Apple Exiting Wi-Fi Router Biz

[Marinemaster]

The quality, always works, quality of the materials, aluminum casing, research, they have a turn key Reliable solution for consumers. When it came out in 2013 other routers were Similarly priced. And everything else they make is not overpriced. People that do not want to pay for reliability say they are overpriced because they do not understand what it takes to make something reliable. I Wasted months and months maybe years messing with Unreliable router and PCs and laptops. The last reliable router I had before Apple was the WRT54G v4 or the Linux edition. I used all the other Consumer routers on the market they All had problems one way or another. Read Amazon reviews and from 2000 reviews for X brand half had problems, half did not. That percentage of just working is way higher for Apple Routers.
I recommended to at least 20 people over the years who purchased the 5th and 6th generations and none one had a problem connecting with either Android of Apple devices. Apple just plain works. I am not talking about prosumer or a Cisco router. The Express makes a great music player (for these that know what it actually does and use one daily).
You want something that is indeed Expensive but reliable ? get a Cisco Enterprise grade router and see how much that cost you. For the regular consumer that wants something that plain works Every time, Apple makes reliability and ease of use standard.

 

[BWR]

Apple makes reliability and ease of use standard.

*made
Just like the Esc key and the MagSafe on the MBP. Where art thou, Steve?

 

[sfx2000]

For a company of that size, I would argue that they do not have so many balls in the air. Every other major tech company that has a similar size are able to deal with far more product lines than Apple.

It's kinda surprising really, since their current CEO is mostly known for his ability to manage and organize things. He was the perfect complement to Jobs' skills.

There was a discussion about this a while back somewhere else, but the crux was that Apple's really good when they focus on one item at a time, but they run into problems with parallel projects - and much of this goes to the org structure that was put into place by Jobs after the Next takeover (erm, purchase)...

Just odd that with all said - that they would let certain branches die of neglect (Mac Pro anyone?), and there's still a fair amount of rage focused on the recent Macbook Pros (removal of many ports, limited RAM, and last years Intel chips) - which is probably additive to the demise of the Thunderbolt display and of course the whole iPhone 7 headset jack...

(and the resulting silliness about USB-C and the Lightning ports on the iDevices, Apple does sell a dongle that converts a USB-C to USB A connector, but still - I guess Apple sees good money in dongles these days)

 

[Marinemaster]

The only thing that has gone bad for me was the iphone charger cable the lightning. It last about one year. Also the exposed contact points on the end of the cable go bad if soda or some other food comes in contact. The USB end never had an issue with it, that is a better design. The contact points are inside kind of like HDMI. I used to have Nokia mini USB charger cable it lasted forever.

 

[small_law]

I did like the older Airport Express units for their portability, but you can find solutions for that elsewhere and usually at better prices. The shocking thing is it looks like they're abandoning Airplay as a local audio streaming solution.

 

[sfx2000]

I did like the older Airport Express units for their portability, but you can find solutions for that elsewhere and usually at better prices. The shocking thing is it looks like they're abandoning Airplay as a local audio streaming solution.

The second Gen Airport Express devices - the 11n that looked like MacBook chargers - they were, and still are, pretty awesome for Airplay - bit perfect D to A...

ATV can still do Airplay audio streaming - at least with the ATV2 and ATV3 - having tried to hard with the ATV4 to be honest, as they removed the TOSlink...

Some folks counted on that...

FWIW - the express did the same thing thru the 3.5mm jack...

 

[sfx2000]

So if one was looking for good audio...

the 11n was a good choice - below it would be the top device - the 11n dualband was ok, but the 11n was very good...

 

[remixedcat]

That is a very apt way of putting things - mind if I borrow that?

sure lol

 

[sfx2000]

I'm a bit surprised to see them get out of the wifi market personally, because people are getting used to paying 200-400$ for a router these days. That would have meant people getting more willing to pay Apple's usual high prices for a router. And the "ease of use" that Google is starting to apply to their new wifi products would have been quite at home with Apple's usual minimalist designs. Devices like the OnHub are something I would have expected to see from Apple.

My personal feeling is that Apple gradually returning to their 90s era, where they are searching themselves. They are trying to refocus and to expand, but don't seem to be finding anything that's sticking to the wall so far (look at their TV/car plans that aren't going anywhere, the flop of the iWatch, etc...) The 90s had a few good ideas, but they failed to make them stick, like the Newton.

I think this is perhaps overhang - remember Jobs killed off many things - the scanners, printers, cameras, etc... the "consumer" Performa's - anybody remember MacTV?

And then there's the TAM - which Jobs immediately cancelled, and almost fired the designer - Jonny Ive...

Yeah - the TAM was an Ive creation, as was the Newton eMate 300 - which probably presaged Netbooks and Chromebooks by almost 20 years... (yeah, 1997 was that long ago) - and at the time, it was an answer to the question that nobody had even considered asking...

(yet, 20 years later, the whole concept of microservices is now a big deal - with Newton - everything was a micro service - dumb apps working with metadata - even the primary dev environment there was basically very similar to Java - everything was scripted for most folks - and...)

(the ultimate newton was actually the MP2K, but the emate rings true -

That being said - we all owe a lot to Apple, as they were the first to really push WiFi... working with Lucent on the WaveLAN cards - the first Airports pretty much were designed by Lucent in the dialup days - the first Airports had 56K modems built in...

Anyways - there's a lot of angst about where Apple is headed - the Mac line is a bit neglected - and there, it's not what the fanbois/bloggers expected (the recent MacBook Pro touchbar thingy) - killing off the displays, and neglect of the Mac Pro workstation, along with the MacMini...

Apple is chasing the money - which is iOS - mostly the iPhone, and the iPad to some degree - media services get some attention so we have the ATV4 - and how this ties back to media distribution system (e.g. iCloud and iTune/App Stores)...

This seems to be Cook's focus - follow the money on what works... and what works is the iPhone..

I'm just sad to see a deprecation of the Airports - as those were previously the center of Apple's strategy of the media hub - but knows...

We here a rumor from Bloomberg about the Airports - and that's about it - my guess is a focus on HomeKit is where those resources have put placed perhaps... and there, putting emphasis on something more people have - which is AppleTV, might be the right decision...

As it is - the Airport Extreme AC (and TimeCapsule) as AC1900 class Wave 1 devices is good enough for the moment...

 

[kvic]

In the other news, Apple fired the OS X automation guru around the same time. I guess these days users are easier to ask and cheaper to pay for an app than scripting their workflow. Automation was (and still is) a key differentiator in OS X compared to Windows. The guy behind it was let go unfortunately.

 

[Yipee Kaiyay]

I've noticed that the reviewers on this site are way biased against Apple routers -dismissing them as "overpriced same old, same old". This was the vibe I got when I read a review on the 5th gen extreme router a while ago.
I bought the router anyway used on Ebay, and this thing has been a workhorse.
Now I recently bought an TM AC1900 (ac rt68u)because this router is like Jesus on this website --not impressed. I should have followed my gut instinct. IMO Asus is an overpriced, overrated company and despite this knowledge I took a chance on their garbage. Never again.

Hardware isn't everything. The software that runs Apple routers is amazing. It's simple, and it does the job well.
I'm saddened to hear Apple is getting rid of their router division. There is no other company out there that is putting any emphasis on the software side of things...they can make dual, quad channel whatever, but if the software to drive all that crap sucks then who cares?
Thinking of returning the Asus and buying one of those cube Apple routers.

 

[sfx2000]

In the other news, Apple fired the OS X automation guru around the same time. I guess these days users are easier to ask and cheaper to pay for an app than scripting their workflow. Automation was (and still is) a key differentiator in OS X compared to Windows. The guy behind it was let go unfortunately.

That guy was good, but the rumour was that he basically wore out his welcome, and ended up on the wrong side of someone higher up the food chain...