(1) After completing this step, shouldn’t the light on “Express” show steady “green?” Mine blinks amber. Going through a “reset” fails: light remains blinking amber.
Actually, no. By default, the AirPort Express base station's status LED, when first powered up, will flash amber. That is normal and is indicating that some further set up is required to turn the LED to green. This is also true after performing a reset on the base station.
For future reference, to find out what the base station thinks is the issue, just use the AirPort Utility, as follows:
- Run the AirPort Utility.
- Select the base station.
- Look for a Status setting in the small window that appears.
- Click on the small amber dot there and another window will appear to explain what the "issue" may be.
(2) In this step, am I correct that it wants my iMac connected to modem’s network? Or does this mean that I must connect Airport Express to network. But since Express is blinking amber, the Mac cannot not see it! However, if I bring the Airport Express to the modem and connect via ethernet, all appears normal: green light; and it shows up in list of available wi-fi. I believe it is this step which convinced Apple “genius” that my unit was OK…
By default, a "out-of-the-box" AirPort Express will broadcast a non-secured Wi-Fi network with a network name of something like: Apple Network NNNNNN. This instruction is telling you to connect to temporarily connect your computer to that network. That is so, the AirPort Utility can access it. Once configured as a wireless client for streaming, the Express will no longer be broadcasting its own network, but will join your existing one coming from your modem. Note: If you modem is capable of creating a wireless network, then it is not actually a simple modem, but instead, a combination modem and wireless router. These are also known as a wireless gateway device.
(3) As for this step… I have always used “Airfoil” with input selected to any audio Safari has available (in my case this is typically BBC World Service).
As you can imagine, Apple fully supports using iTunes for streaming, thus the title of the support article. Using Airfoil, as you know, is an alternative AirPlay server to iTunes ... but both rely on AirPlay to stream audio over a network.
Since I seem unable to produce a functioning green light other than via connected ethernet, I suspect the unit is defective despite being told otherwise by Apple’s “genius.”
Again, the flashing amber LED would be normal until the base station is fully set up. Although anything is possible, I would not initially conclude that the Express if faulty until after doing so.
