Two Airport Extremes

I just read Adam Greenfield’s rant on the non-ease of use that he encountered when attempting to setup an Airport Extreme network. I also just setup an Airport Extreme network. I wasn’t going to say anything about it, but after reading how disappointed Adam was with the whole process, I thought I would add my own 2 cents.

Adam wanted to use an external antenna with his Airport Base Station, but mistakenly bought the model that doesn’t have an external antenna port.

First of all, it turns out the Dr. Bott antenna is only compatible with AirPort Extreme base stations with an antenna port, a requirement which is noted only in fine print on the product’s box and an affordance which is provided on only the more expensive of the two AirPort Extreme base station models currently offered. Did you know there were two different models available? I sure didn’t. You have to parse the language on Apple’s product page pretty carefully to figure this out, because it’s only obvious in retrospect. And, for what it’s worth, the packaging of the two models is similar enough that when I had presented my selection (the modemless $199 option - why would I need a modem?) to a store clerk and specifically asked him if it was compatible with the antenna, he said yes.

I’m not currently using an external antenna, but I wanted the option to be available in the future so I wanted to buy the model with the extra port. Right after I read “starts at $199” on the Airport homepage, I assumed that there were different models available. Granted, the rest of the Airport homepage isn’t exactly clear about which model contains an antenna port, but the technical specifications page is very clear about it. I proceeded to the specs page and knew exactly which model I needed to buy. Adam proceeded to the store clerk and asked him which model he needed to buy. If I’m going to drop $199 on a hardware purchase, I’m not going to leave my experience up to a store clerk.

Adam’s next point of complaint was with the Airport Setup Assistant.

You’ll recall that Nurri’s (Panther-equipped) laptop had the plain vanilla AirPort card as opposed to the Extreme variety, which is the only excuse I can conceive of for the base station’s manifest failure, even though it’s ostensibly backward-compatible. I set up the base station with, naturally, the AirPort Setup Assistant, configured it to require a password compatible with the 40-bit WEP security offered by 802.11b, and figured we were good to go.

I figured wrong. For the next two hours, I tried to get both machines to automatically recognize the network, and consistently wound up confronted with an error message that the password I had entered was incorrect. After just setting the password. Myself. Multiple times. In fact, I never did get a stable network up and running, for even one of our two boxes.

I also used the Airport Setup Assistant to setup my network, but unlike Adam, I didn’t encounter any problems. It was as simple and straightforward as I expect any Apple product to be. My network differs from Adam’s in that both of my Macs have the plain vanilla Airport card, which by Adam’s logic would only seem to create more problems, but it hasn’t. Both of my Airport Macs are running happily along on my Airport Extreme network.

Adam concludes:

For all you Apple partisans I am sure to hear from: I obviously want them to thrive in the marketplace, every bit as much as you do. A quick “Sunnyvale, we have a problem” calling attention to the places where they could use a little tightening up, is more likely to help them than blandly insisting there’s nothing wrong, don’t you think?

I agree. There is something wrong. There will always be something wrong. And there will always be something right.

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