Why Hasn’t Apple Upgraded Airport Routers to 802.11n Draft Standards?

By Andrew McLaughlin | April 25th, 2006

One of the more interesting things to watch over at Apple is the progress associated with their lineup of Airport wireless technology. Apple had the first Airport routers based on the 802.11b standard on the market long before the PC crowd started to adopt WiFi. They also were able to seamlessly upgrade Airport to the 802.11g standard with the Extreme lineup. It was easy for them to do this because they controlled both the router and the wireless card in the Mac. As a result, there was little confusion on the part of the consumers. So why hasn’t Apple upgraded the lineup of Airport routers to the latest draft standards for 802.11n?

The answer is actually quite simple. The standard isn’t yet finalized and Apple has no interest in releasing a product that will make life more complicated for the end user. The real question might be why do the other networking gear manufactures seem so intent on pushing their pre-n gear out the door? CNET’s News.com has an article up today regarding the potential compatibility issues with wireless networking gear based on the draft 802.11n specifications. And it’s a long article that outlines the many reasons to hold off.

The lack of a defined standard certainly has to impact Apple’s plans to release an upgraded Airport router. It is most likely stifling product innovations that would require the higher bandwidth throughput capabilities of the 802.11n standard. Steve Jobs released the Airport Express with almost no introduction and anticipation. The Airport Express included a nice little feature that enabled iTunes to stream music wirelessly over the network to a stereo or set of powered speakers. It was an awesome feature and I bought one immediately.

The media and rumor sites almost immediately drummed up the idea that Apple would release a similar product that would stream video over a wireless network. Anyone that has ever tried to stream audio with the Airport Express will tell you that Video would be a major stretch of the technology. The music features of the Express work as advertised but it does have limitations. Any related device designed to stream video is not likely to be based on 802.11g technology.

The other interesting note about Apple’s wireless networking gear is the pricing strategy. The standard Airport base station retails on Apple’s website for $199.00, while the smaller Airport Express retails for $129.00. Considering that you can pick up a full featured 802.11g router from any of the major networking gear providers for under $60.00 it’s quite astonishing that Apple is able to sell anything. Although Apple’s routers aren’t a major revenue driver they are clearly a significant product differentiator.

Personally, I cannot wait for the 802.11n standard to be finalized in hopes that Apple will release an updated lineup of routers. I also hope these routers will have some innovative features taking advantage of the additional higher throughput of these routes. Unfortunately, I’m not holding my breath for any announcements until the next version of the 802.11 standard is finalized.