New APX, Time Capsule, and Apple Keyboard

The new Airport Extreme, Time Capsule, and Apple keyboard updates were also part of the desktop updates, but they were much quieter and were left out of the spotlight.However, I think they are very important updates, especially on the Airport Extreme/Time Capsule side. The Apple Keyboard’s update was rather small, but it has a rather big impact on consumers.

The Airport Extreme and Time Capsule both received three new major features: Dual band, Guest networking, and Accessing your drive through the internet.

Dual band is my favourite; there are many wireless devices that I have, but they use different wireless types. My iPod Touch uses Wireless G, as well as my mom’s iPhone, and my dad’s PC laptop. However, my Mac uses wireless N as well as a newer Dell laptop that belongs to a friend who comes over often. Because of the wireless G devices, my wireless N router is, most of the time, broadcasting on wireless G, which basically makes it pointless to be wireless N.

However, with dual band, the new Airport Extreme or Time Capsule can now broadcast wireless G with one antenna and use the other antennas for wireless N. This allows wireless G and wireless N devices to mingle and still have both devices reach the best speeds they are capable of. This is a very useful feature, because there have been too many times my download speed has been dropping during the day.

Guest network isn’t a really big feature for consumers, it’s really a big feature for people in more public places. For example, if I were to let someone onto my normal wireless network, it would probably be a friend who was coming over. I wouldn’t really need to bother with hiding my printers or network activity from him/her.

However, let’s say Starbucks was providing wireless network for their cafe, and at the same time, they wanted to have internet for… their employees and a server. However, a hacker could easily hack into their server if they were on the same network, so they would most likely have to use some high level security or just use a different router. This would prevent most amateur hackers from getting in. However, this also costs extra, and makes networking more complicated. Instead of that, running guest networking would provide an almost the same solution, and still would be convenient and not require extra hardware.

Accessing your hard drive through the internet is another feature I’m very fond of. There are too many times we forget files at home, but if you back up your entire Mac to your time capsule, being able to access it means that there’s no such thing as forgetting your powerpoint presentation. Anywhere with internet can connect back to your time capsule or hard drive attached airport extreme. This really turns the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme into a mini server for consumers. It’s also very useful to small businesses any anyone else who travels on the go. If this feature is reliable, then it’s possible for people to buy a Macbook Air and not worry about bringing files with them at all; they can just access it over the internet. With the 500GB or 1TB internal hard drive in the Time Capsule, this is more than enough for most people. If you need anymore than that, you probably are good enough to buy an xserve and set it up with more space, but for most people, 500GB or 1TB is more than enough.

And of course, the Time Capsule and Airport Extreme still have the other features it always had. Printer sharing, hard drive sharing, wireless n, etc. This makes the Time Capsule/APX much more worthwhile, especially considering the price that Apple is charging for it. A lot of people believe that Apple products are over priced, but this is, in most cases, not true. The Airport Extreme is 179 bucks, and most wireless n routers can be found for 100 dollars cheaper, but the APX comes with printer sharing built in. To get that with another router, it would cost another 100 bucks to add a wireless G print server, which basically ruins your network speeds. And there’s also hard drive sharing, that you would also need an adaptor for with other routers. Add dual band, guest networking, and accessing the hard drive through the internet, and the Airport Extreme is worth much more than other routers.

The Apple Keyboard was also updated, but very slightly. The wired keyboard, which always came with a num pad, is now available in a smaller version that does not have a num pad. Now, a lot of people would say “oh that’s dumb” and buy the wired version with the num pad, but I disagree. In my opinion, the version without the num pad actually has less space between the keys, which actually makes it more comfortable for me to type. This is why I’ve only liked the wireless and laptop versions of Apple’s chiclet keyboard. However, this is now available on the wired version, and giving us the choice between the two is, referring to recent updates, a rather rare thing for Apple these days.

But it’s not just to me it appeals to. The version with the numpad is also a LOT smaller, and with a lot consumers, smaller is cooler, better looking, and more appealing. Just like how the MacBook Air draws the attention of people, when they see a giant 24″ iMac and a small keyboard, it leaves a rather interesting impression on them. To a lot of consumers, thinner IS better. And Apple is aiming for that crowd. What does your average Joe care about how fast his cpu is as long as his computer runs Firefox? This is why the new Apple keyboard is a cosmetic change, and a favourable one too.

So these are the updates for the APX, Time Capsule, and Apple keyboard. Very positive updates, and we all hope that future Apple updates to their Mac line will give us a choice again.