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Apple announces support for 802.11g as AirPort Extreme: Apple announced today that they would be offering 54 Mbps 802.11g draft standard support in their new AirPort Extreme products, which include a new card (with a new form factor, thus not working with older Macs) and a new Base Station. Although CEO Steve Jobs said that 802.11g was a standard, as readers of this site know, the IEEE won't ratify 802.11g until fall 2003 at earliest, and the Wi-Fi Alliance's plans to create certification for draft g devices is entirely unknown. Interoperability among different chipmakers and firmware is also an unknown, even though it's likely, and worst case is that incompatible draft g devices talk at 802.11b speeds.
Apple's new card only works in the largest and smallest PowerBooks ever made: their 12-inch and 17-inch PowerBook G4 models. The 17-inch model comes with the card as part of its basic configuration, and both units have built-in Bluetooth as well. No word yet on how they've solved Bluetooth/Wi-Fi interference issues, but it's possible they chose a chipset that has the right characteristics for avoidance.
The new base station is now $199 or $249, and adds USB printer sharing. The $249 units have built-in modems and an external antenna option, and Dr. Bott seems to be selling that antenna. Both LAN and WAN ports are 10/100 Mbps Ethernet, which makes sense for a 54 Mbps (raw) technology.
It supports an access point plus bridge mode, unique among all non-enterprise equipment. The closest option for this kind of connectivity otherwise involves Linksys WAP11s or a WET11 and a variety of technology compromises that generally work, but involve more equipment and complexity. The AirPort Base Station could become an option even in non-Mac environments because of this feature.
Steve Jobs declared that 802.11a was dead, which probably forestalls future dual-band products from the company, which was my prediction for the next AirPort refresh.
I have a briefing with Apple tomorrow and will get some additional detail, including, hopefully, the chipmaker's name.
Other News
HomeRF Working Group disbands: The writing was on the wall with the elevation of Angela Champness to general manager of Proxim's LAN division that HomeRF would be heading finally out the door. HomeRF had a set of excellent features, but it's lack of enterprise support and its late start at higher speeds kept it from catching fire.