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Apple's wireless "leadership" shows a chink in armour

On the face of it, no Apple Mac user needs to install a wireless card, because ever since Apple launched the "Airport" wireless hub, they've been far ahead of PC users; and with the launch of Airport Extreme, they are even ahead of PC Centrino users. And yet, OrangeWare sees a market for upgrading Apple portable users ...

Why?

The first reason is that no Mac can talk to an 802.11a network; Apple doesn't make a suitable adapter. Right now, this isn't a killer, because there are very few people running 11a networks, and no public access ones use that standard. But the coming generation of wireless adapters will be dual-standard - 802.11a/g.

And once a substantial number of such products are around, corporate networks will start switching to 11a. Demand for a/g plug-ins will jump.

There's also the question of just how "market-leading" Apple's product actually is. "Well, I've got a Mac powerbook with the existing wireless interface," remarked one well-equipped Apple fan, "and the internal wireless card is fine -- it's just that the antenna is deaf as a plank."

It's not a problem unique to Mac owners; several brands of PC have internal antennae which are buried behind devices that work excellently as wireless shields; but you have a choice of PC notebook. Apple, however, is the only supplier of Mac portables. Some models have good reception; some don't.

The obvious question is why a Mac user wouldn't just buy a generic 11a/g card, when many Mac portables will take PCMCIA cards (or mini_PCI cards) anyway. And the obvious answer is: because it wouldn't work. These products are shipped with drivers for PC, not for Mac.

That's what Orangeware has fixed; it's written drivers for Mac OS X for other cards.

OrangeWare has announced a generic 802.11a/b/g driver for wireless networking devices for people like Netgear and Linksys to build into their products. It would mean that you'd be able to walk down the PC supermarket shelves and look for wireless cards for Mac, instead of being faced with the PC-only products available today.

Orangeware sees the issue as a demand for speed, since generic 11b cards are already supported. Companies like IOExperts produce downloadable code for OS X and OS 9 operating systems, for 802.11b cards - and quite a few older Mac portables have no WiFi at all.

But 11a and 11g standards run five times faster than 11b.

Exactly how fast depends on whether you read data sheets, or run live tests. Nominally, the rates are 11 megabits and 54 megabits, but that's a technical detail, not achievable in practice - max real data throughput on 11b is 5 megabits per second, while 11a and 11g will transfer data at over 20 megabits. And in the real world, you can expect these rates to drop below that if you move more than a couple of strides from the access point. Nonetheless, it will be faster!

OrangeWare's software driver for Mac OSX will support the latest draft of the 802.11g specification. Which is a good first step; but what Apple users will be hoping is that it will be possible for dual-standard a/g cards to use this driver, opening up 11a as well as 11g.

"This software will open the Apple marketplace to manufacturers of 802.11g products providing for a virtually untapped source of revenue," said Amir Biagi at Orangeware. Untapped, yes; but how big a revenue source is open to doubt. Probably, until 11a becomes widespread and Orangeware supports that directly, it won't be a big market - but it might be enough to tempt the big wireless guys to experiment - or to provide a smaller manufacturer with a way into a specialist market.

Interested OEMs should contact Amir Biagi at Orangeware or phone 714-779-6436 ext. 203