AppleInsider Staff
Ahead of an expected refresh of Apple's Mac lineup, images of what appear to be the wireless cards that could go into those computers have appeared online with potential support for high-speed 802.11ac connectivity.
The images showed up on Monday on TonyMacX86. The card shown in the images is a Broadcom BCM94360CD PCI-E mini custom combo WLAN+Bluetooth card.
That card, it appears, supports IEEE 802.11ac — a wireless standard also known as "5G" or Gigabit Wi-Fi. 802.11ac allows for speeds up to twice as fast as 802.11n, the preceding standard.
The fifth-generation of wireless protocol, 802.11ac sends data over two channels, with each carrying single link speeds of 500 megabits per second. In theory, the standard should produce speeds of up to 1.3Gbps.
Code previously discovered in the OS X 10.8.4 Mountain Lion beta build tipped off observers to the possibility that Apple would soon be bringing the 802.11ac wireless protocol to its Mac lineup, and the pictured card, if valid, would seem to verify that.
Apple was also rumored earlier in the year to have struck a deal with Broadcom, the maker of the pictured card, to put 802.11ac chips into its 2013 Mac lineup. In January, job listings on the company's site revealed that it was looking to hire experts in the new wireless standard.
Apple is widely expected to show off refreshed versions of its Mac lineup at this year's Worldwide Developer Conference. These new Macs may feature the next generation of Intel processors, dubbed Haswell.
The company is also expected to show off previews of the latest version of OS X and its iOS mobile platform, but Macs are especially anticipated, given reports of shortages in certain lines ahead of the developer conference.
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39 Comments
Cool. I hope that the Airport Extreme is updated at the same time!
Fully agree RichL! It'll make for a more snappier experience. Will need to upgrade my iPhone 5, iPad 3 and Airports as well. I wonder if they'll make a card for current Mac Pro models, though I presume it'll need more / different antennas for that.
The bottleneck for most users is not their current Wifi but their internet connection. With the exception of people in Chattanooga few of us have internet connections close to even saturating G let alone N protocols. Although this will help when streaming content from your computer to your TV for example I don't see any reason to trade in my current Airport extreme. Until 1 Gigabit-per-second Internet speed via FTTH is available to more towns I just don't see AC as anything to get excited about.
The bottleneck for most users is not their current Wifi but their internet connection. With the exception of people in Chattanooga few of us have internet connections close to even saturating G let alone N protocols. Although this will help when streaming content from your computer to your TV for example I don't see any reason to trade in my current Airport extreme. Until 1 Gigabit-per-second Internet speed via FTTH is available to more towns I just don't see AC as anything to get excited about.
I fully agree with you. Most users will not notice a difference. However, given the caliber of folks here (which do not represent the majority), there will be a noticeable difference on the LAN. Transferring large files between systems (like TimeCapsule) will benefit from this.
The ones that will receive a rude surprise are those that think it will make their Internet run faster... *chuckle*
[quote name="RichL" url="/t/157630/possible-wireless-cards-for-next-gen-macs-show-802-11ac-connectivity#post_2330633"]Cool. I hope that the Airport Extreme is updated at the same time![/quote] I would imagine if not the same day, the routers would come before the Macs getting 802.11ac. If before — which I think is the least likely of the two possible scenarios — not by much. I don't think it makes any sense to update Macs with 802.11ac but not have the routers available. Since there is no sign that Apple has included the HW sans the drivers (like it's done once before), I'd say the reason for the hold up is for the routers to be available. I hope the routers are more robust this time. Apple's offerings aren't faring too well with the number of WiFI devices we have connected to them. I think the CPU is a bottleneck but it's hard to be sure. Since Apple removed access to SNMP I've had to use alternate and less effective methods to test my home network. There are several reasons I'd like to see an iOS-based AirPorts, but most notably I'd like to see an Apple Home Server with HW RAID that can move the network "hub" from iTunes on your PC/Mac to a networked server for all the users in your household and secure remote WAN access that will eventually include home automation. Am I asking for too much? [I]"Give him an inch, he'll take a foot, and before you know it you won't have a leg to stand on."[/I]