This week, the Wi-Fi Alliance, the organization that oversees implementation of the Wi-Fi standard, is launching its official Wi-Fi 6 certification program.
Jacob Kastrenakes for The Verge:
That might sound boring, but it means the Wi-Fi 6 standard is truly ready to go, and tech companies will soon be able to advertise their products — mostly brand new ones — as certified to properly support Wi-Fi 6.
Wi-Fi 6 includes a bunch of new technologies that combine together to make Wi-Fi more efficient. This is particularly important because of just how many devices we all have these days — it’s not unusual for a family to have a dozen or more gadgets all connected to a Wi-Fi network at once…
This week’s biggest news for Wi-Fi 6 has no immediate connection to the Alliance: it’s that the iPhone 11 and 11 Pro go on sale, and both support Wi-Fi 6. That’s going to quickly put millions of Wi-Fi 6 devices into people’s hands, meaning adoption of the new tech will very suddenly be well underway.
MacDailyNews Take: Wi-Fi 6 really won’t be official until iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max launch on Friday!
Sounds more significant than “everyone is waiting for 5G”… 😉
Wifi 6 is the new “AX” standard that is in iPhone 11 phones in the specs section of Apple.com
It is also available in Asus, Netgear, Linksys high end routers being sold today. Hook your home/business network to the wifi6-ax standard and the speeds will be faster than the wifi “AC” standard.
And no new in house Apple Wi Fi router to be had.
Some people really need to get over the demise of the Airport.. there are good or better options, Apple does not have provide everything you think you need…
Yeah, remember when Apple sold Apple-branded printers and cameras? 🤪
Yes, and the current camera’s on Apple iPhone’s are the best overall hardware and software in house (Apple) and third party wise.
iPhone camera system is really good, and probably best for typical iPhone users, but it’s NOT better than dedicated “big” cameras used by professionals (and other experienced photographers) and videographers. Apple is great because Apple focuses its resources on what’s important for Apple’s future, not on what others can handle going forward. Like modems, printers, (dedicated) cameras, webcams, external drives, (dedicated) servers… And WiFi routers.
The QuickTake camera never sold well. It was barely more than an experiment between Apple and Kodak. Then Apple and Kodak had a falling out causing Apple to drop any thought of continuing the stand alone camera line. (The QuickTake camera was barely better received than Pippin and a lot worse received than Newton.)
The printers were a completely different story. Apple’s LaserWriter was so good for its day that Apple sold the LaserWriters to other manufacturers (Sun Microsystems, etc.) and those manufacturers rebadged them and sold them as their own. (Sun just put a plastic sticker of their own logo over the LaserWriter’s Apple logo and sold them to the enterprise class businesses as Sun laser printers never mentioning Apple at all.) The same went for the ImageWriters. What killed those two lines was what Steve Jobs predicted at NeXT: very smart computers and software drivers and very dumb, cheap printers. Apple was never going to be able to compete with the “just good enough” $59.00 inkjet printers or the “just good enough” $99.00 laser printers. Thus the end of the Apple designed printers rapidly came about in the 90s.
The Apple Airport devices were a very different story than either of these. The Airport devices were well above average and their prices were competitive. With those two things going for that product line, it was just a management decision (whim?) that killed off Airport. Apple’s management just didn’t want to be in the WiFi router business any more. The death of Airport was based upon nothing else.
Of course the specific reasons are different, but the general reason is usually similar. Focus. No need to provide a supporting function (like WiFi router) that is becoming ubiquitous. My “cable box” that connects to Internet service provider has a built-in wireless router. Service provider’s iOS app is used for setting it up (or I can use a provider’s web page). It’s easy, like Apple’s Airport Utility. Let someone else do it for lower profit margin, focus on what’s really important for future of Apple and its customers. There’s still a market for cheap dedicated music players, but the only “iPod” left is the iPhone without the phone parts (or “iPad nano”).
Apple killing the Airport series is truly one of the dumbest things Apple ever did. As I’ve said on this site several times, there are people I know who are still running Airport routers that would never be caught dead or alive owning or operating anything else from Apple. The Airport boxes were some of the most reliable and stable WiFi and router systems out there.
Saying those people should just “get over the demise of the Airport” when Apple dropping the Airport series was the dumbest thing Apple ever did is truly asinine.
Yes, with the demise of the Airport series there are “good enough” WiFi boxes out there. Yes, we will relatively soon have WiFi-6 routers out there. But that’s no reason for people to just “get over” Apple’s dumbest move.
I understand that you personally don’t give a damn about internet security, but some of us do. Also, while you’re on a roll, be sure to entrust Facebook and Google with all of your data they have collected.
One of many, many examples I could cite as a reason to want an Apple-designed router was the CIA’s development and deployment of Cherry Blossom to gain root access to routers (and real-time traffic flow):
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The document lists several network products as susceptible to its hacking protocol, including devices from Asus, Belkin, Buffalo, Dell, DLink, Linksys, Motorola, Netgear, Senao, and US Robotics. Apple’s AirPort networking equipment does not appear on the list, however.
The CIA has struggled to penetrate Apple’s network router hardware in the past due to a combination of the company’s robust encryption and its use of proprietary hardware. Previous Harpy Eagle documents published by Wikileaks show apparently unsuccessful efforts to “gain root access on an Apple Airport Extreme and Time Capsule via local and/or remote means to install a persistent rootkit into the flash storage of the devices”.
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Apple does not NEED to provide everything, but they are leaving money on the table by NOT offering it. It’s like Apple-branded monitors (not counting the new super-high end one for the Mac Pro.) I’m running an ages-old Apple Thunderbolt 27in monitor beside my brand spanking new iMac Pro because I don’t want a crappy looking non-Apple monitor next to it, and I’m willing to pay for the privilege. And there are lots of people like me.
OK, just how many wifi 6 enabled routers are there out there?