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Core 2 Duo iMac includes 802.11n wireless?

rogersmj.com — Screenshots of the Device Manager from the latest build of Vista installed on a Core 2 Duo iMac reveal that the built-in wireless card is identified as a Broadcom 802.11n part. Click on for screenshot.

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  • greatcaffeine, on 10/12/2007, -12/+5Ahh, if only my MacBook Pro had it...
  • bryguy000, on 10/12/2007, -9/+7Makes total sense
  • rogersmj, on 10/12/2007, -3/+22I'd like to add to my submission the story as it is now posted on MacRumors: http://www.macrumors.com/pages/2006/09/20060924194334.shtml

    When I submitted this, it wasn't written up anywhere which is why I linked to my blog where I had compiled the info/screen shots. I wasn't trying to blog spam, I know people hate that.
  • flamingmb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19never hurts to be ready for future standards.
  • goat77, on 10/12/2007, -21/+3I simply love the fact that you have to run vista to currently use it.
    • virtualball, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3OS X desnt support 802.11, at the moment. This is because 802.11n isnt actually perfect yet. Vista is a next-gen OS, it should have built in "n" support
    • sp00nz, on 10/12/2007, -11/+3the 802.11n standard is complete now. Has been for a few weeks now.
    • sp00nz, on 10/12/2007, -10/+2er just saw I was wrong. Coulda sworn it was complete.
  • noreturn, on 10/12/2007, -17/+8Apple has been known to be a forerunner with wireless technology; it doesn't surprise me that they are pushing n.

    And aplogies in advance, but the fanboy in me has to say it: Why would you defile the iMac with Vista?
    • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -8/+13Games, and apps that don't work in or aren't optimised for the Intel version of OS X. (Like Photoshop)
    • mejason69, on 10/12/2007, -15/+7I second that.... why Vista on a Mac??????
  • knil, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18I thought N wasn't even ratified yet?
    • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -2/+38It isn't.

      Think about it though- Apple was pretty clever. They stuck the chip in the computers anyway and made it pretty hard to find out that it was even there. That way, if the standard isn't ratified in its current form, Apple can say hey, we never advertized the computers as having 802.11 N, we just used these chips because (...we felt like it, or whatever they want to say).

      And if the standard is ratified, which seems more than likely to me, Apple will have the technology out early and will be able to give the iMac users a nice surprise in the form of 802.11 N support in future accessories.
    • psylence, on 10/12/2007, -15/+6They made it incredibly hard to find out, you actually had to like, look to find out.
    • eagleswings, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10But so long as it's the same N that's used in the iTV box that's all we need.
    • furto, on 10/12/2007, -12/+1hey i have been looking for a laptop for a while now, i know the imac isnt a laptop :P but the ASUS U5F is a great laptop, just incase anyone is looking, its RRP $2500 and it has wireless N. anyways its a greap laptop that i hope i can get soon.

      posting this just because i would like people to tell me of great stuff, because i was about to by a macbook, then i found this.
  • TyrannousDotNet, on 10/12/2007, -13/+5come to me quad core macbookprooooooo
  • Nodren, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2i'd imagine they put in the hardware but will probably upgrade the firmware to it when the standard is ratified to actually enable..... but then the question is, why? there really isnt any financial motivation for including such bleeding edge hardware.
    • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -0/+20My guess is that they want as many people with 802.11 N hardware as they can get, to increase the target audience for the upcoming 802.11 N enabled iTV. Just speculation though.
    • JPDota, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7VERY good point. iTV will need the bandwidth that n supplies for high def content.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1The truth is though, nobody knows if the iTV will support 11n or not except Apple. It really doesn't make all that much sense for it to support 11n except to futureproof the product, to insure users in the future with 802.11n networks can use their iTV with it.

      In ALL likelihood, they won't be using all of the bandwidth 802.11n provides, and probably not all that 11g provides either, as the video they sell of iTunes isn't all that high resolution (a few megabytes per second at the most; 11g supports 6.5 megabytes per second), and this resolution isn't likely to increase by all that much, mainly because the iPod can't support more high definition than that (and likely WON'T support it, even in the next year), and partly because the bandwidth (from the Internet) higher definition content needs just isn't there yet. Nobody wants to have a movie take 8 hours to download, especially if they can buy it on iTunes, leave the room and go to the living room, turn on their iTV, choose the movie and watch it, as it downloads. That's only capable by keeping bitrates underneath the speed of people's connections, and as it stands, most connections in the US max out at under a megabit a second.
  • macgabriel87, on 10/12/2007, -3/+29it might just be a glitch... we are dealing with a Microsoft product here.
    • zweben, on 10/12/2007, -6/+8That actually is possible, but if it is a glitch it isn't really Vista's fault. It is running on hardware that Microsoft didn't really have in mind when they built the OS. I'm sure OS X running on a PC has trouble recognizing the PC's hardware too (probably more actually.)
    • drakethegreat, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Most the mac hardware is standardized these days, so that hardware microsoft can't test stuff really doesn't make sense. At any event its easily possible that it detected it wrong because vista driver support is not known to be as strong as XP. In any event since its RC1 chances are more then likely it detected it properly.
  • eledu81, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Acording to the wikipedia the 802.11n standard is not due for final approval until July 2007

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/802.11n#802.11n
    • danieleran, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1well its the wikipedia, so go ahead and change it to July 4, 2003.
  • opusagogo, on 10/12/2007, -11/+1"Apple must have been quite confident in the emerging technology to have put it in the iMac, if this is true."

    haha funny
  • r©ain, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Well yeah Apple plans to release their implementation of 802.11n ASAP.
    They would have it out already like other vendors but the spec is not final yet.
    Which is good and bad. Bad because I want it now.
    Good because N-class eqpt will work better and play well with others once the spec is final.

    But what I've been waiting to see is wimax.
    Now that will be the shiznit.
    • StarManta, on 10/12/2007, -19/+1Brilliant, sir. Brilliant.


      .....Wimax is the same thing as 802.11n.
    • kidhero, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Wimax isn't 11n you idiot.

      Wimax is 16d or 16e specs that has sustained bandwidth for real video streaming, something that 11n lacks and makes it very inadequete for use with iTV.
    • kevincw01, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4@StarManta: actually, you're the dumbass, wimax is 802.16. Oh, and WiMax is out already in carrier-grade form factors.
    • SgnDave, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@StarManta

      ... not quite. WiMAX is 802.16.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wimax , in case you were curious.
  • masamunexs, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2I doubt this is true, i mean i think they would mention the fact that their computer has such a cutting edge feature like 802.11n...
    • virtualball, on 10/12/2007, -4/+1Why say that when 802.11n might never be ratified? Thats like saying your device uses Blu-Ray before Blu-Ray even has a chance to live/die...oh...wait....:)
  • t3hX, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Has anybody actually opened this thing? It's obvious the card supports 802.11n if there are multiple (4 or more, not 2) transmit/receive antennas. If not, it's not an 802.11n card.

    I think it's just Vista being screwy.
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5It could have four antenna connectors and still be an 802.11g card, the number of physical connectors tells you nothing except how many physical connectors are there.

      If you opened up the Mac and read off the chip identifier, then put that number into Google and/or found the Broadcom BCM2055/BCM4321, which is Broadcom's 802.11n-pre hardware, then you could assume with a high degree of certainty that the Mac supports 802.11n-pre in hardware.

      Then again, if more users with this same model Mac report the same thing while running Vista (or while running Linux, or while running Windows XP with Broadcom's own driver software installed instead of Bootcamp's), then we can pretty much say it's confirmed. However, either way around it, it doesn't matter all that much, as it's likely Apple won't enable it until they're certain it's going to be ratified and their hardware will be compatible.
  • socrates114, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2digg me down and digg me up
  • timmarhy, on 10/12/2007, -8/+2inaccurate.
    just because you see a device identified as something, it doesn't mean you have the hardware.
    do you honestly think apple will sell you something with such a feature and not advertise it?
    until you show me the chipset supporting it i'm calling *****.
  • heyitsme23, on 10/12/2007, -8/+1how about going to the apple site?

    http://www.apple.com/imac/specs.html

    shows

    Built-in 54-Mbps AirPort Extreme Card (802.11g standard)
    • stephenwq, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Which is almost no relevance as this is 802.11n.
    • heyitsme23, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0why would you believe what a windows beta spec shows on a machine that has basically been hacked to run it, as opposed to what apple claims is included in the hardware?
    • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6It's simple really: because Apple's not advertising the fact they're using hardware capable of 802.11n until there is an 802.11n. That way customers can't demand it, and if it's incompatible with the future standard, they can simply leave support off, or if possible, apply a software modification to the hardware that will make it capable of being supported by true 802.11n hardware.

      Apple's site includes the human readable form of the hardware inside of the iMac, what it doesn't say is "We're using this chipset with these hardware capabilities", which is probably a good thing, as most people have no clue of what a chipset even is.
    • timmarhy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2your fooling yourselves, seriously.
      apple isn't giving you anything for free, nor are they hiding features. apples style is to hold back on features and slowly milk you fanboys for upgrades.... show me one instance where i'm wrong.
  • triden, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I dont get what the rage is about...Dell and other manufacturers also have it in their laptops. Although the spec probably won't change, I'll wait until they get a final revision of it out.
  • raptordrew, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1There are going a LOT of unhappy people (and maybe shotgunned computers) when wireless networks start dropping because of Mac users messing around with their N cards - there have been significant issues with them interfering with B/G networks... I can't believe Apple would do such a risky thing.
  • awilke, on 10/12/2007, -3/+3This fits in perfectly with apple not releasing the complete specs on the ITV box. They say it's 802.11 but not the type. It's definitely N and they didn't want to miss off it's laptop crowd who are currently only getting G.
    • timmarhy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+1i say again - apple milks you on upgrades, it's their business plan.
    • Suplyndmnd, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1This was actually the same tactic I saw on the Wii. On the website it says "802.11" but never specified g or n (or god forbid b). 802.11n was SUPPOSED to be ratified by now but from what I heard/read is that it was having difficulty with interferring with the already present g standards so they were tweaking it some. Also, someone stated above that it is scheduled to be ratified now but it was also scheduled to be ratified summer this year too.

      I even laughed 2 months back when I saw BestBuy had routers specifying that it would do 802.11n. I then was like "Wait, why am I laughing, what the hell happened here?". That's when I ran to the computer to find that it hadn't been passed by the ISO (Isn't it the ISO that takes care of this one... so many f'ing standard organizations i get them confuzzled). Upon reading the fine print it said it was based upon specifications that THEY felt were going to be passed. I think they changed since then so I'd hate to have gotten stuck with that router if it wont work.

      In other news. Does anyone really care if this has n or not? It wont be widely used for quite some time as wireless networks are just now rolling out g in a widespread manner. I forget off the top of my head but isn't g and n nonintercompatible?
    • catoutfit, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6"i say again - apple milks you on upgrades, it's their business plan."

      Unlike say...Dell for example? No wait..
    • Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I think it is IEEE not ISO that ratifies the spec.
  • Numbski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Just for comparison's sake, I have a relatively new mac mini. Here is the relevant info on my wireless chipset. Please note that this would make a huge difference as to why Kismac cannot set passive mode on newer macs...it's not really a g chipset, but a backwards-compatible n chipset. (Wildly speculating here.):

    AirPort Card Information:
    Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x86)
    Wireless Card Locale: USA
    Wireless Card Firmware Version: 0.1.24

    Wonder if an iMac owner could compare the offsets to this and confirm if the newer Airport Extreme cards are all using that newer broadcom chip, or if it's JUST the iMacs. I want to say the former, since it's just a mini-pci card.
    • micvog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is what is showing up on the new iMac C2Ds:

      Wireless Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x87)
      Wireless Card Locale: USA
      Wireless Card Firmware Version: 4.80.46.0
  • garabito, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How are they going to call it this time?

    Airport Super Extreme?
    Mighty Airport?
    MacPort?
    MacPort Pro?
    • Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2My guesses.. Airport AV, TV or HD.

    • robroe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Surely the next step from an airport is a spaceport??
  • Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I think this makes sense because this way Apple will have some installed base that will be a ble to use iTV when it launches. Otherwise the price of entry not only includes iTV and the movies you buy on iTunes, but a new Mac as well. That will put a hurt on early adoption.
    • danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1No they will have a base station released as well. So you will have to buy an 802.11n router at the same time as your iTV. I'd love to have an excuse to upgrade my Mac though.
    • Boondoggle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1That won't help unless you're streaming from a PC/Mac that is connected with either a 802.11n or gigabit ethernet. So my point still stands unless I"m missing something.
  • smokeonit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0spaceport xprize whatever???

    the next gen airport should be iairproHD;-) just kiddin.... i think normal people where always confused by the aiport title for the apple wifi, so a name change wouldn't be a bad thing... i like airpro or macwifi or something like this, something easy to understand what it's about, that's what apple always was about, right???
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