All my WiFi is based on an Airport Extreme I've had since at least 2013. I've never had any need for any of the newer versions of 802.11, nor do I particularly need a grotesquely ugly, cheap plastic enclosure with a veritable forest of (plastic-clad) antennas: no pr0n streamers, no first-person video games, no influencers uploading Tbytes of "creations" per day. My desktop uses Ethernet (10 Gbps), and the devices here that use WiFi tend not to use much bandwith.
And yet I've realized for eight years that this day was bound to come. Why should Apple spend money maintaining a software product for which they haven't produced a corresponding hardware product for eight years?
So I'm (ugh) sort of resigned to going through with one, last perusing of the Intertubes for best price/performance for a single (no mesh), WiFi "router" that (1) will probably require a smartphone to configure, even if only long enough to enable a web interface, (2) doesn't violate the federal government's ban on all new foreign-made routers (at least not without a certificate from some agency or other), (3) will not require some version of Windows to configure or update firmware (probably meaning back to the phone again), and (4) isn't a grey box (or one well-known name — I'm looking at you, TP-Link — box) with absolutely no built-in security, and a default admin username and password enabled before shipping. And I wonder if any of the current batch of routers offer ACLs — on which, no matter what all the security experts say, is an effective security barrier if the likely service stealers are technically incompetent, or at least don't want to be bothered looking at packets if they can just steal signal from someone else down the block.
Notice how much easier it was to purchase and install an Airport (if you had a Mac around)? You think that wasn't worth paying a small premium for? I sure do.
