see why Apple would not use USB 3 then. But still, unless you're using bottom barrel Wireless N connections I've never had problems with them even in large houses. Even with that Apple HDTV rumour, a 1080p video stream doesn't saturate a N connection even at reasonable ranges. What will ac do, let me use my connection down the street?



    ...

    Come to think about it, that would be great!
  • Reply 99 of 124
    andysolandysol Posts: 2,506member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by jfanning View Post


    Wow, it didn't take someone long to bring out that old, tired, chart, there is nothing to backup those figures other than they are the authors ideas, that's all.



    You're wrong. Again.



    Facts are facts. You can bury your head in the sand and pretend to be an ostrich all you want, but you're wrong.



    Those charts are all almost identical and use the following:



    Quote:

    These distances are calculated based on the resolving power of the human eye (reference), or visual acuity. The human eye with 20/20 vision can detect or resolve details as small as 1/60th of a degree of arc. These distances represent the point beyond which some of the detail in the picture is no longer able to be resolved and "blends" with adjacent detail.



    Which gets their data from here:

    http://webvision.med.utah.edu/book/p...visual-acuity/





    How the hell do you think Steve came up with "retina display"? Or, because Steve said it, he doesnt have to have any evidence?



    Thats like me getting on here touting that retina display is all a marketing scheme and no one can tell the difference because I can't. And anyone who disagrees with me is just making up numbers and not having anything factual.



    Here is some humble pie, I'll give you the whole thing.
  • Reply 100 of 124
    sflocalsflocal Posts: 6,092member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by foljs View Post


    Local sync with my iMac? How about it?



    Eventually, it's all going to be cloud-based. So again, my argument stands. I think most people will not notice a difference whatsoever since their internet provider will not have that kind of bandwidth going into the house.



    LAN speeds are a different matter. But then, most folks again will not wirelessly sync to their Macs/PC's but will continue to use their dock/USB connection.



    My point is that the community here that is clamoring for gigabit wireless once again represents such a small minority. Most folks in the real-world will not notice a single bit of difference.



    I'm all for making things smaller, faster, and more efficient. However listening to the community here about how important it is they have it now is just funny. The infrastructure right now is just not there, and will not be there for a long time.



    But hey, if the 1% of you that have to stream their HD videos, or sync your 64GB of data every time at gigabit speeds has to have it, then it's obvious everyone else will find it useful to.
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