Caveat Downloader
January 30th, 2007Alternative title: For Intel Mac Core 2 Duo owners only.
I buckled under the crushing power of my own curiosity and purchased the Apple Airport 802.11n Enabler. $2.12 US later, it downloaded in a moment and in a millisecond, I double-clicked the package installer. Imagine my pain when I got this message in the installer:
Turns out you have to run Software Upgrade and download/install the latest Airport Extreme update 2007-001.
After your machine reboots, run the Enabler. Et, viola. If your router supports the draft-N specs, you’ll see a remarkable increase in network speeds. My almost two-year-old Belkin Pre-N router supports it enough so that it feels like I’m on a wired connection to machines on the network. Very sweet. And very worth the $1.99.
This could change how I work. Imagine… o
UPDATE: Tried a 1 gig copy of about a hundred files. Only got about 1.8MB/sec transfer rate. Disappointing. Finder windows populate faster and shared iTunes playlists are faster.
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January 30th, 2007 at 5:42 pm
I can tell that I’m going to have to buy some “N” stuff for the studio.
And I *just* got the stupid WDS mesh stuff working, too.
January 30th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Is the difference that noticeable? I know that wireless (b/g) is slow enough that I notice the difference; that’s why I wired my house with Cat6…
January 30th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
Glad to hear it works well… I have a MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo that has had a slew of wireless issues, so I’ve been waiting for this update to see if it stabilizes the machine’s network connection somewhat. I was going to wait until a few days had passed to see what kinds of issues people were having, but you might have convinced me to just download it and get moving.
Jon Deal, if you’re using the Sveasoft firmware (and the routers that support it, like the WRT54G or what have you) to set up WDS, the firmware now supports the Linksys WRT350N, which is a pre-N router. I’ve heard good things about setting two of them up in a WDS network… and how cool would it be to have a two-router WDS network running 802.11n? I’m tempted as hell….
January 30th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Alternative alternative title: For Intel Core 2 Duo Mac owners only.
(Unless I’m misreading.)
January 30th, 2007 at 8:14 pm
John,
I have a MacBook Pro Core Duo and downloaded both the Update and the Enabler and the Update ran fine but the Enabler says it won’t work with my hardware. Any ideas?
January 30th, 2007 at 8:41 pm
DrKoob, only the newer MacBook Pros — the ones with the Core 2 Duo processors — have the 802.11n-capable hardware. There aren’t any Core Duo MacBook Pros that have it, so the enabler won’t work on them. (The supported model list is on the Apple Store page for the enabler.)
January 30th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
I’ve edited the first line of the post. Unfortunately, DrKoob, it’s only Core 2 Duos only (the 17″ 1.83 GHz isn’t supported).
My speed increase is noticeable when connecting to a wired 10/100 machine. I’ll report on a big copy once I try one.
January 31st, 2007 at 8:28 am
Am I the lone PowerBook G4 pre-Core Duo holdout …?
February 3rd, 2007 at 12:26 pm
Jill, my 12-inch G4 PowerBook still takes care of all my needs (even running Panther), and has been a gem since Day 1 (two and half years ago). Sometimes I wonder about upgrading tho, if only on the basis of taking advantage of its potentially-better resale value. And stuff like this; who doesn’t want faster wi-fi?