Core 2 Duo has 802.11n Wireless Card SCOOP

[w8ing4intelmacs]

yeah but do you have an 11mb/s connection from your ISP just yet? I admit upfront that I may be completely wrong, I was just under the impression that current wifi speeds between your comp & the access point were/is faster than the connection provide by ISP via your dsl/cable modem.

You are thinking too narrow. The increase in wireless speed is not so much for broadband internet as it is for file serving. The idea is to have a box (imac, macbook, etc) somewhere else (like the den or another room) and have it transmit media (video/music) to the TV via iTV. Music would be fine, but video could be kind of choppy over current 802.11g speeds. An increase in wireless speed would definitely be needed to have good video streaming for a TV.

 

[iMeowbot]

just from my own consumer standpoint, am I the only one confused by wifi 802.11/n/a/g/b ??

Yeah it's a mess, but whatcha gonna do? IEEE working groups don't go for catchy names like the more consumer-focused consortia or even the IETF.

And what will Apple call this thing? It will be tough to find a word starting in E that sounds like it's supposed to be cooler than Extreme.

And aren't we already past the point we're wireless protocols have passed the speed of most broad band connections? I understand that having faster internal network speeds for streaming video/audio is needed.

And traditional networking! Wireless gets obnoxious if you want to do shared directories. I just want something that can reliably pass through common indoor construction materials and doesn't drop out because someone wants to eat a bag of popcorn.

I just personally find all these similarly named speeds to be confusing.

AirPort Exuberant? Expialidocious? Extraterrestrial?

 

[coal]

I have just rated it negative. Just to vex you.

Curse you!

Also, would this actually be a viable media streaming standard?

With WiMax still in development as well, and the voting on the n standard still half a year away, this is probably just something that Apple threw in because the cost difference was minimal and the potential benefit was too great.

 

[roland.g]

can anyone confirm that this is true on the 24" iMac as well?

 

[BrutX]

Yeah it's a mess, but whatcha gonna do? IEEE working groups don't go for catchy names like the more consumer-focused consortia or even the IETF.

the IETF has catchy names? what, like RFC2795?

these engineering standards are named based on a technical nomenclature scheme that makes sense to the engineers. making more interesting trade names for the products is up to the marketing people. don't blame the engineers.

 

[iMeowbot]

the IETF has catchy names? what, like RFC2795?

The working groups all get silly little nicknames

these engineering standards are named based on a technical nomenclature scheme that makes sense to the engineers. making more interesting trade names for the products is up to the marketing people. don't blame the engineers.

They need a marketing department to come up with something cooler than numbers

 

[DeepIn2U]

WOW this is just lovely news!

> Once again Apple bringing the latest technology to the masses ... in secret yet waiting till its a standard before making it official and STAMPING IT as Mac sweet!

 

[liketom]

i think this thread is funny ! peace has discoverd that the card is N compat and vista can see that but tiger can not - how easy do you want it ?

i was thinking apple would do this

 

[jacg]

Apple will want the MBP & MB lines to feature this technology too. Does that mean no radical redesign for the MBP until the new Intel chipset is ready?

Will all those waiting for Merom MBP be satisfied with a half-baked bump?

 

[Paranoidmarvin]

lol, since when has Windows ever got anything right?

 

[inkswamp]

The new card capabilities were discovered when booting the latest version of Vista.

At long last! Someone's found something useful to do with Vista.

 

[mterlouw]

I'm just going from the USB example...hmm ok USB 2 is faster than USB 1, make sense, it's simple and clean. When/if USB 3 is released, wow, how simple. Why stick all these numbers & letters together and skip certain ones? I realize it's probably based on what the engineers worked on in the lap with the industry, but really, the engineers should learn to work with the consumers, not the other way around.

Don't forget the USB High-speed/Full-speed fiasco, where the marketing folks you love thought consumers would be so confused by the simple numbering scheme you mention that they decided to remove USB 1/2 from packaging for a while. What's faster, high speed or full speed? Even the smarty-pants engineers get confused by that one...

 

[RedTomato]

yeah but do you have an 11mb/s connection from your ISP just yet? I admit upfront that I may be completely wrong, I was just under the impression that current wifi speeds between your comp & the access point were/is faster than the connection provide by ISP via your dsl/cable modem.

My home service is 24mb/s in theory. Actually it's more like 16mb/sec sustained. Uses ADSL2+ which has been rolled out in the UK by a couple of companies for about a year now, tho it's not quite mass market yet.

Faster wifi would be useful for streaming to my tv from my home server.

Rather than wait till next year for iTV, I've just brought an xbox with xbmc and will run an ethernet to that. Far cheaper, and with a dvd drive in it too.

 

[RedTomato]

but since apple is marketing the iTV towards flat-panel HDTVs (which they mentioned quite a bit in the keynote), why would they have the word "Tube" in the title? sounds archaic, instantly dates the device.

Cos the internet comes to you through Tubes! Someone send this guy an internet please!

 

[Macnoviz]

I don't know where on Earth I would send data at 802.11n speeds, but if my new iMac arrives with the ability, I won't object

I don't know, maybe in your living room, streaming HD from your Mac to your ---insert cool product name that doesn't start with i here--- hooked to your TV ?

 

[steve_hill4]

ok, engineers, I'm sorry, but you are NOT to be involved in the marketing/naming of your products anymore. I appreciate your hard work and contributions to technology, but really, we don't refer to asprin as acetylsalicylic acid or caffeine as 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione (copied & pasted from wiki as well). Not everyone is as smart as you, please let the evil marketing people dumb down your naming schemes for the rest of us

Ok, I feel like I'm rambling now, I still wish wifi protocols were easier to decode, but it's time for bed.

When the IEEE agree a standard and it is given a series of numbers, (also see 1394 and 1284 as common examples), there must be subsets using letters for different usages. If I came along shortly after ratification of the a spec and said "I want to modify the spec and make it go 25% faster", I then may get designated the b, but a committee comes along shortly after I get the b and says "We're not adopting that new standard, we want this one that has 25% increased speed and 50% increased range, they then get the c.

Onto the commercial market and a is available and c becomes available too. "Where's b?" so many ask. Why is this too confusing for us consumers? It's because the companies can't be bothered like Apple to then further name their products in such a way that you don't need to know the IEEE spec, just that it's faster. Firewire, Firewire 800, Airport, Airport Extreme. I think it should be standardised that all products should have a non-marketed speed and range on them, (I see some say 100m, some 200' and others 500,000m²), but that won't happen, so we are stuck with the current scheme.

 

[Passante]

just from my own consumer standpoint, am I the only one confused by wifi 802.11/n/a/g/b ?? And aren't we already past the point we're wireless protocols have passed the speed of most broad band connections? I understand that having faster internal network speeds for streaming video/audio is needed. I just personally find all these similarly named speeds to be confusing.

Streaming video from computer to computer on your local wireless system requires higher bandwidth than 802.11G.

 

[hagjohn]

its not a screenshot from my iMac.I used my digital camera to get a close up since I dont know how to do screenshots in Vista.

I can take a pic of the iMac with the system in it but the file would be 2 megs.

I'll try to get it up on my mac site in a few minutes.

Besides.I'm a member of the ADC and am very worried right now ok?

On a PC, you would hit "print screen", which copies the image to the clipboard, then open up paint and then paste it into paint.

 

[BenRoethig]

since the imacs came out on a wed. is wed. the new tues?

It's the new tues when after a federal holiday.

 

[SpookTheHamster]

Thought I'd join the fray. It shows up as n on my iMac (17¨2.0 C2D)

I noticed it when I installed RC1, but I didn't really think anything of it.

 

[bucho]

Is there a way to confirm this without having to install Windows? I have neither access or desire to install Vista.

 

[Jo-Kun]

So an iMac running Vista?
What about a screen shot with Tiger recognising this card?

vista runs on my MacBook, so why not on his iMac? lol

probably the card will be not recognized as -N on Tiger yet... because it's probably not yet in the os... it's like when I first got USB2 in a mac (trough a card) and the os couldn't use it at USB2 so recognised it as USB1.1... so the next MacOSX update will add this I guess (it's not because the hardware is there that the drivers are too...)

 

[Deej]

And what will Apple call this thing? It will be tough to find a word starting in E that sounds like it's supposed to be cooler than Extreme.

Airport Even Quicker?

Airport Extreme 2?

Airport Easily-the-fastest-yet?

Airport Electrifying? (Hm.. perhaps not this one)

 

[57004]

On a PC, you would hit "print screen", which copies the image to the clipboard, then open up paint and then paste it into paint.

Yes, that works great on an iMac keyboard which doesn't have a print screen key I believe the new Boot Camp maps one of the function keys to this function though. And you can use the snipper program in Vista according to one earlier poster.

 

[Heart Break Kid]

does this mean I'll h ave to go out and buy a new airport card for my Macbook?

Any ideas when these will be available? I want them now!!