srsly

today when i got home tessa told me that she heard a loud pop then the internet stopped working. the airport(APX) light wasn’t on so i thought it might be my AirBase. a little thinking on that quickly dashed that option since it’s just a glorified extension cord; no power regulating hardware inside it. just to be sure i checked a different plug and sure enough it’s dead. i did a little searching online and found this article on hardmac.com. it turns out there is a possible issue with the power supply, specifically the capacitors, in the APX. they are not designed to be used in the close quarters of the APX case and are susceptible to overheating and popping. according to hardmac’s data this seems to limit the life to around 18 months. they’ve been collecting data since 2004 and they’re close to 2000 failure submissions. if the failure rate is that little surely they’d just let us exchange them, hell i’d take a refurbed one.

i also went to the apple website to leave feedback on the product page, here is the text i put:

Setup is a breeze, lots of security options, the AirTunes feature is great. WDS doesn’t work unless you’re using another Airport Extreme base station but that’s ok. They also suffer from APX Sudden Death Syndrome after about 18 months. I was lucky and got about 22 months out of it. It is being documented on Hardmac.com and they are gathering data on the failures. They suspect it is the capacitors in the power supply that are overheating and popping. Apple has not, as of yet, acknowledged this as a “known issue.”

i doubt it will end up on the site, but i did see a similar review on apple store UK so maybe it will. i think tomorrow i’ll head to the genius bar and see if there’s anything to be done. i may just call tech support first but we’ll see. this isn’t a condemnation of the product at all. i still think it’s a great piece of hardware. it played nice with other networking hardware, the AirTunes feature is really freaking awesome, i’m just annoyed at this and it seems that it is not an isolated problem. if you have a similar story, or know someone that experienced this kind of failure, let’s have it.