The new Airport Extreme was announced in on June 10th at WWDC alongside the refreshed MacBook Air and iOS 7. In the 63 days since WWDC we’ve seen those self same MacBook Airs become available in South Africa and iOS 7 is now on the 5th beta on its way to a release sometime in the coming weeks but alas no sign as of yet of the elusive Airport Extreme.
The new Airport Extreme is the first router from Apple to feature the new 802.11ac standard, otherwise known as Gigabit WiFi because of its ability to sustain extremely high data transfer rates of up to 1 Gbps. The technology is also found in the latest MacBook Air and is expected to permeate the entire Apple lineup over the next 12-24 months. Along with the new standard of WiFi the Airport Extreme also uses beamforming technology which allows the router to ‘track’ the position of a device connected to its network within a room and direct signal at the device to create a stronger signal.
So what happened to this fabulous new Airport Extreme? According to The Core Group “The Airport Extreme is on hold at the moment as it needs to be approved by SABS before we (they) can sell them in our (their) stores. ” There is no exact date as to when they expect the Airport Extreme to clear the inspection and go on sale but those who have already ordered them will no doubt be waiting anxiously.
