Airport Express & AirTunes
Apple have announced a nifty little device called Airport Express — a portable 802.11g base station with an audio port for wirelessly sharing music around your home or office.
You connect your stereo to the optical audio output port, plug the device into a power point and, using AirTunes (part of soon-to-be-released iTunes 4.6), play music on your Mac through your stereo.
Being wireless of course, your Mac doesn’t have to be in the same room as your stereo, just within range of the device. The unit also has a USB port for wireless print sharing and a single 10/100 ethernet port to extend your network.
Kinda cool, and at £99, not priced too badly either.
Posted 5 years ago on 8th June 2004.
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Comments
Any word on range relative to a regular base station? Again Apple makes something wicked cool that no one else even thought of.
Kevin Davis · www · 5 years ago
Range from an ABS seems to vary depending on data transfer speeds - 15m for 54 Mbps and 40 metres for 11 Mbps.
> Again Apple makes something wicked cool that no one else even thought of.
Well the Slim Devices Squeezebox has been around for a while.
It’s a nice product; supports all codecs and its software is open source and cross-platform.
That said, for the almost half the price, Airport Express seems to do much more; acts as a wireless base station, allows printer sharing etc. Plus there’s the aspect of portability.
Makes a refreshing change doesn’t it. Apple bring out a product which is better than it’s rivals in all areas - and half the price. Normally we expect to pay a premium. Nice one ;-)
It would be really awesome if the wan port was actually a lan port (or both).
ErneX · www · 5 years ago