vmarks

rob53 said:

Con: MR2200ac is powered by a Qualcomm quad-core CPU

It's like using any Google products, why would I want to use anything from Qualcomm. I want an A-series based mesh system built by Apple.

That seems unlikely - Qualcomm is or has been in your iPhone. They make 4G LTE and 5G cellular modems. The Intel cellular modems were by some measures not as good.

jdb8167 said:

elijahg said:

sflocal said:

This is why I bought a bunch of Apple’s airport routers and express units when they announced they were no longer get available.  

I use them extensively in apartment buildings after horrible experiences with other manufacturers and Apple’s Airport units have been the most reliable ever.  Many of the original units I purchased 10 years ago are still in operation without having to be reset.  My tenants have praised how reliable their WiFi connections are.

I wish Apple would re-enter the market.  The competition is just junk.  There is no bar to raise now that Apple has lest the arena.

Ubiquiti stuff is really good. I never have a problem with my devices, and they support cool things like roaming so your call doesn’t drop when roaming between access points. 

Their new WiFi 6 Alien router looks interesting. A bit expensive though at $379 retail.

I have not tested the Amplifi Wi-Fi 6 alien, but it's important to note, the consumer level Amplifi products have historically been very different in performance from the pro-level Ubiquiti products (especially the Amplif HD and the instant mesh router products.)

cesco said:

Truly suggest you visit the Synology router community page to get an idea how unhappy clients are, including myself, with this once great product (including the old but still expensive rt2600).
Last update was in October 2019, problems go unresolved. From dropped connections, inability to reach full speed (I can only get 200 Mbit tops with my 400 Mbit package, even near the damn router), slow down requiring reboots (I can count on one hand with fingers left over the times I had to reboot my old AirPort Extreme), wonky WPA3, devices connecting to the furthest point while near one router, and so on.
It’s thought they may have stopped dealing with routers to focus on what they know best, NAS.
Looking for another brand and willing to take the hit. 
Caveat emptor x 100

Interesting. I didn't experience dropped connections, and am getting 400Mbit - which is about the max you'd ever see on 802.11ac. 
I've used the RT2600ac with 2x MR2200ac and not had any of these problems. 

stuartf said:

My experience of running a central RT2600 with 1, 2 and 3 MR2200ac satellites dotted around the house has been unacceptable instability

This would often mean loss of one or more WIFI devices including security cameras until I either noticed the loss of service or realised that other devices were also not responding. Problematic in those forgotten days when we were able to be away from home for long periods.  To fix the hung satellite requires a power off/on on the device.

The three 2200s have been turned off for over two months now as at least one of the nodes would lock up at least once a week. I have experimented with 1, 2 and 3 satellite 2200s configured at various locations around the house. Same issue. The RT2600 is however completely stable when used on it's own

As a mesh set-up this configuration just cannot be recommended due to stability issues

It's a real shame as when it works it's great and the software implementation is good

Several firmware updates last year have made no difference to stability of the mesh

My thought is that placement matters with mesh. I'm not suggesting your experience was caused by this, but it's very important to have nodes within good signal of the main unit, not at the edges. It's strange that your MR units locked up. They can be used as standalone. I wonder if you used one standalone MR in place of the RT2600ac if it would have been stable. 

RYC2000 said:

I was running a RT2600AC with one MR2200AC with ethernet backhaul. After a day, I noticed that the RT2600AC would end up with most of the clients. Then after a number of days, the router's wifi would bog down and need to reboot the RT2600AC. It got to the point that I was rebooting the router nightly. I got tired of this crap and end up turning off the wifi of the RT2600AC and disconnecting the MR2200AC.

I am still using the RT2600AC as the router, but use 2 old Airport Extremes as access points for my wifi and noticed the clients are able to roam back and forth much better than before. The wifi is not as strong as the RT2600AC, but I am getting more reliability and speed. The RT2600AC is a good router if you do not look at the wifi part. I did not want to experiment with adding another MR2200AC and leaving the wifi of the RT2600AC off. 

So why am I not using the Airport Extreme as the router? Its wan port cannot keep up with gigabit internet speeds wired, but its wifi is faster than the RT2600AC.

I haven't rebooted any of this system intentionally - only the mesh nodes that aren't on UPS battery. (The main router is). It's been a few months since a reboot took place, and the clients don't all end up on the main router. I'm not sure how to explain what you experienced.

fradicalone said:

Until about a month ago I had a Synology RT2600ac mesh system. The 2600, purchased in November 2019, last about 6 months, then the Ethernet ports quit working. That was my second rt2600ac, the first one lasted about 18 months and died, again the Ethernet ports went bad.

I had a 3 node mesh: one 2600 and two 2200 satellite routers.

I replaced the whole system with a single Asus 3000ax router, with the AX turned off and the signal is actually STRONGER everywhere in my house!

The Asus also reboots in 30 seconds. The Synology routers 2-3 minutes

Synology is a good company, but the quality of these routers IS NOT.

If you were able to replace a 3 node system with a single router I wonder how the single RT2600ac would have performed without the nodes - but no doubt, the long Synology reboots are absurdly long.

Did I somehow get one of the only working systems on the planet? Something is strange here. The units I have work consistently well. I had a friend buy the same system for his office, and he's been pleased with it, no errors or failures. But a lot of you had issues, including surprising issues, like Ethernet port failure. 

As more client devices adopt Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and you upgrade the devices in your home, it will become more important to upgrade the router or Wi-Fi access points, and we'll move away from 802.11ac. Those of you using 802.11n Airport Expresses are giving up a lot of the connection you're paying for if you're paying for faster connections. 

zimmie said:

This is the testing organizations' fault, because they need to tell the user when something didn't work!

The absolute minimum responsibility of any software is to tell the user about failures so the user can then try to correct the problem. If the user has limited time to correct it, not only are error notifications required, they must be timely.

Problems like this never have just one cause. Apple attempting to send an HEIF file by default is bad. The application should support HEIF, as it's hardly a new format. Still, the site not telling the user the upload or processing failed is worse, without question.

The testing organization tested photo taking through their own app. Which worked.

They did not test taking photos outside of their app and then uploading from the Photo Library, which is what broke.

I'm with Apple on much of this: The user should not have to care what format the photo is taken with. They took a photo, it's on the phone, they uploaded. There is no reason to expose file formats and make it clunky.

College Board should have tested photos taken outside of their own app. It never occurred to them to do this.
They should have checked file extension and file headers and posted an error message with a solution rather than timing out.

And Apple should work to spread HEIC more widely as Google has attempted with webm.

rcfa said:

The whole point of the DIN Form factor is, that with proper cable adapters these should fit into just about any car with DIN or double-DIN car radios.

baconstang said:

I loved the sound of my click wheel iPod.  It had Wolfson converters and blew away my iPod Touch.
It's Fire Wire, but I still have a 24" iMac (2007) that works fine.  It's stuck at El Capitan and I've left iTunes at 12.6.  I think that should sync up with it.  We'll see.

Which iPods have a Cirrus Audio Chip?

ipod ‘Classic’ 1G , 2G & 3G  (CS42L55) (These are also known as 6th 7th and 8th gen iPod)

ipod nano 4G (CS42L58), 5G (CLI1480A), 6G (CLI1544C0)

iPod Touch 2G (possibly CS42L58)

iPhone 3GS (CS41L61) and 4(338S0589), 4S (338S0987)

iPod Shuffle 4th Gen (CLI1544C0)

NOTE: it isn't just the DAC that governs the sound - the rest of the audio components contribute, too.

Soli said:

Are unlimited phone call minutes and texting available with those stated plans, or just data?

Data, although iMessage counts as data. So does FaceTime and FaceTime Audio.