New iPod Touch Has an 802.11n Chip

eggboard writes "iFixIt has discovered a Broadcom 802.11a/b/g/n chip in the just-announced iPod touch (32 GB and 64 GB) models that uses single-stream 802.11n. Single-stream doesn't get the full power of N, but it boosts speed enough that — along with space-time block encoding, a feature coming soon to Wi-Fi access points with two or more radios — the iPod touch could be an effective networked media server, for streaming and transfer, possibly through the new iTunes Home Sharing feature."

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be cool if it had a camera

Re:Server?

[Nom du Keyboard]

I doubt you could call it effective when it would still be tied down by battery life. That could be remedied by plugging it in, but if you have a computer, it seems it would just make more sense to stream from the computer than the iPod.

Your comment makes sense, until the moment you want to take a movie you own over to a friend's house to watch.

All this means

[Fwipp]

All this means is that Apple decided to use a chip that happened to support wireless 802.11N communication. Maybe it was a planned feature, but it got cut. Maybe it was just cheaper or easier to work with than other offerings. Apple will not enable this at some point down the road, just as they won't activate the bluetooth chip inside older Ipod Touches. What _will_ happen is next year, they will sell a new model with the same chips, but this time with the necessary software support and bill it as a new compelling feature.

Re:iLinkIt

[Brian Gordon]

I wouldn't go as far as to imply that the slashdot editors even read submissions to the point that they could tell if it's about Apple.

Re:Why didn't they tell us?

[RedK]

Because the iPod Touch doesn't support 802.11n networking, only b and g. What purpose would it serve to say "Hey, the device is 802.11n capable, but the software won't let you use it". They probably used that particular chip for cost reasons. The chip is perfectly capable of doing b and g and probably costs less in volumes than the b/g only chips now that technology has gone forward.

Re:Server?

[bemymonkey]

Shouldn't that read "iPod docks that cost twice as much as the iPod itself output to televisions"?

Re:Server?

[RedK]

No because you don't need a dock, just a cable.

Re:Why didn't they tell us?

[v1]

It's possible they may sell another $5 upgrade [digg.com] for N as they did when N first came out, for the macbooks that shipped juuust before N was announced on them.

Apple sucks you idiots!

[Sam36]

I can't believe you drool over this over priced piece of communism. Don't you love if when people write open sourced software that relies on some garbage closed source api that is only on macs?

Re:Not how Home Sharing works

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be wondering, "Why hasn't anyone moderated my comment that is somewhat well thought-out?"

The answer is simple. U.

You are not Prince, nor is this SMS with its 160 character limit. There is neither a need for nor a reason to use "u" in regular language. I notice you did not use "ne" for any, "b" for "be", or any of the other shorthand that is typically used when conversing in a space-limited medium. This is not an attack, please don't take it as one, but try to remember in the future that many people (usually myself included) wtop reading after seeing that sort of shorthand in a medium that does not require it.