Wow - an iPad, pencil, and a watch. HomePod is late to the party and viewed as overpriced and not selling well. Do you even know what financial engineering is? Tons on money in the bank and they don't how to use it so they buy back stock (a return OF investment, not a return ON investment). The market speaks - down another $2.00 as I type this - gone negative for the year. No confidence in future earnings due to Cook's lack of MEANINGFUL product development. How is Apple looking right now for the first trillion dollar company? They are headed in the wrong direction.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Officially Discontinues AirPort Wireless Router Lineup [Updated]
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Wow - an iPad, pencil, and a watch. HomePod is late to the party and viewed as overpriced and not selling well. Do you even know what financial engineering is? Tons on money in the bank and they don't how to use it so they buy back stock (a return OF investment, not a return ON investment). The market speaks - down another $2.00 as I type this - gone negative for the year. No confidence in future earnings due to Cook's lack of MEANINGFUL product development. How is Apple looking right now for the first trillion dollar company? They are headed in the wrong direction.
If I recall, the founder of Ubiquiti had worked at Apple for awhile on their Airport line but felt they weren't doing enough and that he could do better. He had ideas that they didn't care to either listen to or act on, so he did his own thing and well... he's a billionaire now.
Its going to entirely depend on what sort of load you're putting on your network. if all you do is stream TV and music, than yes, you'll probably not notice the difference (since your likely bottleneck is your internet pipe, not the AirPort).
However, if you do a lot of data transfers over your own network, an older wireless network might feel sluggish. Try pushing 10gb over wireless G. Or even spotty wireless N.
the difference between N and AC can be tremendous. AC's thoeretical is 1.3Gigabits/second, apposed to N's 0.45Gigabit (or 450megabit) pers second (2.4ghz).
even if you're not getting the max of AC. even 60% thoeretical throughput is going to allow you far more bandwidth for in home networking than wireless N
I have gigabit fiber so an increase in wireless throughput from 35-40 Mbps to 75-350 Mbps is most definitely noticeable — particularly when uploading and downloading files that are hundreds of MB to 1 GB in size (which I do many times a day, everyday).
Synology rt2600 with a plugged-in hard drive, or any synology NAS with any third party router. Been using synology NASs for time machine for years.
Steve Jobs saved Apple with Mac OS and the iMac, something it appears the current group has forgot all about. It appears Apple wants to be a little gadget company from this point forward, with silly little devices that connect to the iPhone. Good luck with that Apple.
I'm still surprised by this. Hard to imagine Apple getting out of the space entirely, yet the fact that they EOL'd this before introducing a successor (which I figured would be a mesh set up) seems to telegraph that they're walking away from it.
Apple said they will support them for 5 years. So in 2023, we will be left on our own.
[doublepost=1524853936][/doublepost]By 2023 when Apple stops supporting these devices, I wonder if their OS and computers that come out in 2023 will even have Time Machine support making our TC's virtually useless for backup.
I think Apple Computer survived as long as it did because it had the excellent hardware to back up its intuitive software, and vice versa. Granting some obvious misses, for the most part if you purchased the Apple version of something, you were getting one of the best options available, which included the Airport Extremes at the time.
Apple Inc is increasingly content to leave the excellent hardware to others and focus on the software, which is eroding away at half of what did get them to the top. It's probably a smart move by the numbers and this is why Tim Cook is seen as a great numbers guy. "Let's make more profit than anyone else."
But nobody loves a company because it's great by the numbers. Comments like the one from Bladerunner2000 is the sound of heartbreak from people who believed more in Jobs' vision of Apple which saw ancillary products as part of an ecosystem of excellence, not just a profit center. "Let's make a better product than anyone else."
Why not keep the Airport Extreme technology going, and throw an Apple TV in each of them? Or a Mac Mini? Or both? Why not keep your company, whose lifeblood is wireless connectivity, at the top of that game too? It couldn't possibly cost more than what they've spent developing "Rose Gold" (pink). The most exciting thing about what should be their flagship product, the Mac Pro, is that the trackpad comes in "Space Gray" (gray). Again... great numbers. Go Apple. But Bladerunner and I are standing by to throw money at the next company we fall in love with.
I believe this is the beginning of the end for Apple - at least as far as computing is concerned. Once they break the eco system, then there is less reason to stay within it.
Those airport express units are a great way to wirelessly stream audio through Airplay - and through an audio system of your choice (not just HomePod). The reasons to stay with the Mac platform are getting less and less. A sad day indeed.
Yes, but that doesn’t mean he was going to throw away the Mac. He was always doing most of the demos himself and always proud when showing of new OS X versions as well as the hardware. When has Cook ever sat down with a Mac and showed something off? Never.
We both have the same first name btw. I haven’t encountered many people with this name in the U.S.
Same, I've got parents, aunts, and grandparents under my support umbrella who never used computers until very recently. They're all far away, so I can't be there to fix things. Really shows which things hold up best without intervention.
You’re right. I wouldn’t use it more than that but it’s more of having that capability. The CD is very important to me. It was cutting edge when I was a little kid and I still like and use physical media. There’s a feeling that tangible goods produce that you just can’t get for digital stuff.
This is a remarkable bit of honesty from Apple, and damning. To what, 'sharpen' its focus on the fall lineup of new watchbands? Last time I checked Apple was a computer company, not some 'consumer products' outfit searching for the next big thing.
I've said this before and will again, that for a company all the more reliant on wi-fi—which will not even sell you the OS on disc, but make you download it—it is beyond irresponsible to forsake one of the key links of such a system within a home.
This is a security issue among other things. Apple is suggesting that aside from being careful what you do online at such places at Starbucks, you do no less at home. Good luck securing the right equipment from some vendor—hoping it works well enough, with no backdoors, etc.—Apple is happy to leave this to you.
While on the topic of security I'll mention again the seeming radio silence from Mr. Cook on the matter of iOS vulnerability due Grayshift hacking. Apple's insistence on its concern for our privacy is wearing rather thin in places.
Apple had better decide what it wants to be. It was a stellar computer company; that is what Mr. Jobs bequeathed Mr. Cook. That legacy is now badly tarnished under heaps of glue, missing ports, bad software, and a disregard for the professional community that once kept Apple alive and off the rocks of bankruptcy. If Mr. Cook wishes to dismiss this in favor of consumer products then a good many of us who favored and relied upon Apple for its innovation and attention to excellence will have no choice but to look elsewhere, to less desirable options—as that we once loved is dead.
Mr. Cook may wish to reconsider however, for fashion is fickle. Presently unassailable due the riches of Apple, these were extracted from the legacy of Mr. Jobs and those that supported his vision. Your own stewardship and what it has wrought is coming plainly into focus now, and far from a certain matter how long consumers will like you versus another little different, Apple's riches will last, or the Board consider you as expendable as you an AirPort Wireless Router.
Last edited:
I wish that was the case.
I have tried several, and I have no problem with paying at any price point. Even Apple can't tell me which non-Apple router to use. I have a graveyard of routers now (5 of them) all high end, different brands. Even routers that I have witnessed working for other people. Same hardware, same firmware, reset all of my devices, etc. etc.
The only one that plays nice consistently and permanently is the Airport Extreme.
If you google you will see it is a common issue (match upload, homepod can't be used with Apple TV.)
So hopefully Apple addresses these issues or certifies some routers.
My parents' home speaker setup from back to front is Airport Expresses + centralized receivers + spread out speakers + remote control for receiver inputs and volume. It's all old af but works better than what Apple offers now and wasn't hard to configure. Airport Express allowed easy upgrades for brand new tech to utilize all this stuff. Modularity matters(tm).
Yeah exactly. Average user...overkill. It has been very robust and also offers security cameras that can hook up to the PoE switch which I plan to try out soon.
With Apple discontinuing their only really backup method, I have to think they have something in mind for WWDC based around the cloud. Or we can hope that they maybe will FINALLY support SMB shares on Time Machine!
Surprise!
Apple Routers are essentially "Mesh" Routers already; since you can easily set one or more up in an "Extend an Existing Network" Configuration, and they will happily cover whatever size area you wish.
Yeah, this is pissing me off. They act like it's new tech when Apple has supported it forever. It's also not even mesh: You have an ethernet network that you add multiple wireless APs to. This is much faster than a wireless mesh network, btw, and wired mesh networks just don't make sense at home.
Wireless mesh specifically would be if you set up many wireless devices with nothing but power connections and had them full-auto (i.e. not setting up a tree) transmit between each other to provide a fault-tolerant network, with one or more special ones connected to ethernet as the edges. This is designed for areas where you can't make as many assumptions, like with outdoor setups. I think Ubiquity actually does sell those, but others falsely advertise. They've also used this in emergencies and in places where it's illegal (Cuba).
Last edited:
You can set up both AirPlay and TimeMachine on any Synology NAS. That's your best bet for a "Time Capsule" Replacement, although it doesn't solve your "Wifi Router" needs...
The ecosystem is slowly going down... one day Mr. Cook will wake up to realise he cannot sell us the mirage anymore because there's nothing left.
The Mac line is really suffering from a complete lack of understanding of user needs (see the Touch Bar, the USB ports, even the MagSafe which saved at least 4 times my laptop).
Apple is focusing on the $$$ and unfortunately the message of the "Crazy Ones" campaign will soon be no more. For me that was the company's DNA, the fact that it supported, understood and helped people to create new things, to develop, to push things forward. And you cannot do that with emojis, ignoring the Mac line and abandoning important pieces of hardware cause other lines of work provide more profit.
Steve Job's spirit is slowly diminishing and the typical corporate profit-driven decisions are replacing it. Soon we will have to part ways I'm afraid :
The only reality now is that there isn’t a Steve Jobs off doing something else ready to come in and save Apple a second time.
Wozniak is around but while he is/was an excellent engineer, he was never capable of leadership and would never be interested running a company. It is just not who he is. Cook has been a great manager. He’s continued to make shareholders lots of money. It’s not really wrong to focus so much on iOS. It has continued to evolve and made many things possible which would’ve only been a sci-fi dream just over a decade ago. The reality is that these creations are only possible because of developers working on real computers. Even when the iPhone and iPad reach some a level of performance similar to the desktop, they will still not be the ideal platforms for development.
If macOS remains on the back burner, Apple will become in danger of their major OS and hardware becoming irrelevant. I really hope that they are thinking of the next chapter of the Mac. OS X has been a fantastic product but I think we’re due for OS XI, a fresh exciting experience that will take the Mac into the future just how OS X did when it replaced the classic MacOS almost 2 decades ago.
[doublepost=1524856478][/doublepost]
I know but it’s not an elegant solution like the TC. For example it’s very easy to expand the storage of the Xbox consoles just plugging in a huge external drive but I prefer the elegant solution of replacing the internal drive of the PS4. The PS4 also lacks a bulky external power brick as well. I value functionality but not at the expense of aesthethics. This had always been Apple’s philoshophy and their forté. OS X and iOS would’ve been popular regardless of hardware design, but it’s hardware design which was made them the complete package. No one can complain about the beauty of Apple products. Even minor products like the Siri remote are beautiful. While a Roku has more functionality, it doesn’t have the appearance of a sophisticated device that lives in harmony in any home theater setup.
The great part about the Apple Time Machine is in the interface and the software updates. I got a software update just a few months ago, in fact. But to get my network working in a new place, I looked and finally settled on the Orbi. The Time Machine is just part of the Orbi network now, attached to it by Ethernet. Still works like a charm.
