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Apple didn't get left in the dust as much as "quit" when it looked like the business was just going to get harder ( competition from two directions). First there was a trendline by the major ISP providers to have 'all in one' boxes ( modem + router + wifi). The ISP providers were given this out to customers by default. So trendline heading toward ISP provider maybe going to zone where router is 'free' (built into the service fee). How is Apple going to compete with 'free' ? [ The 3rd party modem consumer market is nothing like it was back in the early 2010's. 'Motorola' / 'Zoom' / etc ... lots of major players gone. (and not just through mergers/buyouts/consolidations ). ]

There was no thing that we have now with the super high end wi-fi routers costing more than a mac Mini. 2013-2016 there is more an expansion in the sub $100 wi-fi routers than very expensive ones. Vendors like TP-Link were going to completely commoditize a vast swath of the market.

Around 2014, The mesh systems were coming at the higher end. The smartphone controls (as opposed to quirk web interface) was no substantial barrier to entry; especially when had an Android App to expand user base. Some of the foundational elements of mesh were being standardized.

Apple likely quit because they thought it was going to a similar route that laser printers went. If they knew there going to be a in-house radio transceiver company at the time perhaps and folks would be commonly selling Wi-Fi 7 routers at $200 , they might have stayed in, but that likely was not on the roadmap in early 2010's.



P.S. Time Capsule is a 'better than nothing' back-up , but the canonical usage that Apple implicitly endorsed ... single point back-up to a non-RAID drive is asking for trouble long term when the back-up drive either fails or gets corrupted.
I agree with all this. Especially time Machine being a "sort of" backup. It doesn't count in my book. One is none as the saying goes
 
Would be great if it makes a comeback in some form. Possible that it can be integrated into a home product. But not expecting to see it in the next 1 to 2 years.
 
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The more I think on this the more I think it's some sort of mistranslation related to thread router functionality. That said I also can't see an Apple TV being a router as well because they are are typically not in the same place as an internet PON, router etc. unless your Internet comes into the house near your TV that's sort of a waste in terms of Apple TV hardware potential. Homepods minis would at best be a mesh until, but they would need to be much larger to take advantage of all the antennas for MIMO and multi and, so that's a dead end too. So what does that realistically leave us with if it doesn't make sense to do it in an Apple TV or homepods?

This is some sort of misunderstanding that Gurman is reporting on, ignorantly or otherwise (for clicks). I can't make this product make sense in an existing Apple device.
 
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If a customer is running fiber, I don't think they'd be using an AppleTV as a wireless access point!
Those are two completely different customer bases.
um no... that's not how fiber works. fiber ONTs still require a gateway for wifi. The article is talking about combining their new chips into an all-in-one gateway device, not Apple TV.
 
Oof. Eero, heavens no that's a bullet dodged.
Genuinely curious about this response. When my airport died, I ended up dup picking up a set of eeros & they've been great so far. I am not networking savvy, so was looking for something simple & easy to set up, but so far they have been really good. Maybe they are missing something I don't understand? Or there is some other issue with them?
 
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An SFP+ port is so far outside of even this pipe dream, surely you know Apple's network offerings were never meant to handle that kind of throughput. It will never happen.
I know, would be nice if they could add one sfp port if they're going to resurrect their routers. I still have Ubiquiti to fall back on so nbd
 
um no... that's not how fiber works. fiber ONTs still require a gateway for wifi. The article is talking about combining their new chips into an all-in-one gateway device, not Apple TV.
I'd hazard a guess that this is all a deep misunderstanding or click bait from Gurman. I think two separate things are being conflated, mainly thread edge routing vs a typical WLAN router.
 
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I know, would be nice if they could add one sfp port if they're going to resurrect their routers. I still have Ubiquiti to fall back on so nbd
I agree that would be nice, but I wonder if people would break them? Maybe Apple could make an SFP dac connector out of a single billet of aluminum with the typical care they employ with that sort of stuff?

If we're tossing out dream scenarios I want an airport with LACP, 10Gb uplinks, 128Gbp switching capacity, at least a gig of RAM and at least a quad core CPU. For the cherry on top a generous packet buffer size.

Give me 2xSFP+ ports, 6xmulti-gig Ethernet (1/2.5/10Gbps) and 300 watts of PoE
 
My wifi is two Apple Extremes, the main one for the house and the second one is an extender into the garage. (TV and Roku in garage lol, also the Tesla connects to wifi haha)
 
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Genuinely curious about this response. When my airport died, I ended up dup picking up a set of eeros & they've been great so far. I am not networking savvy, so was looking for something simple & easy to set up, but so far they have been really good. Maybe they are missing something I don't understand? Or there is some other issue with them?
I am glad to hear it's working great, that's all that really matters! Their app is slick and setup is a breeze. I tried to make them work over the years because I love network gear. but it's just not for me and that's OK. My main concern is some long-standing Layer 2/Layer 3 stuff but it's gonna depend on the setup.

My main issues that they can't seem to resolve:
-wire speed
-routing/MAC table maintenance.

Basically the first one means you may not see the speed you pay for or you may experience a slowdown over time with multi-gig internet because of a hardware bottleneck and how routing tables are maintained. The second one means you will see stuff falling off the network necessitating a reboot of said device. A side effect is that MAC reservations, especially for IP cameras tend not to work according to the 802.11s specification. This failure is made worse the more nodes you have in mesh.

That said for 1Gbps or under you're probably gonna be a-ok and have a solid setup assuming you don't have a bunch of IoT devices on the network. Their app is super nice! I just can't abide their unwillingness or inability to fix some of the stuff I need.

Unifi has its own set of quirks but they nailed the "magical" part of Apple's secret sauce in the pro-sumer space.

All that said I'll likely end up going with an Aruba 5400R or similar so I have hitless failover and VSF stacking. It's the module slots that are the best, with 4 available, I can have 12 SFP in one, and have copper on the other with room to grow into the bottom two slots.
 
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Macs only have certain data synced automatically to iCloud

Pictures/Video aren't covered by the "iCloud Drive" folder , but most certainly are covered if you have Photos Libraries turned on for backup to iCloud. Lots of other iCloud enable apps can backing store to iCloud also. It isn't just the 'documents' folder if flip on all the "iCloud" switches inside of Settings app .
I didn't expand on my statement, but that's what I meant by that. Apps, if they are setup up for it, do have their data backed up or synced across devices with iCloud. Photos and Videos are handled by iCloud Photo Library for those that have tiny libraries or those that pay for additional storage. Judging by the comments that I've read over the years on this forum, there is a significant amount of people that don't pay for additional iCloud storage.

My point was that Apple releasing another Time Capsule would not cannibalize iCloud service revenue, as the user I responded to said, because iCloud cannot be used like that with Time Machine. Thank you for expanding on why it isn't likely to be able to support that in the future.
 
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Why do they not merge the Airport, Time Machine and HomePod and sell a smart speaker device with its own onboard LLM and SSD that can be used for localised backups, cache streaming media can control your smart devices without needing a server?

Apple could sell it as the ultimate privacy solution where iCloud only works as a bridge and the user has to do very little setup.
I doubt Apple is going this route. The general public ain't interested in a device that does all the mentioned tasks.
 
I think it was a huge mistake for Apple to get out of making Wireless Routers, a huge mistake! I really wish Apple would get back into this business and offer a secure, and local way to store and sync all of my Data without needing to rely on iCloud/Online backups. Recent changes in the UK regarding Advanced Date Protection have me somewhat nervous, not because I’m a criminal or engaged in illegal activity, but because I care about being able to have privacy. That being said, I do think it’s sad how much privacy all of us have willingly given up so we can search for things on Google, use Facebook, check the weather, and just use a smartphone in general. I do appreciate the fact that as far as we know, Apple has not wanted to solely rely on their customer’s Data to turn a profit. Apple exploring getting into advertising more and more though has me worried that Apple is going to break the verbal contract they’ve made with their customers, and that is that their devices are their products, not their customers.
 
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I had a Time Capsule and loved it. For a modern device to have utility for me, it would need to combine a DOCSIS modem, wireless router, NAS and Home hub. My current Netgear modem/router is approaching its last legs, and frankly I’m not feeling any brand loyalty with how flakey their software is.
 
I still have my AirPort Expresses, I don't have the Extreme anymore though. I try to use the Express as a AirPlay point but it's not entirely reliable.
 
I recycled my circa 2007 Airport Extreme Base Station many moons ago. There have been multiple times I've wished I had kept it around. 🤷 Curious enough to follow this rumor as I'll be in the market for a new wifi solution in about a year or so.
 
Built-in router capability in AppleTV with the abillity to use homepod minis to build a mesh network would be neat.
 
The guys from Apples network hardware team went and started their own networking company, their hardware and app seem very apple-like to me. I hope new Apple routes would be just as good without them.
What company did they start? Thx

Oh I see, Ubi:)
 
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