Airport Siri Speaker?

[techwarrior]

http://www.macworld.com/article/314...airport-extreme-becomes-the-siri-speaker.html

Dan Moren raises an interesting idea here. What if Apple is redirecting staff towards a new product that combines Router\Access Points into a new, combined device...

Perhaps adding Siri and speaker to AP Time Capsule\AP Extreme? To AP Express? Maybe add Wifi Access Point to AppleTV? Maybe the recent shift is simply to get away from dedicated network gear and move the functionality into multi purpose products?

For one, I would like to see iTunes added to Time Capsule, so the TC could store all of my media as an iTunes server, and be an always on iTunes source for AppleTV, iOS and Macs without having to keep a Mac running at all times. And, it could be a local backup destination for WiFi sync of my iDevices, Macs, and AppleTV. ATV is cumbersome if you have multiple instances, each is setup separately, but what if you could use a single backup to configure all of your ATV?

Perhaps the announcement that Apple is moving their Airport teams onto other projects is a positive?

 

[ZMacintosh]

I dont foresee the time capsule being the iTunes media server, when they have iCloud purchases for all of this. I wouldn't be surprised if they made a higher end AppleTV to store content on a larger local disk vs a computer or airport device.

I have a feeling though their airport line is done, which would be unfortunate.

 

[DJLC]

I agree with maybe 25% of this....

I think Apple is getting out of the networking business entirely. TBH, they're not really doing anything in that space that's any better than what anyone else is doing. Yes, AirPlay and AirPrint and Time Capsule are cool, but those are things largely handled by other devices now (routers from other vendors, Apple TV, directly baked into stereos, etc).

That said, I could totally see them doing a Siri Speaker if they can ever get Siri to a point that it's not stupid. And if they did, I could totally see that being an AirPlay speaker as well. But I don't think it would make sense logistically to essentially staple that to a router.... generally people put modems and routers out of the way; the Siri Speaker would likely be a product you'd want out on your kitchen island or whatever. I think that would really cripple the usability of such a device.

As far as centralized iTunes Server stuff, I don't think we'll ever see that. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw much of that existing functionality disappear over the next few years. I know for me personally, I no longer have any use for iTunes Home Sharing or anything like that. Between Apple Music and iTunes Cloud Library, I have no need to share media on my local network.

Big picture — I think it's probably good for Apple to exit the networking business. Just like with the printer business in the 90s, they really haven't done much with it that's particularly innovative or revolutionary. There's no reason for them to continue making networking products when the competition is doing the same stuff. I think more and more of the local network sharing options will start to go away in favor of cloud-based services. We already have Apple Music and iCloud Drive; I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Time Machine move to the cloud as well.