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

[sudo1996]

Never had a single problem with mine. In fact the CC2 worked so well, I just got the the 4k one. Again, works perfectly fine and fast too.

Video plays fine once you have it playing. But the Chromecast is by design way too annoying to use for something that's supposed to be a plug-n-play stick for quickly displaying video, especially for guests who don't have the necessary software already set up on their devices. I had to jump through so many hoops just to play an MKV video on it. By the time you do all that, you could just plug in HDMI to watch Shrek.
[doublepost=1479797117][/doublepost]

How is that beneficial? From a networking perspective, the optimal position for an access point is very much different from the optimal position for a TV set-top-box. You'll want an AP to sit at an unobstructed, elevated spot. Otherwise it'll need to transmit at full power all the time, wasting energy and generating unnecessary EM blanketing, which leads to (and is prone to) interference and may or may not damage your health.

Also, my Apple TV is nowhere near my cable modem, and I doubt anyone else's is. Ethernet cabling for that would be doable but annoying.

 

[ahasver]

So what the hell are they're going to do with AirPlay?

They never cared much about last years technology. But seriously all that is left pretty soon is the iPhone which is not a lot. And a few nonupgradable Laptops.

 

[trifid]

After a disappointing few years. 2016 was the end of a fifteen year relationship. I sat down and thought what I would say to Tim Cook if we ever met. Suddenly I found myself typing out my thoughts which evolved into an email referenced below. I know Tim Cook will never read it, nonetheless it was fifteen years of my life, work and otherwise, that seemed it was necessary for me to send. As I referenced this very thread, I thought I'd share it with you as well.

Times are definitely changing, for better or for worse. Hope everyone is having a great night (or morning)!

Great write up and my sympathies to you. One thing though, look at what Steve says here, I think describes Apple 100% on what's happening now:

See minute 39

“they cared about making a lot of money… they got very greedy and instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision which was to make this thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible, they went for profits, and they made outlandish profits for about 4 years, one of the most profitable companies in america for 4 years, and what that cost them was their future, because what they should have been doing was making rational profits…”

 

[sudo1996]

kinda glad to see these go.. I got am Airport Expressn havan't used it for over 5 months.

Plus there are routers out there, maybe not AC, but more features

Um, cool, we have about 12 plugged in at home, and we'll replace anything that fails because they're excellent devices.

 

[Marx55]

Nothing like a good wired connection, whenever possible, of course. Wired will always beat wireless.

 

[jpine]

I guess since Apple does not give a tinker's damn about computers, it does not feel a need to provide related hardware.

 

[sudo1996]

Great write up and my sympathies to you. One thing though, look at what Steve says here, I think describes Apple 100% on what's happening now:

See minute 39

“they cared about making a lot of money… they got very greedy and instead of following the original trajectory of the original vision which was to make this thing an appliance and get this out there to as many people as possible, they went for profits, and they made outlandish profits for about 4 years, one of the most profitable companies in america for 4 years, and what that cost them was their future, because what they should have been doing was making rational profits…”

There's nothing profound said there. Every large corporation's goal is to make long-term profit, and that's assuming the corporation just wants a high stock value. Their stock value will be determined by how much they're giving out in dividends and how much they are expected to grow from reinvestment of profits, and there's a balance to strike. None of them want to be greedy. But under bad leadership, they'll go on one side or the other, either too greedy or too uncertain about profit. An example of the latter problem is Spotify. They lost money for years only to end up losing market share to Apple Music and others.

I don't know what they're doing with all this discontinuation. It doesn't even strike me as greedy, just lame. They're out of ideas, and they're sitting on cash instead of using it. Either that or they're transitioning to great new products (doubt it).
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Nothing like a good wired connection, whenever possible, of course. Wired will always beat wireless.

Lucky for you and me, the AEBS also functions as a router and wired ethernet switch. We've got one at home connected to a larger switch that serves ~50 ports in the house and a total of ~40 devices. Works great. I'd like to keep an AEBS as our router if possible.

 

[emailnotebox]

Are they on their way of killing Mac division progressively and slowly, starting with Macbook Air, Airport, Mac Pro and Mac mini?

 

[maxwelltech]

Honestly, while I get why some people are upset, I have always found Apple routers overpriced compared to other routers. I recently bought a TP-Link router with more ports and higher bandwidth for half the price of an Airport Extreme. The router business certainly isn't a huge source of revenue for Apple, therefore I think it makes sense for them to leave that market to other companies who are more devoted to making routers.

 

[masterhiggins]

I literally ordered an extreme yesterday. Apple is seriously sucking. I'm just going to return it and buy a netgear.

 

[OllyW]

One doesn't need to read the posts here to know how much of a cesspit this forum has become. Or if there are indeed any useful nuggets of info inside, then blame the whiners for drowning them out.

Well I've read through most of the posts and it's generally disgruntled Apple customers who are confused, disappointed or angry to hear a product they have been relying on for many years will not be developed beyond the current models. Even though there are a lot of posts expressing their confusion, disappointment and anger, there are also posts discussing the pros and cons of alternative products.

Of course some members here may be what you dismiss as "whiners" but there's another group who always seem to take the opposite extreme and defend Apple at all costs. The posts from either of those sides doesn't add a lot of value to the discussion but they are entitled to post their opinions. The vast majority of our members live in the middle ground and are generally happy with their Apple products but may sometimes ask questions about the direction the company is taking and whether it's going to fit their future needs.

If you just focus on the extreme views I don't think you are going to get much satisfaction from this forum.

 

[JamesPDX]

I wonder which of these non-Apple routers has the best firewall? Can you control/block certain TCP on these? Are these items more prone to attacks, malware, etc? I can't afford a real "Network Appliance" and the AEBS was kind of a set and forget kind of device. (But save that Configuration File!)

 

[Abazigal]

Well I've read through most of the posts and it's generally disgruntled Apple customers who are confused, disappointed or angry to hear a product they have been relying on for many years will not be developed beyond the current models. Even though there are a lot of posts expressing their confusion, disappointment and anger, there are also posts discussing the pros and cons of alternative products.

Of course some members here may be what you dismiss as "whiners" but there's another group who always seem to take the opposite extreme and defend Apple at all costs. The posts from either of those sides doesn't add a lot of value to the discussion but they are entitled to post their opinions. The vast majority of our members live in the middle ground and are generally happy with their Apple products but may sometimes ask questions about the direction the company is taking and whether it's going to fit their future needs.

If you just focus on the extreme views I don't think you are going to get much satisfaction from this forum.

Here's the issue. Take out all of what you just advised me not to focus on, and there really isn't much useful info to take away, if any.

And even if there is, you are asking me to sift through hundreds of inane comments just to find the few relevant ones. It's ridiculous and it's unreasonable and it's extremely frustrating.

I could shut up. I could walk away. But I really do want to try and save this forum. Maybe it will all be for naught at the end of the day. But I don't want to go down without a fight. And I won't.

 

[recoil80]

They did the same with their display by advertising a product made by LG during last keynote.
I guess it make sense, they could partner with a big brand like Cisco and advertise their routers instead of building Airport and Time capsules.

 

[dv8r]

Here's the issue. Take out all of what you just advised me not to focus on, and there really isn't much useful info to take away, if any.

And even if there is, you are asking me to sift through hundreds of inane comments just to find the few relevant ones. It's ridiculous and it's unreasonable and it's extremely frustrating.

I could shut up. I could walk away. But I really do want to try and save this forum. Maybe it will all be for naught at the end of the day. But I don't want to go down without a fight. And I won't.

And You're off to a good start by calling people whiners and most of the posts useless.

 

[Michael Goff]

It makes sense. It isn't like they've cared about routers for years now.

 

[Abazigal]

And You're off to a good start by calling people whiners and most of the posts useless.

What am I supposed to say when most of the people here are whining and the majority of the posts here are useless?

 

[JamesPDX]

Now this is sad. I know Airports were never the greatest routers on the market but they were very reliable, setup and forget and they looked nicer compared to some of the alien-esque items on offer I'd rather not have on display (look like toys from a teenagers Transformers shelf!)

I think unfortunately we're seeing the streamlining of products from a company that makes so much from the iPhone it seems to foolish to spend resources on things like the Mac Pro, Mac mini and Airport. It's sad - i'm glad they made the iPad Pro 12" which is a niche device in reality, and they should make more niche products but I know myself when you run a business and 90% of your revenue comes from doing something and 10% comes from doing something else that takes almost just as many resources it's insane to carry on that way.

This unfortunately is the sad consequence of a single ridiculously successful device.

And perhaps one day another company is going to take that two-product business away from them by making something much much better, and they'll go the way of the other companies that had no other competitive products ready to go.

But all they had to do is keeping making a great products only marginally better. And of course hardware/firmware security always needs to move forward. This is another symptom of a company that at a glance looks like it's trying to fail on paper. Probably something about taxes, jobs, etc. I wrote this 22NOV2016. (preferred date: 20161122011218)

 

[OllyW]

What am I supposed to say when most of the people here are whining and the majority of the posts here are useless?

Your posts are not really adding anything of value to the discussion either.

Anyway, it's going off-topic now so any further discussion on this subject should be taken to the Site and Forum Feedback forum.

 

[JamesPDX]

I take it that we're not going from B, G, N, AC, etc as fast anymore, there's not a need to get a new one as often and therefore, just isn't going to be profitable for Apple to produce these anymore.

Maybe because: http://www.wsj.com/articles/fcc-airwaves-auction-fails-to-draw-enough-bids-again-1476906098

 

[TheFluffyDuck]

"Hasn't seen a refresh since 2013", seems to be a general trend with Apple.
[doublepost=1479807204][/doublepost]Computers and their peripherals, do not make up a large amount the market share for apple anymore. Its iPhone and little else. But making these products still takes HUGE resources for the company. Clearly somebody at apple has done the cost-benefit analysis at apple and decided that to kill off the mac is the way of the future. The best way to do it, is to make it expensive and borderline obsolete, while talking up how their mobile devices are now "professional" and can do anything a mac can, we see this with the iPad. I would not be surprised if they release OSX as a standalone product to install on generic PC hardware in the next few years. But I don't see them even doing that, as the resources for maintaining drivers will be huge, and puts them in direct competition with Microsoft.

 

[tf_dc]

Mesh routing, new 802.11 standards, HomeKit hub, Alexa-like capability are all obvious things they could add.

Plus partnering with someone like Bitdefender or Checkpoint to turn the home border device into the comprehensive Home/IoT security solution with a firewall, URL categories filter, antivirus, device agents, IPS, VPN and mobile data protection on the go etc - all of this easily configurable - something like what Bitdefender is trying to achieve with their Box. A highly needed thing when the amount of connected devices in our homes increase and their security stays poor. And that functionality usually implies a yearly subscription - so it is all in line with the wish to continuously get money from the customers.

There ARE new market niches with almost no players for now, where huge success and profits are possible, but... I hate the word "visionary' - it has no real sense behind it and it stinks mystics, but people definitely need to look a bit farther than their nose tips and short term profits if they want to keep their business alive and customer base stable or growing.

 

[bingeciren]

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

Yes but don't forget that Griffin is for "charge only" and part of it sticks out of the MacBook. When you use a USB-C port for data, the last thing you want is the magnetic connector inadvertently disconnecting and corrupting your external storage.

The original Magsafe was okay but after Apple switched to Magsafe 2, the power cord was coming off far too easy. Frankly, I don't miss it one bit.

 

[tf_dc]

I feel this is something worth debating. Has anyone thought to raise such a point in 800 posts? I am not going to bother sifting through all these posts, but I think you and I both know the answer to that.

No one is going to point your nose to the posts with interesting thoughts and suggestions here. Lazy to read, ready to whine? Want others to chew the food for you while your own contribution to the discussion was nothing but commonplace counter-complaints? Even now you didn't bother to tell what are YOUR own thoughts about the question supposedly worth debating.

Yes, I fed the troll. Enjoy your meal.

 

[bingeciren]

airplay is awful. so limited. drops audio..

No it doesn't. You are using it wrong.
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Tim is proving to be a moron, running Apple into the ground. He needs to get the hell out. He doesn't use Apple products obviously.

Oh he does, like an iPad, iPhone and perhaps an Apple Watch, but I bet he doesn't touch a Mac, perhaps never seen an Airport device in person let alone setting it up, never uses a scanner or a printer himself, never uses a USB disk and so on. For him, all you need is an iPad for all your computing needs.