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Apple Reportedly Strikes Deal with Broadcom to Add 802.11ac Gigabit Wi-Fi to 2013 Macs

Wednesday January 2, 2013 7:14 am PST by Eric Slivka
TheNextWeb reports that Apple has struck a deal with wireless chip firm Broadcom that will see high-speed 802.11ac 5G "Gigabit Wi-Fi" come to the company's Mac lineup later this year.
While it’s believed that Apple’s 2013 Mac lineup will feature the same designs as their late-2012 counterparts, they are set to include a range of updated internal features and hardware. We’ve learned about one such chipset change – the inclusion of 802.11ac networking – providing Apple’s updated Mac range with super-fast WiFi connectivity.

Sources familiar with Apple’s plans have told The Next Web that Apple has struck a deal with chip maker Broadcom to outfit its new Macs with 802.11ac chips.
The report notes that 802.11ac will roughly triple the speeds seen with the current 802.11n standard, supporting up to 450 Mbps on one antenna and up to 1.3 Gbps when used with three antennas as on Apple's latest Macs.
According to our sources, the WiFi chip isn’t currently available and is still in development. As for availability, we have been told that if work goes according to schedule, they should be part of the new line of Mac computers. There is no word on whether Apple will introduce similar chipsets in the iPhone, iPad, Apple TV, Time Capsule or other products.
A similar report from nearly a year ago claimed that 802.11ac would be coming to Macs in 2012, but the development failed to occur as Broadcom has apparently continued to work on its chips supporting the forthcoming standard.

Tag: thenextweb.com
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troop231
85 months ago
Sweet, this should actually make Safari snappier ;)
Rating: 9 Votes
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Laird Knox
85 months ago
5G? Enough with the marketing. :p
Rating: 9 Votes
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adrian.h
85 months ago
Macbook Air Retina with super fast Wifi? Yes please! :D
Rating: 9 Votes
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pgiguere1
85 months ago
With the small capacity of flash storage in Mac laptops unless you have an insane budget, it's good to know we'll be able to rely on a (relatively) speedy wireless NAS.

I tried hooking a USB hard drive to my Airport Extreme but 802.11n is just too slow.

Also, I hope that the "5G Wi-Fi" term doesn't catch on. There's enough confusion about those marketing terms already.
Rating: 6 Votes
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hleewell
85 months ago
The Best News Ever !!!
Rating: 5 Votes
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TimUSCA
85 months ago

Sweet, this should actually make Safari snappier ;)


Actually, no. Current 802.11n speeds are vastly faster than your internet. These faster wifi speeds will only help internal data transfers such as Time Machine backups and AirPlay connectivity.
Rating: 5 Votes
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adildacoolset
85 months ago
This 4G, 5G, 3G marketing terms are getting annoying now.

Whenever a company wants to hype it's product, just slap on an increment of the previous number and add a 'G' at the end. Lo and behold, people will assume it's awesome.
Rating: 5 Votes
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Jaro65
85 months ago
Haswell + 802.11ac? This should be a good year.
Rating: 4 Votes
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Confuzzzed
85 months ago
Quick, cancel that errant iMac order which has been in processing since 4th December!
Rating: 4 Votes
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WilliamLondon
85 months ago

For 90% of the stuff we use wireless for (internet) g is still pretty massive over kill. Until we have no problem getting and holding 30+ Mbps G is over kill. Yeah for file transfers N is nice but for the most part we are not doing that and G is more than what we need for streaming from our computer to our TV.


Yes, true, but paradigm shifts come from these types of step changes, especially where seemingly there doesn't appear a need for it with today's common computing usage. For example, you say file transfers with N are great (and that's one of the only everyday uses of the bandwidth we have available), so what if we utilised this additional bandwidth more for file transferring by changing the whole computing and storage paradigm? Imagine what would happen if wherever we happened to be we had access to files or applications or data or..., and transfer of this to our local devices was instantaneous - what would our local storage requirements be? How might that impact computing? Do apps need to be stored on a local device? Does all processing need to happen locally? Does the OS need to reside on the device? I'm not the greatest at the visionary stuff, but perhaps you see what I mean. It's when you have this sort of change that a small or large ripple effect can occur (perhaps even paradigm shift). Personally, I think the next major paradigm shift in consumer computing will be around connectivity (is already happening?), and that will hugely impact our computing and devices in the future. As for today, I've got an Airport Extreme that I've been itching to upgrade, and now I think I'll put off upgrading it until they implement 802.11ac - I might as well be ready for the future when it arrives. :)
Rating: 3 Votes

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