Half a Monkey

April 6, 2008

Dear Apple: WTF?

The new Airport Express 802.11n looks a whole lot like its predecessor. You'd think it would be the same design with an updated radio that runs at higher speed. Once upon a time, Apple might have valued consistency enough to fulfill that expectation.

As it turns out, the new Express N looks and quacks like a duck, but is not a duck at all. The hardware and software interfaces look the same as the previous Express, but function very differently. In fact, to achieve the same operational result, you have to configure them -- using the same set of controls -- in opposite directions.

A simple test case: two Express base stations, one old and one new, both of which you want to connect to the same Airport Extreme N base station and both of which you want to share their respective ethernet connections with wired clients. On the old Express, you tell it to participate in a Wireless Distribution System (WDS). This setting alone is enough to allow ethernet clients to share the connection, but there is nothing in the user interface which reflects this state. You can optionally disallow wireless clients on this base station, but wired client sharing is implicitly always allowed.

Contrast this with the new Express which, if set up to participate in a WDS, will not share its Ethernet connection (but again, with nothing in the user interface reflecting that state). However, if you instead tell the new Express to simply join the existing wireless network, not extend it (which setting on the old Express would explicitly not share its network connection), the previously available "Allow wireless clients" setting mysteriously changes with "Allow Ethernet clients". Check that box and suddenly all your wired devices are online. Note however, that wireless clients are now implicitly disallowed, since this Express is no longer participating in a WDS.

Dear Apple: this is not user-friendly, easy plug-and-play wireless networking. This is obscure, opaque barely-functional wireless networking that makes blindingly apparent why those less technically inclined often feel anyone who can actually make these devices work is a practitioner of the dark arts.

Posted by brendan at April 6, 2008 12:27 PM

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