Apple intends to bring what is known as “Gigabit WiFi” to its computers (possibly its iPads and iPhones) this year. Gigabit Wi-Fi allows you to receive up to 1.3Gbps, known as “1.3 Gigabits per second” – a speed that would make 2013 computers the fastest ever on American Wi-Fi networks. Currently, American users can receive “megabits per second” speeds on public and private Wi-Fi networks. If 802.11ac comes to Apple products, we will see Internet speeds triple from what they are now. Not only is 802.11ac excellent Wi-Fi because of its speed, but also its network non-interference. The current 802.11b/g/n networks are composed of radio wave interference with other items, such as microwaves, ovens, cell phones, televisions, and other electronics (such as radios). With the production of 802.11ac Internet, consumers will have faster Internet speeds than the current time because Internet access will be made available on network channels that have no other radio wave interference.
With 802.11ac, our computers, PCs, and laptops will have access to a channel that other radio waves cannot touch. Apple provides hope for this type of access by way of its “ultrafast wireless” Internet, what the company recently made available in its fourth-generation iPad and its sixth-generation iPhone. If this network level is approved and manufactured for Apple products, customers will deal with fewer issues of “Internet is down” or “network is unavailable” than they have in the past. The fewer disruptions we have with Internet connections, the better our job performance can be – and the better our grades can be at school. Without interruptions, presentations can be completed quickly, research papers can be written immediately, and videos can be watched uninterrupted. In short, time conservation will improve if our Internet network access improves.
This week, Apple provided greater hope for 802.11ac Wi-Fi through its latest job ad for someone who knows about 802.11 Wi-Fi standards. The job title provided is iOS WiFi Software Engineer, and job #11287364 was posted on January 9, 2013. The job ad shows that one of the key qualifications for the title is “prior experience working on 802.11 technologies and standards,” an indication that Apple is getting serious about its 802.11 Wi-Fi access. Apple’s intent to hire a Wi-Fi software engineer shows that Cupertino looks to make improvements in 2013 to its Wi-Fi Internet access. What does this mean for customers? It means that we can expect 802.11ac wireless to arrive in this year’s Apple product models.
Apple’s ultrafast wireless was announced back on September 12, 2012. Since the company has already made its current 802.11b/g/n network faster than before, it did not need to hire another Wi-Fi engineer – unless the company has further plans to improve its Internet access, on a scale that consumers have never seen before. In the past, Apple has always acted early on plans it has in mind for a later time. Before Apple used Siri in its iPhone 4S (the “S” stands for Siri here), Apple decided to purchase the company Siri just months prior. Apple decided last Fall to purchase AuthenTec, a company known for its top-notch security measures used to protect consumers and employees. Rumors have speculated in the tech world that Apple will press forward with its plans to bring fingerprint scanning as a new form of security to its iPhone line. AuthenTec, though a partner of Samsung’s, was purchased by Apple as a way to provide its own type of security to iProducts. Prior to Apple’s inclusion of 4GLTE into its iPhone 5, the Cupertino, California company decided to research 4G wireless – even though Samsung and other Android manufacturers included 4G wireless in their smartphones at least a year or two earlier than Apple. The company does not do things like hire Wi-Fi software engineers at random; if Apple wants to hire an iOS Wi-Fi Software Engineer, it has plans to improve its Wi-Fi to 802.11ac.
As for when consumers can expect this new wireless, we do not know. At this point, one can only assume that Apple will emerge with 802.11ac in its early 2013 MacBook models. Fall 2013 is a more confident time assertion than Spring 2013, although one can always hope for the best.