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Apple Officially Discontinues AirPort Wireless Router Lineup [Updated]
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Well, for the first time in 11 years, I just advised someone not to buy an Apple device.
Do they drop AIR PLAY, too? 
What is about my AirPrint-connections?
We connected all our speakers at home through AirPlay...
What is about my AirPrint-connections?
We connected all our speakers at home through AirPlay...
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A shame.
I still use multiple original airport express units - on the rare occasions that I need to reconfigure any of them I have to boot up an old windows netbook with an old version of airport utility (because newer versions of macOS don't support them!) , but other than that they continue to work and enable me to airplay to multiple locations perfectly. Chromecast is nowhere near as good, and of course doesn't integrate with apple products as well. Does this mean they are planning on killing airplay in favour of bluetooth?
The airport extreme has worked flawlessly since the day I got it which is more than I can say for any other router I have experienced. Plus it looks good without loads of bits sticking out.
They are slowly but surely killing the eco-system and the 'it just works' mantra. But hey, at least you can choose from a baffling number of iPad and iPhone models.
I still use multiple original airport express units - on the rare occasions that I need to reconfigure any of them I have to boot up an old windows netbook with an old version of airport utility (because newer versions of macOS don't support them!) , but other than that they continue to work and enable me to airplay to multiple locations perfectly. Chromecast is nowhere near as good, and of course doesn't integrate with apple products as well. Does this mean they are planning on killing airplay in favour of bluetooth?
The airport extreme has worked flawlessly since the day I got it which is more than I can say for any other router I have experienced. Plus it looks good without loads of bits sticking out.
They are slowly but surely killing the eco-system and the 'it just works' mantra. But hey, at least you can choose from a baffling number of iPad and iPhone models.
It's too bad.
Apple's routers had one thing over competitors - better overall security. By that I don't necessarily mean Wi-Fi security itself, but security at the router level.
AirPort routers have always tended to be "set it and forget it". Once you configured it, you were basically all set. Other than the very rare occasional software update, you basically just let the router sit there and do its job. Very little maintenance.
On the other hand, every other router company is trying to outfit their routers with every bell and whistle available in the toy store. They all are trying to one-up each other in features. The problem is, more features, more potential security flaws. And that's indeed been the case - we seem to be constantly hearing about yet another exploit on D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, any other major router brand. On the other hand, it was quite rare to hear of security flaws on AirPort devices.
AirPort devices have never exposed a "web UI" for configuration, requiring you to use the AirPort configuration program. This does cause some headaches when you're trying to use a very old device (I remember having to spin up a Windows XP VM just to configure an old AirPort Express I intended to use strictly as an AirPlay server) but on the other hand, this means less attack surface.
Hopefully some other router manufacturer will finally realize that a simple, no-frills, set-and-forget consumer router actually is a good idea. Grandma probably doesn't care about all the bells and whistles, and the particularly nerdy crowd will often roll their own solution or use alternative firmware. For the average home user, I always tended to recommend Apple routers, even for non-Apple users, since they were rock-solid, required little to no maintenance and basically just sat there doing the job quietly with little fuss.
Apple's routers had one thing over competitors - better overall security. By that I don't necessarily mean Wi-Fi security itself, but security at the router level.
AirPort routers have always tended to be "set it and forget it". Once you configured it, you were basically all set. Other than the very rare occasional software update, you basically just let the router sit there and do its job. Very little maintenance.
On the other hand, every other router company is trying to outfit their routers with every bell and whistle available in the toy store. They all are trying to one-up each other in features. The problem is, more features, more potential security flaws. And that's indeed been the case - we seem to be constantly hearing about yet another exploit on D-Link, Netgear, Linksys, any other major router brand. On the other hand, it was quite rare to hear of security flaws on AirPort devices.
AirPort devices have never exposed a "web UI" for configuration, requiring you to use the AirPort configuration program. This does cause some headaches when you're trying to use a very old device (I remember having to spin up a Windows XP VM just to configure an old AirPort Express I intended to use strictly as an AirPlay server) but on the other hand, this means less attack surface.
Hopefully some other router manufacturer will finally realize that a simple, no-frills, set-and-forget consumer router actually is a good idea. Grandma probably doesn't care about all the bells and whistles, and the particularly nerdy crowd will often roll their own solution or use alternative firmware. For the average home user, I always tended to recommend Apple routers, even for non-Apple users, since they were rock-solid, required little to no maintenance and basically just sat there doing the job quietly with little fuss.
It’s good that Apple is fearlessly eliminating needless distractions by ensuring their talented people are focused only on building the products and services that are most impactful.
I think the big issue is that Apple is heavily pushing wireless as the way forward - WiFi, Bluetooth, LTE, Qi charging and dropping ports as well as heavy use of cloud services. This move leaves one of the main ways of connecting the internet to access services in the hands of 3rd parties and their hardware which strikes me as quite a big risk. (the other ways being LTE and a LAN port). My Time Machines have had flawless WiFi performance - if the modem ever drops it's connection and then reconnects there is never any issue with the Airport. I haven't ever had to power cycle it in 3-4 years!
.
My Airport Express is there for only one thing (music), all household purposes are managed through a Netgear router. All of my electronic appliances should be protected by "smart" sockets. Fingers crossed
Nope.
I don't blame Tim Cook for retiring the current SKUs.
What you don't seem to see is the apparent change in product philosophy. Now Apple doesn't serve the hole digital chain - from cloud to device - any longer.
The good news is that the Airports are quite user serviceable unlike other Apple products. I've twice replaced the power supply in one of my older Time Machines and the parts are not hard to find. They're all over eBay.
I think you have it backwards.
Apple doesn’t fill the entire product ecosystem for the sake of people boasting that they use all Apple products. They do so when they see a gap in their offerings and think they can do something better than the competition.
That was the case then when routers weren’t as good. Today, the competition has pretty much caught up, and there really isn’t much Apple can do to reasonably differentiate their router from what other companies are offering.
A corollary was when Apple sold its own printers in the 1980s and 1990s in order to ensure that Apple customers had proper printer support. As competitors filled the void, the need to sell Apple-branded printers was reduced. Today, I don’t think anyone can make the case for a unique printer from Apple. Any third party offering does the job well enough.
In short, while an Apple-branded router is nice to have, it’s hardly a necessity in the greater scheme of things.
Does airplay and AirPrint still work with other routers ? Damn I’ve been using a time capsule since forever.
On my second version.
On my second version.
Yes. Just need to have multicast enabled for bonjour
I have owne every single Mac product since early 2000. Th AirPort Extreme has been the most stable one. But the thing I liked the most was AIRPORT UTILITY. It was so easy to setup and have something reliable work that flawlessly. While the product is going to last another year or two, I hope apple continues to make airport utility work with other routers or some trusted routers.
Do they drop AIR PLAY, too?
What is about my AirPrint-connections?
We connected all our speakers at home through AirPlay...
Both work seamlessly on third party hardware. Just make sure multicast is enabled for bonjour services to work.
It never did, but that was not the focus? Even its WAN was capped at 300 / 400Mbps if I remember correctly.
But it was, for most of its time, and may be even now since I haven't tested EERO, the most stable, hassle free, dead easy set up router on the market. No other router is even close.
After using many many routers, my conclusion is stability over everything else. I don't care if it reaches 800Mbps in perfect 802.11ac condition. I don't want to restart a router every few months. And I don't want to hear from my friends their Internet is not working, and I will tell them to restart their router.
I somehow wish they could Open Source their NetBSD OS used in AirPort.
I would like to see proof of that.
By default, multicast should work with any router for a single internal subnet.
Pushing multicast across a layer 3 device (i.e. a router) is where you would need to configure your router for it.
I don't blame Apple for discontinuing AP/TC. Apple got into the biz initially because third party support for TM was non-existant when first launched and was likely flooded with support calls which were isolated to the customers WiFi routers. Now that TM is included in third party devices, the constantly evolving WiFi standards, vulnerabilities, and warranty claims, the AP/TC is more of a liability than an asset.
Apple can easily partner with third party manufacturers and/or test compatibility before offering a product in their stores. Apple likely makes more $ on each sale without the expense of developing and supporting their own branded product.
Apple can easily partner with third party manufacturers and/or test compatibility before offering a product in their stores. Apple likely makes more $ on each sale without the expense of developing and supporting their own branded product.
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