Macintosh27 Jan 2007 07:29 pm
My Airport Express, at around two years old, seems to have lived longer than most of these units (which seem commonly to fail at 12 to 18 months because, apparently, of a defective power supply) but that’s not much comfort. The music’s stopped, and I can’t access my file server.
I’ve registered the death at macbidouille where over a thousand AEX failures have been reported. I’m not sure what to do now. I feel a bit cheesed off with Apple, but I want AirTunes. I also fancy Airport Disk and 802.11n, but the new Airport Extreme, which features these, doesn’t (for some reason) do AirTunes. Only the original, aging Airport Express will, and it’s still pretty pricey even at £65, and I’m now somewhat suspicious of it.
AirTunes is nice, isn’t it?
Think it is missing from the Airport Extreme because that functionality has been moved to the Apple TV?
Love AirTunes. When they let you stream to multiple units, I almost went out and bought a couple more (wish I had now). Before the iTV announcement, I thought the rumoured product would be a sort of video AirTunes thing.
The product they announced looks more like a cut down Mac Mini, designed to run a souped up Front Row (indeed, I’d thought that besides price, it had no advantage over a Mini). It hadn’t occured to me it might have AirTunes (which of course a Mini can’t do), but it does seem quite likely.
If it does, there still won’t be a simple single unit that does AirTunes and acts as an access point, because Apple have confirmed the the aTV won’t to the latter. But it does seem to me like there’s still a market for a cheap, small unit, to act as a more compact base station or to sit beside the second hifi, or both… The things is, can I wait for the Express MkII (and will it be more reliable?)
I have a AirPort Express (the little Macbook power supply-sized ones - I forget if the UFO looking ones are called AirPort Express also) and [assuming the power supply doesn't go out] I love the darned thing. It’s great for portability!
I take it with me when I go on the road and have instant wireless. There’s absolutely a market for something like that. The Airport Extreme is nice (not that 802.11n will work with my Macbook) and I’d really like the ability to attach an external drive to it (even more so if it would properly host my iTunes and/or iPhoto library) but it’s too big for travel.