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AirPort Routers Ranked Highest in Customer Satisfaction as Apple Halts Further Development

yaxomoxay said:
I am not a Forestall fan by any means... but at this point... I think that Cook's culture of 'harmony' created an army of yes-men that will do whatever Cook and Ive say.
The fact that Forestall was far from Apple could also give him some advantage.
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Forestall brought us the wonderful iOS 6 design that probably would have never gone away if he had stayed with Apple.
 
Rookbird said:
Unfortunately I don't think that will happen. Tim Cook is pushing profits above customers/innovation and the board will love him for it but it will lead to the collapse of Apple as a leader. They are destroying Apples future to make more profits now.
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To be fair, Apple has ALWAYS chased profits. However, it used to manage that by at least providing a modicum of style and interesting engineering design, while providing useful improvements in its OSes. Nowadays, only the profit chasing remains from that.

bladerunner2000 said:
It's ranked highest in satisfaction as it's one device Apple doesn't have much possibilities to show how much courage they have and totally CRIPPLE the product with their stupidity.
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Apple did its level best though, by requiring an OS-restricted app to access the settings rather than a web OS-independent interface as is the standard in the industry. It compounded that by dumbing down the app until it only provided the basics. People held onto release 5.6.1 for as long as possible to access all the settings before it wouldn't run any more.
 
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yaxomoxay said:
As I said before in other threads, Cook's job was to be the immediate-post Jobs stabilizer. His experience in keeping up with tactical tasks was perfect to stabilize a company that had to live through the trauma of Jobs' death. His other task was to find the next visionary, instead he decided to become it. Cook badly misunderstood his role.
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That sounds like a great romanticized idea, and I agree that it's probably what should have happened, but there's no way this is actually true. When they announced he would become CEO, they gave him a huge incentive to stay until 2021. Why would they do that if they didn't intend for him to stay? What incentive does Cook have to leave early and miss out on that sweet payout in five more years? And they've only given him more bonuses since then. https://www.macrumors.com/2011/08/26/apple-awards-tim-cook-1000000-shares-of-stock-as-ceo-bonus/

He has a lot of bonuses that vest through 2021. Don't expect him to leave before then, and hopefully the company is still doing ok by then and they have found a visionary. I'm worried about Apple losing the magic that has drawn so many great minds to work there. Once you pass that tipping point it's very difficult to bring it back unless someone like Steve Jobs literally raises from the dead and brings Apple back to greatness again. Hopefully they stay on the right side of the tipping point. The generations coming up now through the workforce are motivated less by money and more by having an impact and making a difference. Apple can only throw so much money at the problem once it becomes a problem serious enough to warrant action.
 
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I guess they're only interested in making things with an "i" in their name: iPhone, iPad, etc.

I seriously wonder if they'll keep making computers.
 
Really was disappointed when I first learned of Apple halting further development of routers. I've had a first generation Airport express that has worked solidly for years. Whatever possessed them to remove a worthwhile division is a bad sign.
 
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JeffPerrin said:
I think all the bloggers have overlooked the biggest reason Apple is getting out of the router biz: most every ISP in the country now, or will soon include router and wi-fi capabilities built-in as part of their modem hardware.

Hard to compete with "free"...
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It might be hard to compete, but you know you're dealing with a known quantity. Over the years, how many home routers have been compromised by security hacks, or dodgy firmware built in at the factory?

With an Apple router, I know I'm getting an easy to setup secure device that will not be easily hacked, or spy on me.
 
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tubeexperience said:
That's hard to believe.

You can't even configure it from a Windows PC which makes up 90% of PCs.
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That is irrelevant; as the study is about satisfaction of customers who already own the routers. People who have AirPort products like them more than people with different routers.
 
Nick11Mac said:
Really was disappointed when I first learned of Apple halting further development of routers. I've had a first generation Airport express that has worked solidly for years. Whatever possessed them to remove a worthwhile division is a bad sign.
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Sigh... it's rumor. Engineers get shifted around all the time. Next version might already be ready to go. Might being rolled into Siri speakers and other products.

Time machine still exists so that is still going to need a device too. The cloud is not Strong enough for most people for 2tb backups!

It's just a stupid rumor that people don't understand. Hell they could have bought a company that makes next gen stuff.
 
It somewhat makes sense to integrate Airport, Apple TV and Mac Mini into one single product as the media hub and home station of Apple AI core.
 
JeffPerrin said:
I think all the bloggers have overlooked the biggest reason Apple is getting out of the router biz: most every ISP in the country now, or will soon include router and wi-fi capabilities built-in as part of their modem hardware.

Hard to compete with "free"...
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Excellent point. I will say that the router/modem I got from comcast was hot garbage. Hours on the phone over several days, getting sent replacements, having to explain the same thing to everyone that underestimated my abilities, all to end up buying my own modem and an airport.

All that to say: free comes at a price
 
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With the sudden appearance of several "mesh" systems on the market over the past few months, perhaps Apple realized that "mesh is the future" of home networking.

I believe they also were confronted by declining sales of their Airport product line.

Faced with these two realities in front of them, and also because there is [at the moment] no reason to "upgrade" the existing Airport any further, I think that Apple has decided to relinquish the home networking market as it has done so with printers (long ago) and displays (recently) -- leaving those niches to others who specialize in them.

I can see these possibilities:
1. Apple will at some point in the future introduce its own "mesh system" (some others here have mentioned that it might be combined with some kind of Apple-TV device).
2. Apple will "partner" with a company that already has a mesh product on the market.
or
3. Apple will do nothing, leaving it entirely to others.

I could see an "option 2", with Apple carrying one (or even two) 3rd-party mesh products in their stores...
 
weckart said:
Apple did its level best though, by requiring an OS-restricted app to access the settings rather than a web OS-independent interface as is the standard in the industry. It compounded that by dumbing down the app until it only provided the basics. People held onto release 5.6.1 for as long as possible to access all the settings before it wouldn't run any more.
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You guys should be looking at getting the Asus RT-AC68U router. Cheaper than the Airport and still has HFS support for USB connected drives to it;

https://www.asus.com/ca-en/Networking/RTAC68U/

List of all Asus routers with HFS support here:
http://event.asus.com/2009/networks/disksupport/
 
HenryFSU said:
This is sad, I really do like my Time Capsule.
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I have had routers from many different manufacturers. 2 from netgear just stopped working.

That's how I got to Apple routers which were the easiest to set up:

Really set it and forget it and they have been excellent. (Have the extreme and a Time Capsule. Never got used to the stove pipe versions. They do look ugly)

We don't know the sales numbers, so this may just be Apple closing down of what they consider a niche market.

There are plenty of options with cheap prices around.

I think we'll miss these even more when what we have now dies.
 
I've had several Airport Routers, including three TimeCapsules. All of them failed within two years. A few lost the ability to mount the TimeCapsule drive for Time Machine to work, and a few just stopped connecting to the net. They're about the least reliable Apple products I've ever purchased.

In my house (1-story home) I had a TimeCapsule and an Airport Express because the signal couldn't reach to the back of the house—and even with the Express in the middle in Bridge Mode it only got about half the signal.

When the TimeCapsule signal started cutting in and out on a daily basis after about 18 months, I replaced it with a single NetGear router and an external HD twice the size of the TimeCapsule. Not only do I get full signal strength at the back of the house with no extender/bridge, but both items cost significantly less than the Apple option. And it was just as easy to set up, and offered more features.

I'm not sorry to see these products go away.
 
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