Apple Ceases Development of 'AirPort' Wireless Routers as Engineers Reassigned to Other Products

[Digital Skunk]

I'm not surprised given how my less than one-year-old 3TB Time Capsule suddenly DIED on me.

It was such a wonderful product long ago, but I guess I should've listened to THE ENTIRE TECH INDUSTRY and gotten a solid router with a solid NAS.

 

[JGRE]

I am starting to dislike Apple more and more. About time a true visionair takes over instead of Tim the Money machine.

 

[jmgregory1]

Another day and another Apple product waiting for a refresh gets dumped, nice one, when will Apples stock get dumped in the same manner with investors 'reassigning' their money?
So no wireless AD or MIMO or MU MIMO support, and I bet in a few months they will just pull the product entirely including the TimeCapsule product which makes Apple even more of a mess of a joke.

Cooks and CO's new Apple keeps on scrapping all the things you loved about Apple....

I'm seriously considering getting an LG Nexus 5X, because I can update that over the air without then having to wipe it and set it up from scratch because of bugs... my £700 iPhone 7 hung when I tried to make a call with it over Bluetooth in my car because the line was engaged.... the iPhone crashed and burned whilst being used as a phone....... my older Nexus 5 has NEVER done that.

Apple's stock gets dumped on a regular basis, such as when they report record earnings / or drops in earnings, or pretty much any other reason as the financial market tries to manipulate the stock value. Apple deciding (maybe) to stop developing the Airport product is not going to kill their business and today isn't negatively effecting your using your system, so why care? We don't know what the future holds, except that there are lots of good and some great wifi routers out on the market today, including Apple's Airport units.

In regards to your BT issue with your iPhone 7, Apple has always had issues with BT, but they generally do figure them out in short order.

 

[btrach144]

Who is Apple anymore? Get rid of Tim! He's turning out to be John Sulley in disguise.

 

[hmmfe]

As a corporation, it can be sued by shareholders if it does something that doesn't maximise profit. Capitalism, babe.

As a corporation, it can be sued for anything - winning is another matter.

Milton Friedman (and more recently Al Franken) will certainly argue that is is so, but there is no fiduciary duty to maximize profits. In fact there are only two fiduciary duties - duty of care and duty of loyalty.

In short, you must make decisions based upon reasonably available information and these decisions cannot result in your enrichment at the expense of the corporation.

Now, the above does mean that corporate officers must act in the interest of the corporation (and by proxy its shareholders). However, acting in the interest of the corporation can take many forms - the maximization of profits is just one of them.

 

[32828870]

Rethinking my previous post, maybe there is an explanation. Follow my ADHD thought process :

"Siri" Home Assistant "All-in-One" Multimedia Router/Hub:
Spurred by Amazon's success with the Echo and Google's recent entry with rumors Apple is entering into this market, perhaps Apple is developing a "Siri" based home assistant hub. An "All-in-one" device bridging home automation, router, AirPlay support, iTunes and multimedia support, streaming, "Siri", etc.

Mac's and iOS devices support AirDrop's ad-hoc service although access points (routers) will always be necessary, maybe this is a step in bridging products and services.

Thoughts?

 

[Huracan]

Slow motion tragedy. Since Apple decided to take the Computer from their official name it has been a slippery slope into losing the computer soul they had. Even when Steve Jobs did his turnaround he did it with the iMac. Underwhelming MacBook Pro, no external displays, no routers now. Disappointed.

 

[katbel]

Whaaat???

I understand why they shut down their display business (though I'm not happy with it) because apart from design, they couldn't really make a difference in the display business.
But the AirPort, and especially the Time Capsule, really made a difference. I've never had a backup system that worked more smoothly and without any maintenance at all than my Time Capsule.
Sad day. Again.

It looks like Apple is killing all the things that works. What's happening?!
I love my airport, it's the only one that never let me down
not like Apple now
but to cheer us up ...
do we need to buy the Apple book?!

 

[ksnell]

It is, though it needs specific extensions and support, but apple actually publish what these are and what's needed, so third party support should improve.

That would be nice. The only third party support I know of is Acronis Access Connect, which installs server side on a Windows share, but it is stupid expensive for a home use Windows Share. Wish they had a free version for personal use like Teamviewer does for remote desktop connections.

 

[aine]

The out-of-the-box experience of upgrading/replacing an Airport Extreme is so amazingly simple -- everything gets transferred automatically, the old router can automatically become a wireless extender, all with an incredibly simple "graphical" non-technical UI. One might say "magical". And is there a simpler laptop backup system that the Time Capsule? Nope. My Airport Extreme is as much a part of my Apple eco-system as my Mac and iPhone. It is the one Apple product that I recommend over and over without hesitation. So, yes, makes sense to kill it off.

 

[sblemmy]

Like many here, I'm disappointed that the Airport line will be discontinued. Although I love my Airport Extreme (it's the simplest and most reliable router I've ever owned), I do see the difficulty in identifying how Apple adds value to the router market.

I know TC gets slammed a lot on here for some of these decisions, but I do think they fit with his vision of shifting Apple's business model toward services. Arguably, the most innovative hardware to emerge in the post-Jobs era was Touch ID, which was necessary to implement Apple's new service: Apple Pay.

 

[gugy]

WOW, Apple has been a huge disappointment as of late. I think Tim needs to go very soon. The scary thought is none of that old boy's executive club seems able to steer the ship on the right direction. Maybe Apple needs to find an outsider.

 

[bingeciren]

Apple kills everything useful one by one. I am gradually losing faith in them. I guess we have seen the peak of Apple and from now all we will see is a slow and steady downhill.

For a change, I would like to read some cheerful news about Apple but it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.

 

[rvinny]

I currently use airport express units to send music around my house. What product can I use to do this once those are gone?

Chromecast Audio.

While you're at it, no reason to use Apple Music either. Google Play Music for iOS has Chromecast *and* Airplay built in.

 

[Porco]

Really starting to worry about what Apple is doing. Seems more and more that they only want to be a laptop, iDevice and dongle/adapter company.

On its own, this is just one (minor) fewer reason to stay in the Apple ecosystem. But add enough of these minor reasons together, and switching to other companies' products becomes easier and easier, and more attractive.

 

[trifid]

These engineers being redirected to Ive's xmas tree design division?

 

[Uofmtiger]

Chromecast Audio.

Unfortunately, it is much more limited than Airplay on the iOS platform. It doesn't work with popular apps like Apple Music and Overcast...to name two.

The good news is that Airfoil now supports Chromecast (I haven't tried it yet), so that will at least fill some gaps if you stream from a computer.

 

[Bregalad]

I defence I would note that pretty much every broadband provider's "modem" is also a WiFi router. Demand for AirPort must be way down.

But, as many others have noted, Apple's biggest draw is the "it just works" ecosystem. Fighting to get various pieces of hardware from a half dozen manufacturers to work together is something Apple customers have been able to avoid for decades. Now it looks like we're going to be in the same boat as Linux users, waiting for decent 3rd party drivers that rarely ever appear.

 

[apolloa]

Apple's stock gets dumped on a regular basis, such as when they report record earnings / or drops in earnings, or pretty much any other reason as the financial market tries to manipulate the stock value. Apple deciding (maybe) to stop developing the Airport product is not going to kill their business and today isn't negatively effecting your using your system, so why care? We don't know what the future holds, except that there are lots of good and some great wifi routers out on the market today, including Apple's Airport units.

In regards to your BT issue with your iPhone 7, Apple has always had issues with BT, but they generally do figure them out in short order.

Apples Airport units are VERY outdated, it does t have the latest fastest speeds or MU MIMO yet they cost as much as other high end routers, and it IS a joke and DOES affect my use of it, because when my current TimeCapsule packs up, I doubt Apple will be selling a replacement. It's another great idea that worked well being dumped by Apple and defended by its loyalists...
And iOS 10 is a joke, on my iPad Pro when I click on the page numbers on this forum to jump to a page the keyboard pops up then disappears..... it's a total buggy mess!!! Oh perhaps I should wipe and reformat all my iOS devices, and then maybe again after the next update, and the one after that because that's the experience I'm paying thousands for....

 

[mac_in_tosh]

Whenever I bring up the possibility of getting a smartphone other than an iPhone, my children nix the idea because they have MacBooks, we have AE wireless and things just work together. If Apple thinks they can strip away pieces of the environment to focus on things like phones, then they could be in for a rude awakening when people realize there is no overriding reason to have an iPhone compared to the latest offering from the competition.

I've been doing some research on Windows laptops to be ready if/when my 2011 MB Pro needs to be replaced. I've never done that before. It had occurred to me during this time that one strong point for remaining with Apple is the ease of wireless using their AE basestation, which I recently upgraded without any complicated setup. Again, take that away and one less reason to avoid jumping ship.

 

[bingeciren]

You all realize AirPlay is compatible with any wireless network and does not require the use of an Airport? Literally everything an AirPort can be done by another router.

I am sending music to my HiFi system using the optical Audio output of an Airport Express. Can you point me in the direction of a router that is Airplay compatible and has digital Audio out?

 

[ironpony]

Wasn't Steve Jobs for free nation wide wifi at one point? therefore doing away with cellular. This must have something to do with cutting the cord ... or "not cutting the satellite"! This is brought to you by AT&T, Verizon and what ever other cellular service might need your money.

 

[bingeciren]

Apple's long killed off it's pro user base

Apple's new motto is: Pro is out - consumer appliances are in.

 

[Mildredop]

iOS has a better commercial development platform. If you rely on commercially available apps iOS is the way to go. Take Yamaha for instance. They have not and currently will not develop their stagemix app for their digital mixing consoles. Their reason was that Android is too unstable at this point. I don't see me jumping off the iOS train anytime soon.

I don't think you read the post correctly - I was talking about jumping away from MacOS/Macs.

 

[mkeeley]

USB C is actually an improvement in the long run. I know you loved magsafe (so did I), but it was proprietary and ONLY useful for your Apple laptop. Imagine now universal USB C connectors everywhere and the ability to charge both a phone or computer from a single cord. Apple's mistake is leaving the iPhone on their proprietary lightening connector; they should have moved it over to USB C to make it one cord and one connection for everything.


I think two things are in play:
1) As many folks have commented, the router/time capsule function is likely to be rolled into an all-in-one device that serves as a "home" device. Whether that also includes Apple TV or not, I am not sure. If I were Apple I probably would roll in Apple TV into a home/router/time capsule device, if for no other reason you are likely to expand Apple TV uptake. The downside is that the price will likely be high e.g. $400 or around there.

2) Router security may be a significant factor at play. Perhaps Apple will not heed to secret mandates for back-door access to their routers and will just shut it down lavabit style rather than acquiesce.

No reason they couldn't have made a USB-C magsafe, Griffin has managed to.