[Macworld]

Post your comments for The Future of the Mac: Networking here

[hmurchison]

Informative write up.

I'd like to see 802.11ac Apple Branded stuff next year.

[recording]

I'd be interested to hear about the latency with these new protocols, especially for real-time audio and music applications.

[pawhite524]

Thanks Glenn. Informative as usual and written so clearly a non-tech person like myself could follow.

[Woggers]

I bought one...
Exactly one day after the warrantee expired the hard drive crashed.
It has cheaply made TOSHIBA hard drive inside. Found this out while trying to get all my data retrieved. NO THE DATA IS LOST!
I have always been a MAC fan but for the price and the length of time is was used..... COMPLETE CRAP!

[grants]

No idea what woggers is dribbling on about, but back to the topic :

Sneaker net is back once again to being the fastest transfer. When that happens, I guess that means that demand is strong enough to move on to the next level of wired.

Good wired gigabit networks perform around the same as FW800. So, sneaker was pointless. However, with a Thunderbolt connected SSD or even a USB3 connected SSD (although real-world tests suggest that USB3 isn't much faster than FW800) with IO speeds at 6Gbps, written once, read once, resulting in 3Gbps, you are still >3 times faster than wired. So walking across the room is fastest = Time for newer technology.

[bigpics]

One Q - is all the switching seamless and automatic? I.e....

....do the devices automatically pick the "best" (speed or strength) protocol, and if you, say, move out of range of your AD connection would it just shift to AC or N or......???

That would certainly make having them built-in all on the upside I would think.

Or.....??

[wardoggie]

Quote

No idea what woggers is dribbling on about, but back to the topic : Sneaker net is back once again to being the fastest transfer. When that happens, I guess that means that demand is strong enough to move on to the next level of wired. Good wired gigabit networks perform around the same as FW800. So, sneaker was pointless. However, with a Thunderbolt connected SSD or even a USB3 connected SSD (although real-world tests suggest that USB3 isn't much faster than FW800) with IO speeds at 6Gbps, written once, read once, resulting in 3Gbps, you are still >3 times faster than wired. So walking across the room is fastest = Time for newer technology.

You also left out eSATA, which I hear is pretty fast, too. Cheap speed if you have a Mac that can use it via PCI or Expresscard adapter; expensive if you rely on a Thunderbolt adapter.

[oldwiz]

Quote

I bought one... Exactly one day after the warrantee expired the hard drive crashed. It has cheaply made TOSHIBA hard drive inside. Found this out while trying to get all my data retrieved. NO THE DATA IS LOST! I have always been a MAC fan but for the price and the length of time is was used..... COMPLETE CRAP!

Where was your backup? Any hard drive made by any company can fail. Any smart user has multiple backups, including one off-site.

[romad]

As for 802.11ac returning to optical cables most likely in the Pro line, that assumes that Apple won't have killed off the Mac Pro by then.

[romad]

Quote

As for 802.11ac returning to optical cables most likely in the Pro line, that assumes that Apple won't have killed off the Mac Pro by then.

Darn it, I meant to say Thunderbolt, not 802.11ac!