Don't remember any of this with Apple Extreme/Express, is Apple made better?
I don't know that it is a question of one being made better than the other. Rather it is a case of incomplete standards. When the device creating the network and the device extending the network are designed and programmed by the same team (or even use the same firmware) there is going to be a high level of compatibility. But when the device creating the network is made by company A and the extender by company B compatibility relies on thorough, complete, and well understood standards. It wasn't that long ago when 802.11n was an evolving standard and lots of people were building 802.11n devices to what they
believed (or hoped) would be adopted as the final standard. If 802.11n network devices were compatible across manufacturers product lines it was the exception rather than the rule. With the adoption of the final IEEE 802.11n standard many of those devices were non-compliant and therefore obsolete because the manufacturer had guessed wrong. (By-the-way, Apple guessed right.) 802.11n devices built since the adoption of the final IEEE standard are pretty generally compatible.
Network extenders appear to be in the pre-final-standard stage today.
