Last night Apple released version 6.0 of the Apple AirPort Utility for the Mac as well as Time Capsule Firmware Update 7.6.1. The new release does not appear to have gained any new features or fix any bugs. However AirPort Utility 6.0 has been given a facelift. The new user interface (UI) looks just like the iOS version of the utility.

The user is presented with a network diagram of how the network devices (Apple only) are connected together and to the Internet.

Clicking any one of the icons brings up further details about that device.

To edit the setting for an Apple wireless access point (AirPort Express, Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme) click the icon for the device and click edit.

The new interface for editing the devices settings has been simplified. I found it a lot easier to find what I was looking for.

I did have one disappoint, however. Apparently my 802.11b AirPort Express is too old and is no longer supported. Apple does provide a solution but I suspect that my WDS system no longer works. Time for a trip to Creative Computing.

Have you tried the new AirPort Utility and have some tips to share? Have you run into any issues? Please let me know in the comments area below.

No PowerPC allowed

The bad news is that Apple, in the interest of moving the platform into the future, has dropped support for the PowerPC. Snow Leopard will not install on a G4 or G5 Mac. Time for an upgrade?

Under the hood

The refinements in Snow Leopard can be broken down into two general areas with a small number of user interface (UI) improvements.

• Technology
• Exchange

Exchange 2007

Like most of corporate America, my employer uses Microsoft Exchange to provide enterprise email and calendar services. On Windows, I use the Outlook client to read email and manage my time. Outlook is part of Microsoft Office for Windows. The MacIntosh Business Unit of Microsoft does not provide Outlook for the Mac but instead provides Entourage; something that most agree is a poor substitute. In any case, to connect my Mac to the corporate email and calendar service, I had to purchase Microsoft Office for Mac.

Snow Leopard changes that requirement.  The Snow Leopard versions of Mail.app, iCal and AddressBook provide built in support for Exchange Server 2007. Even though I was using the corporate VPN, setup was relatively easy using the Autodiscovery wizard that each application provides. Autodiscovery will use the information provided with your email address to find all the information needed to setup Exchange support. I completed the setup in Mail.app and iCal and AddressBook were setup automatically. Not everything worked for me though. For some reason iCal won’t sync with my Exchange calendar. Other than Exchange 2007 support nothing else appears to be (visually) difference about these apps except I can now manage my personal and business calendar from one app and view them all at once in a single window.

32bit/64bit

Some of the changes in Snow Leopard will only be exciting to computer scientist and software developers but will still yield tangible benefits to most users. Nearly all system applications — including the Finder, Mail, Safari, iCal, and iChat — are now built with 64-bit code to take full advantage of the multicore CPUs in the Intel processor. This will boost over all performance because the Mac can now take advantage of more memory (16 terabytes) and process data twice as fast. However, not all Intel Macs are created equal. To run Snow Leopard in 64 bit mode, you’ll need an Intel Core 2 Duo processor and a 64 bit EFI. If you bought your Mac in late 2008 or sometime in 2009 you can take advantage of 64 bit computing with Snow Leopard. Right now most applications are still written for a 32 bit computing world so this isn’t such a big deal.

32 or 64 bit, there is still some processing improvement to be had in Snow Leopard even for those older Intel Macs. The Intel Core Duo and Core 2 Duo processors are actually two processors on a single chip. Apple has developed a new Application Programming Interface (API) called Grand Central Dispatch (GCD). “Grand Central Dispatch takes full advantage by making all of Mac OS X multicore aware and optimizing it for allocating tasks across multiple cores and processors.” To take full advantage of these processors, software applications will need to be reprogrammed. Once software developers start programming their applications to use GCD, they will be able to boost that applications’ performance on a dual-core Mac mini, an 8-core Mac Pro, or anything in between.

Apple has also developed OpenCL, a new API I to take advantage of the fast graphic CPU (GPU) in Intel Macs thus potentially making the MacIntosh user interface (UI) faster. “OpenCL in Snow Leopard is a technology that makes it possible for developers to tap the vast gigaflops of computing power currently in the graphics processor and use it for any application.” We may finally see the Mac become a computing platform that gamers will like.

You can see evidence of the new APIs, (GCD and OpenCL), at work in the new version of QuickTime; QuickTime X. QuickTime X is quite visually different it’s predecessor. If less is more then QuickTime X embodies that. I open a .mov file from my library and I am presented with a spartan black box in the middle of my screen. Playback is smooth even on my 3 year old MacBook (2GHz Intel Core Duo, 2GB RAM). One of the features I love, that was absent in the previous version, is that I can now record video straight from QuickTime. “QuickTime Player can now capture audio or video using the built-in camera and microphone in your Mac.” I can now create high definition video-cast and how-to videos with QuickTime and post them directly to MobileMe or YouTube. Thanks to QuickTime I can now launch my movie career.

Is that all?

While there are a large number of other “refinements” in Snow Leopard the ones I talked about here are the most noticeable. Services, Exposé and Stacks has small but useful improvements, Time Machine is faster and Preview has been enhanced. Is it worth it to upgrade? I think the three items I outline here justify the $29 cost of Snow Leopard. I no longer have to switch to Entourage to read my corporate mail and manage my work calendar. My three year old computer seems faster than it did before and I am starting a side career in video. If you don’t have an Intel Mac the question is moot. For all Intel Mac owners running Leopard or Tiger, get yourself a copy and install. If you have more than one Intel Mac (like I do) get the family pack for $49. It’s a good deal.

Being able to get a robust wireless network signal around my house was something that I struggled with for some time. My Comcast cable broadband connection came in through my garage and basement so that is where I had placed my wireless access point (WAP). The cable coax connected to my broadband bridge which was then connected to my 802.11n Apple Time Capsule (TC) WAP. The problem was that the wireless signal was not strong enough to reach throughout my 1700 square foot home.

I could sit in my kitchen (right above the WAPs location in the basement) and get a very strong signal but I barely got a signal in my family room or bedroom. If I wanted to use the computer from the backyard, I couldn’t; unless I piggy backed on my neighbor’s signal.

At fist I tried to solve this problem by moving the position of the WAP.  It originally on a shelf in the basement but then I moved it up into the rafters in my unfinished basement. That yield only a slight improvement. I then tried using Powerline Ethernet devices but I never successfully got those working.

Some coworkers suggested using a Linksys WET54G Wireless-G Ethernet Bridge to extend the network. These devices were very difficult to setup and never worked reliably. I though maybe the Linksys equipment did not work well with the TC so I went searching on the Apple web site discussion board for a solution. That’s when I found out about Wireless Distribution System (WDS).

Appple’s online documentation mentioned that I could use WDS to “set up two to five base stations as a unified network that shares one Internet connection.” In other words, I could setup multiple Apple WAP to create a single large wireless network that I could access from multiple locations in the home. I could put a WAP in the basement, one in the family room, and one in the living room (near the back of the house) basically saturating my home with wireless. This is exactly what I did.

WDS does not yet have a standard implementation. There is no guarantee that WDS implementations from different vendors will interoperate. I used only Apple branded products to setup my WDS network. I did this because I wanted everything to work and because Apple has excellent documentation on how to do it. Your mileage may vary.

Below is a list of the equipment I used.

• Apple Time Capsule (802.11n)
• Apple Airport Extreme Base Station (802.11g)
• Apple AirPort Express (802.11g)

I bought the AirPort Express (AX) on eBay as the lowest cost method to acquiring an Apple wireless base station. The AirPort Express is a small portable WAP and Internet gateway with one 10/100BASE-T Ethernet port for connecting a DSL modem, cable modem, or Ethernet network, a USB port for connecting a USB printer, and a 3.5-mm audio minijack for analog or optical digital sound to a stereo or powered speakers. The AX also support AirTunes. AirTunes transmits music from my iTunes library on any of my Macs and sends it wirelessly to the AX attached to my stereo.  How cool is that!?

I also bought an unopened flying saucer style AirPort Extreme Base (AE) station from a colleague. He had picked it up at a yard sale and was willing to let me have it for $50. With the existing TC and the new AX and AE I now had enough to create a WDS network to blanket every part of my home.

The first thing I did was setup my main base station, the Time Capsule,  in WDS mode.  I had already setup all the other parameters including the SSID, channel number, password, wireless security etc. The SSID and channel number must be the same for each base station for WDS to work. These settings are found in the Wireless and WDS tabs in the Apple AirPort Utility.

Once I was done setting up the WDS information for the main base station I clicked “Update” and waited for the base station to reboot. I made sure to note the AirPort ID of the TC and used this information later to setup the other two base stations. I selected “Participate in a WDS network” from the drop down box in Wireless tab and from the WDS tab drop down I selected “WDS main” to set the WDS Mode and checked the “Allow wireless clients” check box. Next, I setup the the AirPort Express (AX) base station as a remote base station. A remote base station connects wirelessly to the main station and retransmits the signal from the main base station for wireless clients that are too far from the main base station. I used the AirPort Utility to connect to the AX and set it up with the same network specific information (channel number, SSID etc) I used for the TC.  I selected “Participate in a WDS network” from the drop down box in Wireless tab and from the WDS tab drop down I selected “WDS remote” to set the WDS Mode and checked the “Allow wireless clients” check box. I entered the AirPort ID of the WDS Main base station and clicked update. After the AX base station rebooted I moved on to setup the AirPort Extreme Base (AE) station. Setup was similar to the AE. I used the AirPort Utility to setup the network parameters (SSID, channel number, etc) including information for the WDS Main. Once the AirPort Extreme Base station rebooted I used the AirPort Utility to confirm that the AirPort Express and AirPort Extreme were bound to my home network and relaying traffic.

The solution is not perfect. The WDS network uses a small amount of the network bandwidth for network management so wireless throughput is slightly less than it would be with just one base station. However, this is a small price to pay for being able to use my laptop or iPod Touch from anywhere inside or outside my home.  Now I can sit in bed and catch up on show in Hulu or work in my backyard streaming music to my iPod Touch from my iTunes library.

References:

Using the AirPort Admin Utility to create a WDS network with multiple base stations