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- Review: New Airport Extreme Completely Rules (Also: Unpacking!)
It's been awhile since I've really bought myself a techie toy (well, if you don't count the Wii I accidentally picked up off of ebay a week ago). But last weekend, in an effort to finally set up a decent...
It's been awhile since I've really bought myself a techie toy (well, if you don't count the Wii I accidentally picked up off of ebay a week ago). But last weekend, in an effort to finally set up a decent back-up system and embrace the future of WiFi, I somehow came home from the Apple Store with both a giant external hard drive and a brand-spanking new Airport Extreme base station. (Still further evidence that I have the world's best girlfriend)
Following is a staged unboxing set of photos (I forgot to do it when I actually unboxed) and a run-through of the device's merits and exciting new Airport Disk technology. Check it out -- I hear that the new Airport isn't available nationwide yet, so know before you buy.
Technorati Tags: airport extreme, apple
First and foremost, the new Airport Extreme is a great WiFi router. It replaced a $50 Belkin 54g router that was never able to cope with the stress of routing my cable modem, managing to lose service on an average of five times a day. From the time I got the new Airport configured, it hasn't gone down even once. It's remarkable, and it feels speedier, even though I don't actually have any other 802.11n devices to feel its full benefit. The design's lovely, too. Leave it to Apple to find an attractive green LED, right? After years of thinking of green LEDs as cheap commodities, Apple makes green look premium again. Amazing.
Here's a hint when setting it up, though: Unplug your cable modem and the base station, then power up the modem, then the base station. You'll be good from there.
The new Airport Utility software is really great. Flexible, intuitive, elegant. There's a very simple basic version, and an extremely powerful advanced mode if you really want to tweak it and feel like a pro. Apple's on their game, as usual.
The second software piece to the set-up is Airport Disk Utility, the tool needed for the magnificent and simple new Airport Disk feature. Basically, you plug an external USB hard drive into the Airport Express, and you can share it to Macs or Windows machines as full-featured network-attached storage. The software couldn't be easier -- you set it to discover Airport Disks, and that's it. You password protect your disk, and then it's there whenever your computer wakes up. My drive is saved, so I don't even get notified when it pops up. It's just always there -- a flexible, fast media server. Sheer brilliance.
It's been awhile since Apple brought out a new device that just worked the way the first Mac just worked. By that I mean a device that takes something horribly muddled and distilling it to its essential components. People don't need real network-attached storage. They need something like this. The base station is a bit pricy -- $180 -- but I think it's worth every penny. Rock-solid performance, a footprint to match the Mac mini, and innovative features. Apple to a T. Brilliant stuff. An unqualified "A."
Pete Mortensen
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