It is already more than a year that we reported the short lifetime issue affecting the Airport Express base station (APX). In less then 10 months, we have collected over 1,000 reports of dead APX via our
online registration webpage, almost all of them with the same syndrome: sudden death, no more light, and an average lifetime of 16-18 months.
After investigating and thanks to many forum members and readers (particularly
Jen,
Henrik et Antoine), we identified the faulty component: capacitors with inappropriate technical specification to be able to properly work in a closed and hot environment as one can find it inside the APX. Such a problem might be considered as a design or manufacturing issue and Apple should acknowledge it and launch an Exchange & Extension Program for the Airport Express base station. We also decided to help Apple's consumer service to identify the defective APX serial numbers.
Today, based on over 1,000 reports, 85% of the reported defective APX have been manufactured in 2004. Based on more than 850 cases, the average lifetime of APX depending on the production week in 2004 is illustrated below:
It seems that the issue keeps on going at the beginning of 2005, but then dramatically drop. It remains unclear so far if it is directly correlated to the gap expected with the 18 months lifespan calculated so far for the APX, or if Apple changed faulty capacitors for a more suitable ones, giving APX a much longer and reliable lifetime (Samsung is manufacturing the APX power board).
Evolution of the number of dead APX reports collected over time, from the introduction of this product by Steve jobs in June 2004:
As we already
reported it couple of weeks ago, Apple might have already in hands a list of the "cursed APX", while not willing to launch a repair program yet. Based on our information, we identified series of APX that should be eligible to a Exchange & Extension Program: All APX with a serial number ranging from
HS428xxxxxx to
HS518xxxxxx.
For users who would like to revive or keep using their APX while waiting for the appropriate Exchange & Extension Program, a reader sent us a new procedure to replace the defective power board by an external power source.
Bartholomé has been using 2 diodes and an old power supply unit:
When my APX died, I was happy to found all information on macbidouille/hardmac, especially details concerning Henrik's procedure to revive my APX. I used a different system to re-power my dead APX: 2 diodes and an old 5V PSU.
The external PSU was originally from a Palm.
Specification are as follow:
PALM AC adaptor
P/N: 163-1149B
MODEL: PSA05R-050(PA)
AC INPUT:100-240V 250mA 50-60Hz 12-17VA
DC OUTPUT: +5V 1A
With an external PSU, the resurrected APX is not warm anymore, maximum 40°C (slightly warm in my hands).
With such information and details, we hope that Apple will not wait further to launch a dedicated Exchange & Extension Program, this issue has been identified and detailed for quite some months already, and it is about time to react: it has been around for too long now.
This is a Mac site, right, but there are still some news you just can't avoid: Sony has officially announced that the PS3 would be available in Europe on March 23rd. Don't bother looking for the cheap one, the only you'll be able to put your hands on for a mere €599 is the 60GB deluxe version. While this sure is bloody expensive for a game set, it is quite a good deal if you consider that the PS3 is also a Blue-Ray drive able to play HD films.
The French newspaper
Le Figaro reports that video programs/shows will be available on the European iTunes Store in March/April.
In addition, Apple might only apply a 3 months delay for TV series between their display on TV and their availability date on iTunes Store. The same strategy currently used in USA.
Apple might even go one step further and offer movies on iTS only 3 months after their first projection in cinema. Apple might based its entire video service on iTS following the most flexible European system (UK) for defining the delay for TV shows and movies between first projection and availability for being purchased (online or physical media)
It remains unclear how it will really work at the end in different European countries, but for sure we might face some fight between Apple and some European video media distributors.
Ruckus Network, an online music store with more than 2 millions tracks in catalog, has decided to make it free for all college students nationwide (USA only). It works for advertising supported college-only and students with a valid .edu email account.
There is of course a major problem: music tracks feature Microsoft DRM, making incompatible with iTunes and iPod, but also for Microsoft Zune!! Indeed, the Zune is exclusively linked to the Zune Market Place.
So if this announcement might look interesting, in facts it will only benefit to a small number of students.
An update for Airport Extreme is available via the Software Update Panel or via Apple Support website:
This update is recommended for all Intel-based Macintosh computers and provides compatibility with AirPort Extreme base stations and networks.
To our knowledge it does NOT solve the current issue with Airport-enabled Mac Pro.
Google does not forget about the Mac and goes on promoting innovation, even if what I'm going to talk about will only rejoice the geekiest of us.
On its Mac-dedicated blog, Google has announced the release of a SpotlightFS plugin for MacFUSE.
Uh? Let me explain:
MacFUSE is a Google Code project aiming to port FUSE to OS X. FUSE (for Filesystem in USErpace) is a UNIX kernel extension allowing users to create and use any kind of filesystems without having to write a dedicated kernel extension (
more details on Wikipedia.) Roughly, FUSE allows for virtual filesystems.
One of the interesting FS module is an NTFS one, that allows
writing to NTFS volumes, when most UNIXes (and OSX) can only read them, thanks to Microsoft's closed specifications.
The latest release is SpotlightFS, a filesystem based on... Spotlight. It allows to have
real "smart folders" instead of ".plist" files masquerading as folders. The point? Try drilling down a "smart folder" in column view or in an open/save dialog? Doesn't work, because it is NOT a folder. Pretty dumb, uh? And I'm not talking about "smart playlists" in FrontRow (that's different but the same frustration). So SpotlightFS allows you to create real "smart folders" that are populated live with actual symlinks to the files matching the Spotlight query.
So, SpotlightFS is really only for geeks, but if someone can do it for Google Code, Apple should be able to do it.
