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AirPort Routers Ranked Highest in Customer Satisfaction as Apple Halts Further Development
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Exactly. Apple have been rumoured to be releasing some sort of home assistant/cloud access/homekit/media centre/Siri thing for a while now. If they consolidate a router into this it will wipe the floor with anything else on the market, surely.
Right now I don't need the above assistant hardware, my home is antique and any home kit lighting, locking or otherwise just isn't going to happen here without completely refurbishing and re-wiring, but if you throw in an Airport Router it might make me look twice at it.
Yeah indeed. Which is why I haven't jumped to a cloud backup solution for my personal data yet and just backup to a NAS in my house. I reason that if I have, for example, a house fire I have larger concerns than losing my MP3 collection
Oh yeah, so do I. Just recently added a new extreme to extend my network. The windows version worked just fine to update the extreme and add it to my current setup. So if you are saying it doesn't work, then you have a problem because it works beautifully on my Windows 10 PC!
Or simply because the latest Airport Extreme already has the latest wireless standard 802.11ac. Steve Jobs did say that Apple is like a startup. People got moved to work on different things. Until a faster wireless standard is finalized, I don't see why Apple needs to make a new router just because.
There are various ways around this - you can use the Airport Extreme as the primary router:
https://www.dslreports.com/faq/16077
If you're going to make wild assumptions it would seem more likely that windows users would assume an apple router is for Apple products only and wouldn't investigate whether they work with windows.
Not on the latest 802.11ac models. I find it foreign that you can't use a standard browser like Chrome to configure a router which all other routers can do. It's usually the low cost $20 network switches that require a proprietary utility since they don't have a proper web based management interface.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201519
It's not "just because." There are much better and more robust wireless networking methods/topologies. Some are being released now. Apple will push that forward, faster, and incorporated in a new product category. Yes, some will be unhappy - likely the same people who want USB-A connectors to stick around for another couple decades.
I could care less about the Time Capsule aspect. That too is just another potentially fallible drive.
I'm more sad to see the best, most straight forward, wireless routers go bye bye. But to be fair, I have never worked with a router from another company. I have also never used a computer from another company, so keep that in mind (my 1st Mac was in 1990. I've never been compelled to look elsewhere. I know, I definitely feel like a rare breed, having never operated a Windows PC.).
That said, I can't imagine another router being any more user-friendly than an Airport Extreme or Express. And while I've not looked at routers in years, I can see Google stepping in to fill this void - if they aren't already in the router biz. Seems like a level of control they wold relish. Ick.
I'm more sad to see the best, most straight forward, wireless routers go bye bye. But to be fair, I have never worked with a router from another company. I have also never used a computer from another company, so keep that in mind (my 1st Mac was in 1990. I've never been compelled to look elsewhere. I know, I definitely feel like a rare breed, having never operated a Windows PC.).
That said, I can't imagine another router being any more user-friendly than an Airport Extreme or Express. And while I've not looked at routers in years, I can see Google stepping in to fill this void - if they aren't already in the router biz. Seems like a level of control they wold relish. Ick.
The TV is nowhere near where I have my router
+1. Apple TV as an Airport Express replacement makes possible sense - obviously you're adding "stuff" to the AEx - but as an entertainment hub it adds video to audio, and you would get wifi near your TV.
But my network hub is in the basement, and my TV is not in the best location for a router, so why would I want to run it all through an Apple TV Router?
This really is a shame. The Extreme can use DHCPv6 to obtain an IPv6 prefix from our ISP and has a proper IPv6 firewall with configurable port exemptions, IPv4 NAT with forwarding and really good WiFi capabilities.
Now I face the prospect of finding an equivalent replacement at some point. Not looking forward to that whole rigamarole.
Now I face the prospect of finding an equivalent replacement at some point. Not looking forward to that whole rigamarole.
I hit this very same issue. And with the new super powered Wifi devices out there, I was facing interference for the first time in my life - even though I live in a single family home! Two of my neighbors Wifi routers were fighting with my Apple Time Capsule constantly. It was quite a mess - and after trying out eero I ultimately settled on Netgear's Orbi - which I hope is causing neighbors equal grief - because I can get that signal down the street a ways now...
The other issue I had with the Apple Routers was that they were lacking in terms of configurability and visibility. They used to have a lot more features exposed via the config app - but those slowly disappeared over time. Plus I used to be able to see details about clients on the routers, etc to help troubleshoot problems. When I started having issues with my setup I was more or less 'blind' due to the vanilla nature of the Airport tool these days.
My guess is that some key engineers left Apple and they couldn't hold it together any longer. Plus, the shift away from single AP to mesh wifi is leaving them behind. I do suspect they will acquire a company like Eero or Luma as a way to fill in this gap though...
You know what, I stand corrected. I ran bootcamp, installed the latest airport utility for Windows, and the router is detected. I must have used an older airport utility way back when, and didn't think much about it since I have plenty of Apple devices to set it up.
Thank you for being persistent and corrected me.
Apple should revise their system requirement page then. I guess it's a nudge for people to buy more Apple products...If you're technically competent, the edgerouter lite by ubnt can't be beat. I use it in front of my CM and use airports as wireless bridges with it all wired with gigE.
https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-lite/
https://www.ubnt.com/edgemax/edgerouter-lite/
How is it as a router? Does it support DHCPv6 and does its IPv6 firewall allow configuring individual address/port exceptions?
It irks me a little that the industry has conflated these two functions (router and wifi) inseparably.
If Apple adds Time Machine support to any router that supports a USB hard drive then this could be a good thing for Mac users. I never liked Apple's overpriced routers anyways. Too limiting. I have an Airport express and it won't even permit me to use it to extend the range of my network because my main router is a Cradlepoint.
Are you guys using AU 5.6.1 for Windows? It really works with no trouble or missing features on the new ac Aiport Extremes? I haven't tried it on my PC but it'd be good to know it really works. I wonder why there were reports that it wouldn't work with the newest AEs.
Problem with survey is that people who buy other routers probably either have higher expectations - because they really care about specific functionality - or don't even know who makes it. That could skew the results.
That all said, I'm very happy with my TC and would like to replace it with another Apple router soon, but not if it's going to be a deprecated product.
But they do forget that half of the world, still pays a lot for internet, being that not everybody has unlimited downloads. I would love to have a subscription with iCloud, but I'm always afraid of passing the traffic limit I have per month.
Apple realizes their ecosystem's most critical components are macOS, iOS, watchOS, tvOS. Everything else will be thrown away (routers/displays/accessories in general). As long as that means more innovative features like handoff/continuity to tie the ecosystem together I'm good with it. There are a ton of more capable wireless solutions out there.