WIFI 6 and Apple Silicon Mac

[bill-p]

So Apple Silicon MacBooks finally have WIFI 6 now. That means much faster and more stable WIFI connection. It also means my Mac is now more in line with my iPhone and iPad.

We discussed the lack of WIFI 6 to death with the early 2020 13" and the 2019 16".

I'm surprised no one is mentioning this at all. Granted, Apple themselves also didn't mention it. But seriously, did nobody read the specs list?

 

[chabig]

It was in the presentation, and it's presence is clear on apple's website. The new machines all have WiFi 6. What more needs to be said?

 

[bill-p]

Yeah, for something that was completely omitted from the previous Intel Macs, it's received so little fanfare.

 

[DanMan619]

Yeah, for something that was completely omitted from the previous Intel Macs, it's received so little fanfare.

There's really not much to say about it. Wifi 6 is basically still brand spanking new. The expectation it'd be on the systems this and last year was unrealistic. It doesn't mean anything to the average consumer and most people don't have Wifi 6 routers yet and won't for a while anyway. Apple can't say "it's a kajillion times faster than before" like they'd want to because anyone who doesn't have a Wifi 6 router won't see any benefit. So it just wasn't worth any fanfare.

 

[Lobwedgephil]

Its nice to have for sure, but a non factor for most people for a while. While I just upgraded my house to wifi 6, I don't know of any non tech people who have even heard of wifi 6 yet.

 

[bill-p]

Well, Apple could mitigate this simply by introducing a new AirPort that supports WIFI 6. They abandoned the AirPort a while ago, and this would have been the perfect opportunity to introduce new AirPorts.

But I guess that's for next year. Expecting too much from Apple this year is a sad state of affair.

 

[Supra Mac]

Probably didn't saying anything about it because if someone does a test on the Pro vs the Intel model it may be slower because the 4 port model is 3x3 instead of 2x2 of 2 port and air.

 

[bill-p]

Yeah, I'm very curious about performance as well. My office is about 2-3 walls away from the router. The 16" gets decent WIFI 5 signal and can hit 500mbps consistently.

I'm curious to see if WIFI 6 will allow M1 MacBook to hit more than that, or if it'll be about the same (or event worse). We'll see.