Apple Discontinues Its AirPort Router Line (9to5mac.com)

9to5Mac reports that Apple is officially exiting the wireless router business and selling off its remaining inventory of AirPort products. This includes the AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and both models of the AirPort Time Capsule. "We're discontinuing the Apple AirPort base station products," Apple said in a statement to 9to5Mac. "They will be available through Apple.com, Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last." From the report: While the news is disappointing for fans of Apple's routers, the end of the AirPort line is no surprise either. Bloomberg reported back in November 2016 that Apple had disbanded the team responsible for developing Apple's routers, and in January 9to5Mac was first to report that Apple Stores started selling third-party. At the time, Apple told us that its AirPort line would remain -- with the mesh Wi-Fi routers adding a solution for larger homes: "People love our AirPort products and we continue to sell them. Connectivity is important in the home and we are giving customers yet another option that is well suited for larger homes."

Comments

Good

[I4ko]

Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up. There are much more flexible and cheaper alternatives.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

bummer, I really had hopes they were switching their routers over to iOS to leverage the new tech they have developed over the years as well as AirPlay2 and even the possibility of Siri home control to allow for a low cost Homepod/AirPort Express mesh router.

I think this is a missed opportunity.

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up. There are much more flexible and cheaper alternatives.

Yes, less alternatives is ALWAYS better for the consumer.

Fucking idiot.

Re:Good

[I4ko]

How many consumers do you know that will go out of they way and buy Mikrotik or Ubiquity for $60 when they can buy the $200 device at apple when they are buying their MacBook/PRO? Forcing people to do research is good.

Re:Good

[arglebargle_xiv]

Given how insecure both the Mikrotiks and Ubiquiti's are (did you specifically choose those two because of this?), I think anyone doing any research into getting one will go straight back to Apple.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The router industry has competion now more than ever before.
If one of the more expensive players bites the dust, (for good reason) so be it.
It's not as if Apple was doing anything exceptional with their Airport feature set, aside from garden walling everything built around it.
In the end, that's a losing game stratagy.
So they lost out.

Re:Good

[viperidaenz]

"default credentials are the most likely cause"
"Things cleared up when both Anubhav found users complaining on the MikroTik forums about defaced devices, admitting they were using default or no credentials."
"Looks like somebody made a script that logs into unprotected devices and changes the identity name," said a MikroTik spokesperson. "[MikroTik] RouterOS devices do have a password and firewall by default, but many remove those for unknown reasons."

Totally the manufacturers fault.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a fool. Apples routers are actually more affordable and if you're willing to read they are quite extensible and capable. Let me guess, you think Asus makes great routers huh?

Re:Good

[KingOfBLASH]

Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up.

While the Airport might indeed be essentially an overpriced router, the Time Machine is pure genius.

Essentially it's a hard drive attached to a router, but it will seamlessly set up backups for your macbook.

If your disk gets hosed, you can restore almost everything, with diffs taken something like every hour.

While some /.'ers might point out the ability to do this with cheaper hardware and rolling your own using rsync, I defy you to find a similarly simple solution.

Literally I just told my parents to buy a time machine, and their mac is backed up. Nothing else I need to do, brain dead simple!

Re:Good

[Trailer Trash]

Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up. There are much more flexible and cheaper alternatives.

I disagree with the sentiment. I have two airport expresses, and frankly they're wonderful. One of them is plugged in behind the Bose and has a cable running to the aux input of the Bose. With an easy touch of a button I can easily play music from my iphone or laptops to the Bose. That's been a nice feature. And, yes, I know about bluetooth, but I was doing this 10 years ago.

The other one was useful back when internet was spotty in hotels years ago. I always traveled (and still do) with the airport express and a short ethernet cable. If wifi is unable or sucks but a wired connection is available, I plug that thing in and have wifi. It's the size of a macbook charger, so it's easy to take along.

Re:Good

[DougReed]

The are not cheap, but after going through several iterations of "home" routers, Linksys, Belkin, Netgear... you name it. Had to reboot them constantly, only some stuff would successfully connect. None of them were reliable. Most died within a year. Dropped connections. hung connections.. you name it. I hate Windows, and Linux won't run everything I need for work, so I bought a Mac. VERY reliable. I finally got fed up and decided maybe ... just maybe I might find something that 'just works'... I bought an Airport out of desperation. My Apple router is almost 10 years old. It has crashed once after lightning caused a power spike that was strong enough to cause the Power suppression unit it is plugged into to clamp the circuit. I have yet to find a single device that failed to connect. I haven't rebooted it since the last security update. I, for one, am sad to see them exit the market leaving it to the 'cheaper alternatives'. Maybe the EdgeMax UniFi might work.

Re:Good

[tverbeek]

How many of them provide data backup services with Time Machine?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont care about consumers ; only spreading your pro apple lies and bullshit.

Fuck hypocritical idiot.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Most routers have a USB port for drives...

Re:Good

[SeaFox]

While some /.'ers might point out the ability to do this with cheaper hardware and rolling your own using rsync, I defy you to find a similarly simple solution.

You don't even need to "roll your own r-sync" anything. You can set up an AFP share on a FreeNAS server and point Time Machine to it. You might need to configure user permissions for the machines to access the dataset they back up to, but it's a pretty easy one-time thing, and you can make a homemade "Time Capsule" this way with redundant hot-swappable disks through ZFS. A more robust backup solution than Apple's appliance.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

That how a free market works. The crap gets eliminated.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you used both FreeNAS and AirPort Time Capsule? I have. FreeNAS is great, but Time Capsule is way way easier to setup.

Re:Good

[Reaperducer]

You can set up an AFP share on a FreeNAS server and point Time Machine to it. You might need to configure user permissions for the machines to access the dataset they back up to

I think you just proved his point.

Re:Good

[ctilsie242]

I have a Time Capsule, and it has been working flawlessly since I got it, as an internal router. It has been regularly patched, and although it doesn't have advanced functionality (manual ACLs in and out, so I can block port 25 outgoing just for sanity reasons), it has been decent. The Time Capsule also is a decent NAS, although with it being a single drive unit, one still needs a secondary backup system for documents, just in case.

For being a primary backup device, with documents backed up via a separate method, it was pretty close to ideal.

I just hope Apple opens the Time Capsule "protocol". Synology and QNAP devices support it, but it would be nice if any CIFS/SMB share could be used for remote Time Machine backups.

As for a router, it is hard to find a vendor with a good security reputation. Apple hasn't had many attacks against its AirPort routers, and they patched often. I wonder what a good home router vendor is that is a suitable replacement. Of course, the best answer would be a PFSense appliance, but it would be nice to have a mainstream vendor with a good reputation for security (as in no backdoors "accidentally" left behind).

Re:Good

[lucm]

That was just the first Google hit. MikroTik in particular have a long, long history of 0day in their firmware.

A quick search in the CVE database shows that MicroTik with all their products combined have the same number of vulnerabilities than the AirportExtreme alone, and the number is 7. You're full of shit, fanboi.

Re:Good

[lucm]

I defy you to find a similarly simple solution

You mean like the countless cloud providers that cost pennies and that don't force you to buy proprietary overpriced hardware and operating systems?

Re:Good

[Powercntrl]

The are not cheap, but after going through several iterations of "home" routers, Linksys, Belkin, Netgear... you name it. Had to reboot them constantly, only some stuff would successfully connect. None of them were reliable.

A little over a year ago, I decided to set up a Kodi server, and put Amazon Fire Sticks (the 2nd gen ones) on each TV in my home. It was at that point I found out how deficient my shitty Netgear router was. I picked up an Airport Extreme on sale for about the same price as some of the higher-end Linksys models, and it completely solved all my video streaming problems. Damn thing is rock solid too, I never have to reboot it.

It's truly a shame Apple is exiting the WiFi router business. People who are quick to call it "overpriced" have clearly never used one.

Re:Good

[Darinbob]

When AirPort was new it was great. The alternatives were far more clumsy and difficult to use. Sure, it was more expensive, but then most consumer electronic products are cheap in price because they're cheap in quality.

Re:Good

[omnichad]

In my experience, the Time Capsule functionality was very buggy for a long time. There were people with a Time Capsule in their house that I eventually had to tell just to get a USB hard drive and use for Time Machine. Their backups were getting corrupt and refusing to back up. The solution was to delete the entire backup history and set it up from scratch. Each time.

Re:Good

[omnichad]

A number of routers with USB ports and AFP support are able to do it. Same with many NAS devices. Now that Apple seems to prefer SMB, there are even more options. The only difference is that most of these don't advertise Time Machine service over Bonjour. So you have to manually point Time Machine to the volume after connecting.

Re:Good

[Darinbob]

You can get AirPorts on Amazon cheaper than the router I bought (since I did my research and wanted a quality router to put Tomato on). And the AirPort does a lot of stuff the bargain routers don't do. I don't have one but people I know who did have one always liked how easy it was to set up; you can even set it up from your tablet or phone. And AirPort express seems to be $99.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

My wife's cousin had an Apple router... what a piece of crap. It refused to let their Konica/Minolta printer connect through it. What's more, in typical Apple fashion, you couldn't find a setting or panel to figure out why. I ended up having to run a cable to their network switch to get it to work. I was able to get every other device working on the router, so it's not a config issue... just typical Apple crap.

In contrast, my previous router (Dlink DI-704) and my current Asus RT-AC68U have been really flawless. Neither ever needed a reboot, and we run multiple devices on them all the time, as well as streaming, torrents, etc. They were truely plug-and-play. The point is, you need to buy a quality router, and while Apple may have had an above average device, there are many others that are better at that price (my Asus was $200 when I bought it many years ago... and the Dlink was even less). Stop buying crap routers, do a little research, and you can have many better options.

Re:Good

[Darinbob]

Time Machine on OSX is awesome, nothing on Windows comes close (never mind the habit of Microsoft to change backup formats on every major release). And that's with just an external plugin harddrive. The wireless harddrive is an option for those who just want to keep doing backups just as simply without plugging stuff in.

It uses hardlinks to present a full copy of all your files in a normal volume. This makes handling incremental backups trivial, and you can restore files from the command line easily, and with their UI you can quickly move back and forth through hundreds of snapshots. No need to remember to do a backup or to schedule them for a certain time of day and the like, or to clean out older backups you don't need anymore.

Really, this is the way all backups should be done.

Re:Good

[Darinbob]

This does sound a lot like a certain type of Linux user that always claims to do something better with a few scripts and poking at /proc, all while claiming it's "simple". Yes, if you're a power user, go ahead (I do use linux). But sometimes it's nice to just plug something in and have it work. So I'm going to go visit my mom in a few weeks, and one of those chores will be to backup her windows computer again, and I wish it were as easy as backing up my Mac at work.

Re:Good

[Darinbob]

Ya, that'll work great over DSL. Seriously, backing everything up to the cloud even on moderately good broadband would take forever, never mind people with slower internet connections who aren't the power users to figure out other ways to back up the system.

At work for awhile they kept pushing a cloud backup server (it's like they never even heard about security when think up stuff like this). After a week it still hadn't finished backing up my laptop, and later even incremental backups would take a few days (could never get that thing to stop trying to backup my vmware images). Later one of the users needed to do a major restore and the damn thing wanted him to select manually the files to restore. Eventually I uninstalled it (root access) and went back to my encrypted harddisk that I plug in a few times a week to let Time Machine do its magic.

Re:Good

[Darinbob]

I had gotten a router that wasn't one of the cheap things. The cheap built in wifi from u-verse was terrible, it only did 2.4GHz which meant I collided with all the neighbors and trying to stream to my TV was bad. I knew I could put Linux on the new router if I needed too, but I stuck with the default OS for awhile. It was pretty terrible, it would start stuttering at times only to get going a minute later (I suspect some headaches with DHCP lease expiring but I never found a configuration). And this was an above average router.

So then I went and put Tomato on it and it was like night versus day. Streaming was fast, and smooth, even with only 12MBps and the router beind on a different floor. Then all the nice features came into play, like seeing how much data I was actually using that day to watch TV, adding in some adblock, and so forth.

Re: Good

[jimbo]

I don't know; their routers are very good quality, fast and very stable and easy to setup. Not only is the wifi chipset good (Broadcom) but even things like the AC/DC transformer is built with quality components that seem to go beyond regulations (granted that may just add at most a few dollars to the BOM).

I use an Asus router because I enjoy tinkering with settings but many don't.

I feel having lots of choice in the market is a good thing, even if some are things I don't buy for myself.

Re: Good

[Malc]

I bought one for exactly the same reason when I was doing a lot of business travel 12 years ago. My colleagues even started trying to get a room near mine when we visited Shanghai just to get some reliable WiFi.

Re:Good

[bursch-X]

The easiest solution I could imagine is get a Synology NAS, which has a point and click UI via your browser and you can setup TimeMachine backups via point and click, however this is still a complex process and not for the casual user

https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Backup_Restore/How_to_back_up_files_from_Mac_to_Synology_NAS_with_Time_Machine

And considering that the cheapest Synology NAS isn't particularly much cheaper than an Time Capsule and you'll need a compatible WiFi dongle to also make it work as a wireless router it's not really an alternative. The cheapest NetGear NAS seems to be even more pricey.

So if people call the Time Capsule overpriced, I'd love to see any other NAS what is as easy to setup with the same features for a comparable price.

Re:Good

[bursch-X]

I used to use Backblaze for cloud backups. Back then I was "only" backing about 200GB. When I tried to restore the data it took almost a week. And I'm on a 1Gbps fibre optic line.

My Time Capsule would do the same in a few hours at worst, or if I plug my Mac directly into the Ethernet port of the Time Capsule even faster. Cloud backup is just no solution for full HD backups. Nowadays my internal HD is 1TB and almost full. I'd never consider cloud backups for that. It's just not practical. I have a Time Capsule (3TB) for the whole family, I also backup my machine infrequently to a directly attached local hard disk (2TB). And for my most important files from my home folder, I'm also using Synolgoy Drive that syncs its content to my Synology NAS (4TB). I've restored backups to new Macs many times and it just works flawlessly. The wireless "local" backup is just so nice, because you don't need to remember to plug a drive in or do anything for it and it's fast enough to not be impractical like cloud backup solutions.

Re:Good

[bursch-X]

Bluetooth audio is still laggy AF. I think AirPlay via WiFi is way better, that's why I love my Airplay Express router. If you play back the Auido from even an old Apple TV (mine is 2nd or 3rd gen) via AirPlay it does it flawlessly, perfectly in sync.

Re:Good

[bursch-X]

Same here. I always thought they were pricey and went with all the cheaper choices. Buffalo, Netgear, you name it. First of all the setup was always a pain in the butt via browser UIs that looked like a nightmare from the 90s without any consideration of usability. And then these things were really unstable. I had to reboot them sometimes several times a week to get them back to normal.

Then I first bough an Airport Express, because I wanted to use AirPlay audio, but I fell in love with it, because of its simplicity and how stable it was. I made it my main router. Then a few years later got me a Time Capsule, mostly for backups over WiFi for the whole family. I didn't have to worry about them losing any data, and they didn't have to do anything to make it happen.

These two devices have been rock solid. Zero issues. Remote access from outside the LAN is fantastic. I really don't want to go back anymore This is a real bummer. I've got a Synology NAS and I'll probably just pop in a WiFi dongle if I ever need to replace my Time Capsule, but man it's a real shame that Apple abandons all the places where they really made a big difference.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Hah, yeah. Talk about missing a point.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

The only Apple device I have is an ~6 year old Mac Mini.
I have been switching from Mac to linux the past few years and now when getting my second AirPort as a upgrade, apparently the AirPort assisant or whatever it's called considered my computer to be too old and didn't allow me to configure the router.
I don't have an iPhone/iPad to setup it with so I had to return it.

Easy to set-up my ass.

Also, on my previous AirPort didn't have any notable features at all, pretty much the only thing you could do was upgrade the firmware, set SSID and password, set up a proxy, extend a existing network and do port forwards. I bought a cheap TP-link router for traveling which costed $35 which had way more features than the AirPort.

"does a lot of stuff the bargain routers don't do" my ass. Personally I don't need those extra features though which was why i opted to buy another AirPort.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because Apple in its wisdom has just commented out all the error processing in the source code since its customers just don't want to see that stuff. Easier to blame the other vendors.

Re:Good

[Mr_Silver]

So I'm going to go visit my mom in a few weeks, and one of those chores will be to backup her windows computer again, and I wish it were as easy as backing up my Mac at work.

Windows isn't as easy as just plugging in a time capsule, but if you're on Windows 10 then File History is pretty simple.

Just point it at your external drive, define how frequently it should back up and away you go. The only time it gets a bit more complicated is if you want to define locations outside of your libraries - but the interface is dead simple.

Unlike the one in Windows 7, it won't fill the hard drive and then stop working until you remember to delete a snapshot from a year ago. For want of a better phrase, it actually does "just work" - took them long enough!

Re:Good

[thegarbz]

That was just the first Google hit.

So observation bias then. Replace MikroTik with Airport and you'll get Google hits too. But that may cause your fanboi brain to melt.

Re:Good

[thegarbz]

Yes but he did it stupidly. He could also have just plugged his HDD into pretty much any modern router and pointed Windows Backup to it as well.

Re:Good

[thegarbz]

While some /.'ers might point out the ability to do this with cheaper hardware and rolling your own using rsync, I defy you to find a similarly simple solution.

My dad has a run of the mill D-Link router. Plugged a HDD in there, told him to click the "Setup Windows Backup" button, and he was done with a full system backup. For a bonus I told him to go to the control panel, click File History, and click enable. Done.

Complete backup and file history enabled and possible on pretty much any router with a USB port and Windows 8 or later. The backup works just the same on Windows 7 but the File History does take more than 1 click to setup.

Re:Good

[thegarbz]

One of them is plugged in behind the Bose

Of course it is. You need to hook an overpriced sound system to an overpriced Airplay receiver.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

*Fewer* alternatives.

Fucking idiot.

Re:Good

[TheRaven64]

Apple entered the wireless access point market because it wasn't competitive. There were few players and there was a big premium for 802.11g parts (many of which were crap), and Apple wanted to sell support for 802.11g as a feature on the PowerBooks. This feature was largely worthless if the expensive 802.11g WiFi interface on the laptop was always running in downgraded 802.11b-compatible mode. Something similar happened with 802.11n. By the time 802.11ac came along, the market was competitive enough that there was no need for Apple to do anything: if they did nothing, people were still able to get 802.11ac working well. In addition, 802.11ac was much less of a selling point. The jump from .11b to .11g was the difference between nice toy for demos and generally useful. The jump from .11g to .11n meant that the WiFi was typically not the bottleneck for most users. The jump to .11ac means that WiFi is even less of a bottleneck, but it's well past the point where most people care.

Re:Good

[TheRaven64]

I've set up AFP on a FreeBSD machine for Time Machine backups. Doing it with netatalk 2.x was quite painful. With 3.x, it works out of the box. It is slightly more effort to set up than a Time Capsule, but it's also more powerful. For example, my Time Machine backups go to a ZFS filesystem, which is periodically snapshotted.

Time Machine occasionally corrupts backups (colleagues have reported this on both Time Capsules and external disks, though I haven't seen it for a few years) and if it does then the only option with a Time Capsule is to delete all of the existing backups and start again. Well, that's the only official Apple-supported thing. You can also often run fsck on the backup disk image and get it working, but that falls into 'Linux-user' territory for your definition.

With ZFS, I can clone the current version, revert to an older snapshot and Time Machine will then happily run an incremental backup from a couple of weeks ago, rather than a full backup (as it does if the same thing happens with a Time Capsule).

Oh, and Time Machine does file-level deduplication, but my ZFS filesystem is doing block-level deduplication and lz4 compression, so I'm using a lot less disk space for my backups (they get very high dedup and compression ratios).

Re:Good

[TheRaven64]

Does it still do the thing that the older Windows Backup utility did of creating nonsense-named zip files of your data? This was annoying because it completely defeated block-level deduplication on the NAS.

Re:Good

[TheRaven64]

I just hope Apple opens the Time Capsule "protocol".

They did. They have documented the extensions to AFP that Time Machine uses and they have been supported by netatalk for many years. I've been backing up to a ZFS-based FreeBSD machine with Time Machine for about 8 years. It mostly worked with netatalk 2.x, with netatalk 3.x it's been flawless.

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

Apple entered the wireless access point market because it wasn't competitive. There were few players and there was a big premium for 802.11g parts (many of which were crap), and Apple wanted to sell support for 802.11g as a feature on the PowerBooks. This feature was largely worthless if the expensive 802.11g WiFi interface on the laptop was always running in downgraded 802.11b-compatible mode. Something similar happened with 802.11n. By the time 802.11ac came along, the market was competitive enough that there was no need for Apple to do anything: if they did nothing, people were still able to get 802.11ac working well. In addition, 802.11ac was much less of a selling point. The jump from .11b to .11g was the difference between nice toy for demos and generally useful. The jump from .11g to .11n meant that the WiFi was typically not the bottleneck for most users. The jump to .11ac means that WiFi is even less of a bottleneck, but it's well past the point where most people care.

Interesting bit of history, thanks!

However, I still like Apple's Routers because they are the ONLY people I trust not to slipstream-in NSA backdoors into the Firmware.

Re:Good

[TheRaven64]

However, I still like Apple's Routers because they are the ONLY people I trust not to slipstream-in NSA backdoors into the Firmware.

That's not true. Huawei, for example, doesn't install NSA back doors. More seriously, how do you know that the NSA hasn't injected vulnerabilities into Apple's firmware? If you've followed the story of how the Juniper backdoor was introduced, you'll know that it doesn't necessarily require anyone in the company to be aware...

Re:Good

[indytx]

I bought an Airport out of desperation. My Apple router is almost 10 years old. It has crashed once after lightning caused a power spike that was strong enough to cause the Power suppression unit it is plugged into to clamp the circuit. I have yet to find a single device that failed to connect. I haven't rebooted it since the last security update. I, for one, am sad to see them exit the market leaving it to the 'cheaper alternatives'.

My story is similar. Though I haven't used any of our Macs in years, the Airport Extreme that I parked next to the cable modem has been chugging away for about a decade with no downtime. Same for the Express which we were using to stream ages ago. I only wish my "business class" routers at my office lasted as long.

Maybe the longevity is the problem because they don't need to be replaced. With no Jobs riding everyone, they've gone cheap. We already know the phones don't last, the laptops don't last, and now Apple is killing off one of their rare but not-so-sexy products which actually lasts.

Re:Good

[coofercat]

I do the same with my Qnap NAS - and I agree, it's stupidly simple.

Controversially, my wife's laptop (Windows 10) uses file and directory backups, which just go onto a regular SMB share (so no server side, as such). When I turned them on, I figured it's better than nothing but I should probably get something else to finish the job. A lot longer than I should have left it later, and it's still chugging away and working just fine - and her files are all 'time machined' in the archive. It's not a whole machine backup, but it seems to work in a similarly simple way. Amazingly, for Microsoft.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

His blind faith in apple and ignorance of all other tech keeps him strong.

Re:Good

[arglebargle_xiv]

You're full of shit, fanboi.

You do realise that you're calling someone who has never owned a piece of Apple hardware in his life an Apple fanboi? Obviously you know as much about fanbois as you do about router security.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed that an empty password was nowhere to be found in dictionary attacks, so i changed my password to that.

Re:Good

[AlwinBarni]

Additionally to that usually Apple products have long lasting support, aka updates, whilst most of the less expensive routers stop being updated after a year or so.

Re:Good

[fred6666]

Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up.

While the Airport might indeed be essentially an overpriced router, the Time Machine is pure genius.

Essentially it's a hard drive attached to a router, but it will seamlessly set up backups for your macbook.

If your disk gets hosed, you can restore almost everything, with diffs taken something like every hour.

While some /.'ers might point out the ability to do this with cheaper hardware and rolling your own using rsync, I defy you to find a similarly simple solution.

Literally I just told my parents to buy a time machine, and their mac is backed up. Nothing else I need to do, brain dead simple!

At least rsync is going to work on the 95% of PCs out there which aren't Macs.
It's not simple if it only works for 5%.

Re:Good

[fred6666]

Apple in Bose in the same sentence. I hope you used Monster cables to connect all of these.

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

However, I still like Apple's Routers because they are the ONLY people I trust not to slipstream-in NSA backdoors into the Firmware.

That's not true. Huawei, for example, doesn't install NSA back doors. More seriously, how do you know that the NSA hasn't injected vulnerabilities into Apple's firmware? If you've followed the story of how the Juniper backdoor was introduced, you'll know that it doesn't necessarily require anyone in the company to be aware...

The truth is, I don't know.

But, I at least am fairly certain that Apple would at least not be COMPLICIT, based on their Corporate History. But you raise a good point.

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

His blind faith in apple and ignorance of all other tech keeps him strong.

Nice try, ignoramus. Take your Apple Hate and GTFO.

It is not "Blind Faith"; it is Experience. And your are sadly mistaken that I have an "Ignorance of all other tech". Just because I like Apple stuff as a general rule, and have had nearly universally good experiences with their products; doesn't at ALL mean I don't deal with, or know about, "other tech".

For example, I work for a small software Consultancy, developing Microsoft-based business s/w, and I assist in some of the IT. A couple of years ago, I spec'ed a Zyxel VPN/Firewall/Router (we don't use the Router part so much) for our Corporate network, and spec'ed a TP-Link Managed Switch (this was before all the controversy surrounding Chinese Back-Doors in their products) to hang the Synology NAS we backup-to (the first of two Synology NASes I have spec'ed for my employer) off of (before I realized the Synology could do its own Port-Throttling). I also spec'ed and Setup and Admin. our corporate Backups, which are using a somewhat unique backup strategy (thanks, Microsuck, for not bothering to maintain the "Last Modified" or "Archive" flags on your SQL DB Files!), because of the huge number of MS-SQL databases we develop-in and maintain.

I could go on and on, but I hope you get the point.

Now, does THAT sound like I have an "ignorance of all other tech?"

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

Apple was not even a sane choice in the router segment, so it doesn't remove any choice for the well-informed customer.

Also, less vendor lock-in is better for the consumer. So to see companies trying to vendor lock-in us the most going out of a market segment is always good news.

What you are saying is nothing more than thinly-disguised Apple Hate, and is just a Strawman argument..

The reduction of Choice, even by a brand that YOU (the Lord God Emperor of All Things Digital) do not like, is STILL a Reduction of Choice.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you inadvertently proved the opposite side of the argument there. I'm guessing when OP said "my parents", that he wasn't implying his parents worked in IT.

Re:Good

[Mr_Silver]

If I remember correctly it uses the original filename and then appends a date stamp. So if you have three versions then it'll have three files of the same name but with different trailing date stamps.

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

One of them is plugged in behind the Bose

Of course it is. You need to hook an overpriced sound system to an overpriced Airplay receiver.

Ad hominem.

Until recently with "smarter" home audio systems, the AirPort's TOSLINK/RCA connections were the only way to stream audio in such a fashion. Just because there are modern options that do things in a cheaper fashion does not discount the cleverness of the solution when it appeared 10+ years ago.

Or can you furnish examples of similar functionality from 2004?

Re:Good

[Anonymous Coward]

If you drive anything more expensive than a Nissan Versa then your argument is null and void.

Re:Good

[fred6666]

I'd take less vendor lock-in choices any day. Dozens of other companies will popup and offer WiFi router. There might even be more choices after Apple leave the segment.

Re: Good

[Shirley Marquez]

ASUS actually DOES make some great routers. But only if you unlock their full potential by running DD-WRT or ASUSWRT-Merlin on them. Suitable routers include the RT-AC66U, RT-AC68U, RT-AC86U, RT-AC88U, and RT-AC5300. Info on ASUSWRT-Merlin is here: https://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca/a...

Re:Good

[Darinbob]

I use a third party backup. Windows first started with whole system image backup into a proprietary format, then went with just backing up 'Library' into a different proprietary format, etc. 'Library' backup is stupid, none of my critical files are there and Library files are small enough I can manually copy the whole thing to a usb stick. The Windows 8.1 backup certainly isn't very good, and I don't think they've improved it much in Windows 10 or they would have marketed this loudly as a great leap forward for mankind. The third party backup I use writes files into a zip format. So it's relatively easy to extract things again even if you lose the backup program or have upgraded Windows to a version that refuses to recognize the older Windows backup format. I don't back up regularly though, it's not a work computer and I'm not changing tons of files that I can't recover.

The "how frequently should it back up" is problematic too. I do not keep external backup drives plugged in all the time. I don't even keep my computer powered on, it is physically powered off a lot. So scheduling backup for 2am every thursday won't work. And because these Windows backups are so slow that I don't want an automatic backup when I'm playing a game or such (more disruptive than a full virus scan).

Time Machine is fast. The time it takes to figure out which files to backup on my work Mac is fast, much faster than any equivalent I've seen on Windows. When I didn't take my laptop with me to meetings much, I would just leave the backup drive plugged in all the time and forget about it. But now that I'm mobile I just remember to plug it in every few days or when I want to make sure my changes are saved. You don't need to configure it, though you can if you want to exclude files and directories. While it's backing up I don't even notice it, there's no noticeable system slowdown. The backups are in a normal volume with normal directories and files. I can restore files by just copying them if I want, or use the Time Machine UI, or write a script to search backups, etc.

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

I'd take less vendor lock-in choices any day. Dozens of other companies will popup and offer WiFi router. There might even be more choices after Apple leave the segment.

I don't know where you get "Vendor Lock-In" with Apple's Routers. They offer some unique Services; but as far as their Router setup and usage goes, there isn't much in the way of Vendor Lock-In (no more than a lot of other brands). WiFi is WiFi, Ethernet is Ethernet. Can't do too much to "Lock-In" those protocols. The Airport (Setup) Utility is available for Windows, and the Windows version apparently works under WINE on Linux (at least for Ubuntu) :

https://discussions.apple.com/...

Now, If you're trying to spin "AirPlay" (AirPort Express) or "Time Machine" (Time Capsule); but there is no reason you HAVE to use those functions. It's still a WiFi Router, afterall. Plus, as far as AirPlay goes, there are plenty of third-party devices and applications on every Platform that support it. So, no real "Vendor Lock-In" there.

So, can you be specific; or, as I suspect, are you just saying there MUST be Vendor Lock-In, because... Apple?

Re:Good

[fred6666]

Airplay and time machine were the two things I had in mind yes. There might be others.
Of course you can buy an Apple time machine and use it as a router. You are just wasting money, right?

Re:Good

[fred6666]

Haha, first router I know which is not configurable over any web browser. Good one.

Re:Good

[thegarbz]

Ad hominem.

Nope, subtle dig at the buying practices of the GP. You read too much into my statement and came up with the ad hominem yourself.

Re: Good

[Anonymous Coward]

I drive a Nissan Versa you insensitive clod.(I really do)

Re:Good

[dgatwood]

bummer, I really had hopes they were switching their routers over to iOS to leverage the new tech they have developed over the years as well as AirPlay2 and even the possibility of Siri home control to allow for a low cost Homepod/AirPort Express mesh router.

They already run Darwin under the hood, and have since... I think the first snow ABS. There was never anything preventing them from doing those things.

Re:Good

[dgatwood]

I found a cure for that. Step 1 is buy a Synology NAS. Step 2 is set up Time Machine on that. Step 3 is turn on automatic snapshotting. It's unfortunate that ZFS never happened. Otherwise, the Time Capsule probably would have adopted it, and we would have had snapshotting on it nearly decade ago. Heck, we might even have gotten something sane, like automatically shipping the on-device snapshots in bulk at the user's convenience....

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

Airplay and time machine were the two things I had in mind yes. There might be others.
Of course you can buy an Apple time machine and use it as a router. You are just wasting money, right?

But they have (just) a Router already. TimeCapsule is just an Apple Router with an HD built-In.

Nope. No other Proprietary Protocols, sorry. Time Machine and AirPlay are the only extra features on an Apple Router or Time Capsule. I can't remember if you can simply plug in a USB Drive to a regular Apple Router and use it for a Time Machine target; but there are several NAS', such as Synology, that support both AirPlay and Time Machine.

Re:Good

[omnichad]

Sure - but a Synology for a single laptop is a bit overkill. While snapshotting would prevent problems for corrupt time machine backups, it was the Time Capsule overheating that was really the problem and so any device but Time Capsule wouldn't need it.

Re:Good

[dgatwood]

I've had similar corruption with Synology when using AFP. The corruption is caused by either AFP or macOS sparse disk image support, and my money is on the former. I have not yet had corruption while using SMB, though the absence of proof is not proof of absence, and all that.

Re:Good

[Trailer Trash]

One of them is plugged in behind the Bose

Of course it is. You need to hook an overpriced sound system to an overpriced Airplay receiver.

Yep. And 12 years ago my very nontechnical wife had no problem playing music from her computer to the Bose in the kitchen. Ultimately, I got more asian babe wife out of the deal. You might not understand that.

Re:Good

[omnichad]

I wouldn't be surprised if it was AFP. There is a reason Apple favors SMB now.

Re:Good

[thegarbz]

Now if only it were hooked up to something nice it may be worth listening to.

By the way I'm taking a dig at your choice of sound system, not your choice of Airport. That thing was* just fine.

*It is completely outclassed by the competition these days.

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

Haha, first router I know which is not configurable over any web browser. Good one.

That may actually be a security ADVANTAGE.

Think about it.

Re:Good

[fred6666]

It may or may not, depending on implementation. Anyways, the web page is blocked by default on the WAN side, which is what matters the most. I guess it's the same thing for Apple's utility.

Re:Good

[fred6666]

Phew. There are just 2 of them!

The thing is, the only reason people get a TimeCapsule is because of that proprietary Time Machine feature. So the vendor lock-in, the proprietary protocol is at the very core of it.

The Airport router is not as bad, I admit, but still, I never met someone getting this router without also having many other Apple devices (usually at least a Mac and an iPhone, often a 3rd device such as an Apple TV). These people are usually vendor locked-in to the bone. They are never going to be able to move away from Apple.

Re:Good

[dgatwood]

AFP might make it worse, but the entire notion of essentially mounting a block device read-write over a network was bats**t crazy to begin with, and still is, even if you're doing it over SMB. The moment I heard how they were doing it, my immediate reaction was, "How can that possibly be reliable?" and here we are, ten years later, and it still isn't. And that was before I learned about how they were abusing directory hard links as an alternative for proper snapshot support.

Using automatic snapshots to repair corrupted backups is a workaround for what is, IMO, a fundamentally flawed design. The Time Capsule should have used a snapshot-based filesystem on the device itself, and the backup process should have consisted of shipping a binary diff to a daemon that patches those files on a clone of your computer's main volume and then takes a snapshot. That way, if anything went horribly wrong, it could just roll back to the previous snapshot and retry the backup. The Time Capsule should have exposed those snapshots as mountable SMB shares for restoration purposes (or as folders in a single virtual share, or whatever).

Those approaches would have been sane and well-behaved. Instead, Apple shipped something completely nuts, and then never took the time to fix it, presumably always assuming that they would get a sane, snapshot-capable filesystem eventually. I guess they didn't expect it to take an entire decade, nor did they expect that in that time, they would have gone from having actual server hardware to having only Mac Minis and Time Capsules, and subsequently to having jack squat.

*shrugs*

Re:Good

[Mr_Silver]

Every single thing you don't like about Windows 8 backup has been fixed in the Windows 10 version. In addition, all the things you like about Time Capsule are available too. Like I said, it's actually pretty good.

Re:Good

[lucm]

Cloud backup is just no solution for full HD backups.

And what happens when someone breaks in and steals both the computer and the backup? Or if the house burns down? Do you really swap disks and keep one somewhere else?

This whole "let's backup everything" is the issue. I seriously doubt that you generate or aquire valuable irreplaceable digital content at a speed that your internet upload throttle can't handle. All you realistically need is o/s restore media, internet and a few minutes to setup a sensible backup solution.

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

It may or may not, depending on implementation. Anyways, the web page is blocked by default on the WAN side, which is what matters the most. I guess it's the same thing for Apple's utility.

I think that is correct.

Re:Good

[TheFakeTimCook]

Phew. There are just 2 of them!

The thing is, the only reason people get a TimeCapsule is because of that proprietary Time Machine feature. So the vendor lock-in, the proprietary protocol is at the very core of it.

The Airport router is not as bad, I admit, but still, I never met someone getting this router without also having many other Apple devices (usually at least a Mac and an iPhone, often a 3rd device such as an Apple TV). These people are usually vendor locked-in to the bone. They are never going to be able to move away from Apple.

Since there are many NASes that support both AirPlay and Time Machine, it is extremely disingenuous to dismiss those protocols as "Proprietary".

And someone's particular router choice is of no moment. There are MANY all-Apple installations that use third party routers. In fact, my 5th gen. airport AP is the first Apple Router I have owned, which I got because I was upgrading from "g" to "n" at home, and I have never had an interest in a Time Capsule, although they are a pretty nice all-in-one solution for some people.

Re:Good

[Trailer Trash]

Now if only it were hooked up to something nice it may be worth listening to.

By the way I'm taking a dig at your choice of sound system, not your choice of Airport. That thing was* just fine.

*It is completely outclassed by the competition these days.

Understand. However, it's in the kitchen and sounds great in that context.

Re:Good

[ericlondaits]

Nonsense. I have a Time Capsule... and when I go on trips I add a regular WD external drive as a Time Machine destination very easily from the control panel. It could as well be any NAS. No lock in. A new backup from zero doesn't take that much over a wired connection.

... The only issue I'll have when I change routers is that I'll need one that has a good updating mechanism and which I can plug a regular printer into via USB (that's the other thing I'm using the TC for).

Re:Good

[fred6666]

You are so locked-in that you don't even realize it. Try switching from Mac OS to Linux/Windows/whatever and try using that Time Machine on your Time capsule again.

which I can plug a regular printer into via USB

I use printers with Ethernet ports instead.

Orphaned technologies

[HanzoSpam]

So what becomes of orphaned technologies like Time Machine and AirPlay? Do they plan to finally license them out to other vendors?

Re: Orphaned technologies

[bursch-X]

You can buy a Synology NAS at use it as a Time Machine backup station. Wired or wireless.

Re: Orphaned technologies

[bursch-X]

And the Synology Audio Station software also supports AirPlay playback just fine.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[TheFakeTimCook]

So what becomes of orphaned technologies like Time Machine and AirPlay? Do they plan to finally license them out to other vendors?

Neither of those technologies depend on Apple Routers.

Time Machine doesn't do anything other technologies do, anyway. They just made it drop dead simple to implement, and built the backup-browser into MacOS.

As for AirPlay, it does use some semi-proprietary texhnology, I guess; but considering there are already multiple third-patty AirPlay broadcasters and receivers, on multiple platforms (including Android, frinstance), I don't think that the loss of Apple Routers makes any difference.

I will say, however, that I have had several different non-Apple routers, and one of the things I like about my Apple Router is how simple it is to set it up in Bridge Mode. Yes, I have had other Routers that can do Bridge, but it is often non-obvious how to set it up.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[grub]

Both work on non-Apple devices. I have a big TimeMachine ZFS dataset on a NAS4Free box.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[viperidaenz]

They will probably leave them as-is an not invest any more development effort in them.
They've discontinued the financial incentive they had.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[Anonymous Coward]

I will say, however, that I have had several different non-Apple routers, and one of the things I like about my Apple Router is how simple it is to set it up in Bridge Mode. Yes, I have had other Routers that can do Bridge, but it is often non-obvious how to set it up.

That's been one of the features I've most appreciated about the AirPorts for years. I can't speak for other brands, but if you're looking for alternatives, Asus routers make it just as easy.

Re: Orphaned technologies

[Anonymous Coward]

Occasionally it even works, though it usually requires annoying not-quite-supported workarounds. There's months of waiting after a major macOS update for it to work again, too. Perfect for a backup solution.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[tverbeek]

How is Time Machine "orphaned"? It still works with a locally-attached hard drive... not nearly as convenient as with a Time Capsule, but it's still fully functional.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[Anonymous Coward]

I will say, however, that I have had several different non-Apple routers, and one of the things I like about my Apple Router is how simple it is to set it up in Bridge Mode. Yes, I have had other Routers that can do Bridge, but it is often non-obvious how to set it up.

Yes, bridge mode on AirPorts is probably their most useful feature.

Especially when you consider that when not in bridge mode they only have their crappy NAT-PMP implementation and don't support UPnP at all. That kind of fucks with all sorts of things that don't like Double-NAT (like say Xbones and PlayStations).

Re:Orphaned technologies

[another_twilight]

Netatalk is an open source implementation of Apple's Filing Protocol, which is what Time Machine uses.
There's lots of instructions for setting this up on Linux. IIRC I had less problems with this than tracking down odd SMB settings.
Worked flawlessly for years when I was using it (no Macs in the house, at the moment).

Re:Orphaned technologies

[surfcow]

Time Machine is Apple's backup / restore program. It is not going anywhere.

AirPlay (formerly AirTunes) is Apple's proprietary network stack for streaming. It's used by many hardware venders to synch wireless speakers. I believe AirFoil uses it. It's not going anywhere either.

Time Capsule is an AirPort Extreme with an integrated HD used for Time Machine. It is going away.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[TheRaven64]

Samba also supports the requirements for Time Machine over SMB, since Samba 4.8, so you can back up via either SMB or AFP to a non-Apple device.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[Anubis IV]

Orphaned how? A Time Capsule device is just their Time Machine feature wrapped in a piece of hardware, but the feature exists without the Tim Capsule, and is, in fact, how most users are using it already. All you need for Time Machine is a hard drive connected to your Mac. The Time Capsule was just a simple way of putting that drive on your network instead of next to your machine.

Likewise, AirPlay works fine over any WiFi network, Airport or not. The only thing the Airport line brought to AirPlay was the addition of an AirPlay receiver with the Airport Express. I.e. The Express has an audio jack so you can play audio over your network, but there are already hundreds of speakers, docks, AVRs, and even apps for smartphones that allow you to stream AirPlay signals without the Express, so the feature is hardly orphaned. In fact, AirPlay 2 is the next version of the feature and is currently in the beta for the next iOS update.

Re:Orphaned technologies

[tlhIngan]

Orphaned how? A Time Capsule device is just their Time Machine feature wrapped in a piece of hardware, but the feature exists without the Tim Capsule, and is, in fact, how most users are using it already. All you need for Time Machine is a hard drive connected to your Mac. The Time Capsule was just a simple way of putting that drive on your network instead of next to your machine.

And most Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliances from basically anyone, including the one built into most higher end routers that let you share files from a hard drive support Time Machine, too.

So your network backup storage isn't really going away either - if you have a somewhat decent router that can share files off an attached USB hard disk, or a NAS appliance, chances are you can back up to it via Time Machine.

Pity about the express

[khb]

Small, good sound. Guess HomePod sealed its fate ;

Commodities

[Anonymous Coward]

Routers are a commodity.

NAS not as much, but that's because it's more of an investment fully equipped.

The latter because of the dislike of the cloud, is getting more and more server apps.

Apple could have gone with the curated app store model for their own brand of NAS with the ease-of-use servers usually don't have.

Re:Commodities

[viperidaenz]

Synology, NetGear, Asus, QNAP, probably others too, all have curated app stores and easy to use web interfaces.

Re:Commodities

[b0s0z0ku]

Problem was the Time Capsule "tower" (the latest one) was an abysmal design for a NAS. Next to no cooling for the HDD, and critical cables routed in such a way so as to make replacing the HDD a royal pain. If the cables were 6 inches longer and routed around the drive, it would just slide out, but Apple either designed to save 10 cents, or to deliberately frustrate repairs.

Re:Commodities

[Anonymous Coward]

...Apple either designed to save 10 cents, or to deliberately frustrate repairs.

Given what we know about how they engineer Macs, it's a safe bet that they did it primarily to frustrate repairs. The 10 cents savings was just serendipity.

Re:Commodities

[b0s0z0ku]

Yep, gluing a glass panel over the screen and the rest of the computer's internal parts is just an evil design choice. The older iMacs, held on by magnets, were much better.

Re:Commodities

[DontBeAMoran]

The older iMacs were much better, but how did they fucking work? (i.e. magnets?!)

Re:Commodities

[b0s0z0ku]

I meant that the glass panel over the display and innards was held on by rare-Earth magnets. To remove, use a few suction cups and yank...

Good:Hol-e router.

[Anonymous Coward]

Flexible to the point they're full of security holes.

useful range extenders

[supernova87a]

It's unfortunate that Apple didn't make a bigger deal / better known publicity of the feature set of its Airports. Did you know that they have the ability to create extended mesh networks by linking up multiple units, just like overpriced overhyped stuff that some startups are hawking in the last 2 years? It has covered my home like a charm, and you can find used ones for ~$30.

Re:useful range extenders

[Anonymous Coward]

We've been able to set up those features with ddwrt, openwrt on other routers for years if not a decade now.
It's nothing special, nor has it been expensive.
Unless you wanted an Airport router.

Re:useful range extenders

[Reaperducer]

Unless you wanted an Airport router.

Or something that works.

Or something that can be set up in under two minutes.

Or something that doesn't require flashing your router's firmware.

Or something an average person or their parents can use, and not some L33t haxxorz wanna-be kludge.

I have a Time Capsule, and its wifi signal extended through THREE AirMacs across my property. ("AirMac" is the old Japanese branding for Airport Express.) They all work perfectly. All the time. The only time they've been reset is when the power went out a few years ago. And setting the whole thing up was accomplished in under 30 minutes.

Re:useful range extenders

[drinkypoo]

You can get Ubiquiti Ubifi hardware for $99/AP, or the really high-speed stuff for $199. There's no router in there, but they do meshing.

Time Machine.app

[Anonymous Coward]

Will Time Machine.app be discontinued along with the AirPort line?

It's the easiest backup software for my non-technical family members.

Re:Time Machine.app

[grub]

Time Machine isn't dependent on an Airport base station.

Apple's 'achievements'

[sandbagger]

Things Apple has added:

Emoji Bar
Dongles
Watch Bands
Earbuds that need to be thrown out when the batteries degrade
Keyboards and mice that need to be thrown out when the batteries degrade

Things Apple killed recently
Airport
Time capsule
Airports
Cinema Displays and displays with matte finishes
Headphone Jacks
USB Ports
MagSafe
iPods
SD Card Readers
Wired mice and wired keyboards
Machines with PCI cards

Things that are effectively dead
Mac Mini
Mac Pro

Re:Apple's 'achievements'

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm still bummed that they lied when they promised us "Apple II forever".

Re:Apple's 'achievements'

[DoktorMidnight]

Yeah that's...that's how they innovate now. The writing has been on the wall ever since they were willing to make their flagship laptop line "pretty" by removing all the ports except one for their proprietary connector (and charging you a hefty fee if you wanted more than just one of those). And installing a touch bar (though the competition has full touch screens) while leaving the internals underpowered (though I am given to understand that was partially Intel's fault as far as the processors go). Also the keyboards are apparently crap now? That seems to be a subjective complaint, but I hear it a lot. At any rate, I expect in a few years Apple will just be an upscale, fashionable electronics boutique, and everyone will be mildly surprised any time it's mentioned that Apple once made some pretty good computers.

Re:Apple's 'achievements'

[DontBeAMoran]

First Commodore and now Apple. We won't have any good computer brands left in a few decades.

Re:Apple's 'achievements'

[scdeimos]

Blame the Mac guys. They got sand in their jocks when the Apple IIgs came out and could do more for less.

Re:Apple's 'achievements'

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with a touch screen laptop is, how do you open a laptop WITH ONE FINGER, while still being able to use it as a touch screen. I'm sure if they could have made a touch screen and still handle the same opening, they'd have been touting it from the rooftops. I don't think either are all that necessary. But the former is what apple calls revolutionary and touch screen laptops are quite nice for field visits with plans and sketches anybody can point at and manipulate.

Re:Apple's 'achievements'

[Reaperducer]

Apple still sells wired keyboards.

But you also forgot these items that Apple discontinued:
- Floppy drives
- Apple-branded rechargeable AA batteries
- Apple-branded DVD-ROMs
- Apple-branded dialup modems (The last one was built into the original iTit Airport)
- Apple-branded scanners
- Apple-branded digital cameras
- Apple socks (iPod cozies)
- Apple-branded printers

Fortunately, the Wintel equivalents will live forever in discount Chinese websites thanks to Microsoft lemmings.

Re:Apple's 'achievements'

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you could add "Soon to be effectively dead" category and just put "anything not related to ipads, iphones, or iwatches". It's disgusting how the richest company on the planet can't be bothered to stick a new processor or upgrade the RAM once every couple years on some of these computers.

Meh...

[b0s0z0ku]

Their routers were always mediocre -- the lack of a Web configuration control panel was a major negative. They always needed a specific Apple/Windows/iOS only application, and Apple removed functionality from the Airport Utility over time. Dumbed it down, instead of providing an expert mode for "power" users.

Also, the recent "tower" Time Capsules were an asinine design. The hard drive would have been easy enough to slide out and replace, but Apple routed critical cables with fiddly, hard-to-reach, easy-to-break connectors under the drive, in the way of removing it. Also, it had next to no cooling for a spinner 3TB hard drive. Stupid all around.

But I wonder if the goal is to discontinue routers with built-in storage or external storage, so as to nudge people to use Apple's pay-as-a-servide iClown backups instead of (free except for hardware) Time Machine. I doubt it though, because they could have just sold a "redesigned" line of routers without USB or storage built in.

Thank You

[Anonymous Coward]

I run into way too many hipster idiots running their companies on these. Had a 100 seat shop running on an Apple router and time capsule.

Re:Thank You

[b0s0z0ku]

Time Capsule would be problematic for that application, but why the hate of Airport hardware in general -- seems it would work fine as a router even for a 100 member firm.

AE is a great Airplay Device with optical out.

[mveloso]

A little known fact is that you can AirPlay to an Airport Express and it'll output digital PCM to whatever's on the other side. I have a bunch of them feeding into different stereos all over the house, for cheap whole-home audio. Pretty good for a $30 device (used).

Re:AE is a great Airplay Device with optical out.

[b0s0z0ku]

Apple wants to sell you HomePods and noose you to their cloud for $200+ a pop. $30 isn't enough pound of flesh for them.

Re:AE is a great Airplay Device with optical out.

[scdeimos]

The unfortunate problem with AirPort Express is that they're only 802.11n. No bloody ac, ad or ax.

Re:AE is a great Airplay Device with optical out.

[Reaperducer]

A little known fact is that you can AirPlay to an Airport Express and it'll output digital PCM to whatever's on the other side. I have a bunch of them feeding into different stereos all over the house, for cheap whole-home audio. Pretty good for a $30 device (used).

And by "little known," you mean specifically listed on the box, in the manual, in iOS, in iTunes, and on Apple's website?

Speaking of used Airports, a great place to get them cheap is Goodwill. I know a guy who picked up a lot of four for $20.

Re:AE is a great Airplay Device with optical out.

[thegarbz]

And that is a problem for playing a bit of music why?

Re:AE is a great Airplay Device with optical out.

[omnichad]

If they're only acting as a audio receiver/bridge, that won't matter too much. Unless you have audio to stream that's also too large to fit over the optical S/PDIF pipe.

The big question:

[LynnwoodRooster]

When will a new proprietary W1/Bluetooth network protocol for Apple devices be announced?

Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[Yaztromo]

This is really too bad, because the Airport line were fantastic routers, and had a pile of functionality that you can't easily get in any other package.

Back int he mid 2000s, the "flying saucer" routers were designed with institutional use in mind, supporting up to 50 simultaneous connections. They were one of the first home routers that provided IPv6 functionality, both native and tunnelled, right out of the box. They support the Bonjour Sleep Proxy service (I'm not aware of any other router that does), permitting Bonjour services for devices that switch to a low-power mode, along with wide-area Bonjour that can automatically register hosts and their services with a suitable DNS (akin to dynamic DNS, but with services as well). The Expresses have excellent Airplay support, accepting streaming Apple Lossless audio and outputting via either standard analog or digital optical. And the Time Capsules have out-of-the-box support for TimeMachine backups.

They are also very easy to mesh together, and have had it for fifteen years now. The configuration tool will even dynamically generate a connection diagram for all your Airport devices, showing how they interconnect (and whether connections are wired or wireless).

All in all, great routers for the money. I know of no other routers that provide all of these features in one box. Hopefully Apple will partner with someone so we don't lose Bonjour Sleep Proxy and wide-area Bonjour support in particular. And at least my existing installations will continue to work for many years yet. Still a bit of a sad day -- Apple used to be ahead of the curve, but let the market slip past them.

Yaz

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[greenwow]

They were fantastic. My AirPort Extreme I think I bought new in 2003 still works. It's slow so I only use it when my other access points quit. I think I've been through six of other brands since then so I've had to resort to using it many times, but it just keeps working unlike all of the other ones I've ever bought. The next closest one was the good old Linksys WRT54G that I think worked for four years before it started locking up and requiring cycling the power.

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[_LORAX_]

Don't forget they were one of the only routers that was virtually impossible to brick since they were fully link-local ipv6 aware. They were nearly impossible to kill as well.

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[Yaztromo]

They were fantastic. My AirPort Extreme I think I bought new in 2003 still works.

I have one as well, and it also still works. I haven't used it in over a decade, as it capped out at 802.11a/g and I relaxed it with the 802.11n version (and later the 802.11ac version) when they became available.

Some other cool features that people may have forgotten about -- as the Airport Express was designed for travel, it supported up to five "profiles" you could pre-load into it for connecting to different networks. So you could have one profile for home, and one for use in different hotels (for example). This was awesome at a time when many hotels didn't have their own WiFi networks, but who provided Ethernet for business travellers. You could just plug it in, set it to the correct profile, and have your own secure WPA encrypted WiFi network.

I have five Airport routers, and still actively use three of them (an ac Time Capsule, an n Extreme, and an n Express). I don't expect I'll need to replace them for at least 10 years.

Yaz

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[DigiShaman]

Ubiquiti's home product, AmpliFi, blows the Apple AP out of the water. It's mesh too. You can extend the range with extra repeaters that you plug into the wall. The experience is darn "Apple-fied" easy. In fact, I fully expect with near 99% certain that Apple Stores will be stocking the AmpliFi units as direct replacement of their own Airport. And if they don't, well, Apple is just fucking stupid.

Yeah, they're that good.

https://amplifi.com/

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[Yaztromo]

Sure there are good routers out there -- but do they have all of the protocol support the Apple routers have?

I mean, it if doesn't have Bonjour Sleep Proxy or Wide Area Bonjour (and yes, I use both), regular Bonjour advertisements (for services provided by the router itself), and doesn't have Airplay support, then I'm _losing functionality_. A small speed bump doesn't make up for that.

Besides which, Amplifi's IPv6 support is anemic compared to Apple's. According to their own docs they only support DHCPv6 and 6to4. It doesn't appear to support setting up a manual tunnel to something like tunnelbroker.net. I can only assume it supports ICMPv6 RA's (it would seem to be pretty dumb if it didn't), but that doesn't seem to be an option in their configuration.

So "blows out of the water" seems a rather overblown statement right now. I agree however that it would be awesome if Apple teamed up with Amplifi to get these technologies into their routers as a suitable replacement to Apple's APs (the code for all of them is Open Source, so there are no reasons why it can't be done).

Yaz

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[b0s0z0ku]

I suspect that Apple will be cloud-nudging and cloud-pushing for things like printing, music playing, and sharing so lack of Bonjour and Airplay is a feature (to them) not a bug. They can't monetize and bill monthly for local services not controlled by them.

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[Yaztromo]

I suspect that Apple will be cloud-nudging and cloud-pushing for things like printing, music playing, and sharing so lack of Bonjour and Airplay is a feature (to them) not a bug.

They can't get rid of Bonjour. It underpins so much of Apple's cloud strategy in the first place. Wide Area Bonjour and Back to My Mac are already Cloud powered, and Wide Area Bonjour needs Bonjour Sleep Proxy if it's going to be able to deal with devices that can go into low power (sleep) mode. When it comes to Bonjour, it's as if you made the statement that Apple doesn't need to support TCP/IP anymore because "Cloud". Even with the cloud, you still want/need Service Discovery.

As for Airplay, considering Apple is getting close to introducing Airplay 2, I doubt it's going anywhere. It's still the only way to push video from an Apple device to an Apple TV, so it won't be going anywhere soon.

(I should note that you can get Bonjour Sleep Proxy service from an Apple TV if your router doesn't supply it, so again -- it's probably not going anywhere).

Yaz

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[tlhIngan]

Fantastic as they may be, and innovative they once were, well, the rest of industry has pretty much undercut them.

Apple routers were expensive at several hundred bucks each. Sure they're better than the $20 daily special at Best Buy (or the $5 sepcial at Alibaba), you could get some very high end routers with the latest WiFi for less. And even "enterprise class" routers from the likes of Ubiquity Networks (UniFi WiFi APs, AmpliFi routers and mesh networks).

And a lot of them didn't require a Mac or iOS device to configure them, since they had web-based configuration systems.

There was going to be a point when consumers simply stopped buying Apple AirPorts in favor of the competition (of which the field is packed solid), and it was probably a long time ago. Apple under Tim Cook simply likes to hang onto stuff until it's no longer tenale and it's likely some part is now so obsolete Apple cannot build anymore. And given how crowded the field is (it's bad when any retail store has dozens of different models for sale), any new model Apple makes would have seriously strong competition.

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[Anonymous Coward]

For "wide-area" and other proxy service for mDNS and DNS-SD, Stuart Cheshire (from Apple) is trying to standardize it at IETF: https://tools.ietf.org/html/dr... . Hope it can help make it more widespread.

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[DigiShaman]

Well you're right, Bonjour Sleep Proxy is only on the Apple Airport routers. However, mDNS (multicasting, effectively Bonjour) is supported on many networking routers and APs, including Ubiquity based equipment. That said, the parent is correct; Apple will eventually deprecate iTunes and all local medial storage/playback. Oh, I'm sure you can cache cloud media for mobile usage (like in an Airplane), but it all get's tied back to the cloud.

As for me? I'm seriously looking into a 2 disk Synology unit that will act as both my NAS and media. I'm sure I could roll my own solution for cheaper, but, I'm a sucker for elegance and simplicity (I'm not wanting to futz around with that stuff). Who knows, I might find another brand. But my point is, I'm not going to be tied back to Apple any longer despite having iTunes serving me so well. It's a shame really, but cloud streaming is where the industry is headed and I don't want any part of that.

Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers.

[Anonymous Coward]

For "wide-area" and other proxy service for mDNS and DNS-SD, Stuart Cheshire (from Apple) is trying to standardize it at IETF: https://tools.ietf.org/html/dr... . Hope it can help make it more widespread.

Oh GOD!! Then we will never be able to rid ourselves of the scour that is APPLE!!

Replacements?

[Wolfrider]

--So, does anyone have any good recommendations for something to replace AirPort routers ?

Re:Replacements?

[Anonymous Coward]

--So, does anyone have any good recommendations for something to replace AirPort routers ?

Ubiquiti UniFi. Hands down.

Re:Replacements?

[another_twilight]

You can probably manage to either replace the Airport's ease of use, or the functionality, but not both.

Custom firmware like DD-WRT on ASUS routers was what I was using up until moving to pfSense on a small atom board. The ASUS hardware was decent enough, and less eye-wateringly priced than some competitors. I still have one in use as a dumb access point.

I've seen instructions for compiling Netatalk for DD-WRT for a more complete AirPort replacement. I've used Netatalk on an Ubuntu box as a TimeMachine source which worked seamlessly, for years.

But this fails, hard, on ease of use.

Re:Replacements?

[aaarrrgggh]

I like Unifi a lot, but I am not sure it is really a great replacement for an AirPort-- it is a significant upgrade with external APs. Personally, as I look forward to eventually having gigabit internet, an external AP becomes a huge benefit.

But, Ubiquiti also has their AmpliFi all-in-one line, which hits the same market pretty well and offers solid mesh capability.

Re:Replacements?

[wootcat]

With AirPort routers discontinued, here are the best alternatives for Mac and iPhone users

http://appleinsider.com/articl...

Re:Replacements?

[Wolfrider]

--That's perfect - Thanks! :)

a uniquely great product abandoned

[tverbeek]

I don't care so much about the router-only models, which can be replaced with competing commodity routers. But the Time Capsule model has no equivalent, and was one of Apple's best ideas... OK, half of one of their best ideas. The other half is Time Machine, which is hands down, the best personal-computer backup system I have ever seen: set it up, and forget about it until you need it. Working over wifi, it's like "cloud" backup, but faster, no monthly fees, and low probability of data breaches.

I gently pushed the Time Capsule to every customer who bought a computer from me the year I worked in the Apple Store... not because management told me to (they didn't), but because I wanted people to have them. I already have one, of course, but – like the iPod Shuffle I wear every time I go to the gym – I anticipate a day will come eventually when I'll need a replacement. And Apple won't have anything like it.

Re:a uniquely great product abandoned

[omnichad]

They've proven time and again they don't want good products unless they are mass appeal now.

They already dropped legacy Final Cut Pro (and broke it entirely in High Sierra), have no good Mac Pro line anymore, and even hobbled their Macbook Pro with useless keyboards.

Re:a uniquely great product abandoned

[Cutterman]

Yep, I agree with you there, particularly for backups.

My ex-wife and son are technophobes who couldn't keep a Windows system up for a week without borking it. So I bought them Mac laptops and a fat Time Machine - no trouble since because effectively nothing to set up. Switch on, OSX finds the Time Machine and starts backing up.

I have one too, though I disabled the router and just use it as an expensive switch - but Time Machine just chugs on.
Naturally I have other NASes around that I back up Windows and Linux to, but Time Machine is so simple - "it just works" and yes, I _have_ done successful restores from it.

A particularly stupid move on Apple's part.

Mac

Re:a uniquely great product abandoned

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care so much about the router-only models, which can be replaced with competing commodity routers. But the Time Capsule model has no equivalent, and was one of Apple's best ideas... OK, half of one of their best ideas. The other half is Time Machine, which is hands down, the best personal-computer backup system I have ever seen: set it up, and forget about it until you need it. Working over wifi, it's like "cloud" backup, but faster, no monthly fees, and low probability of data breaches.

Don't worry! APPLE will find a way to break that or monetize it!

I gently pushed the Time Capsule to every customer who bought a computer from me the year I worked in the Apple Store... not because management told me to (they didn't), but because I wanted people to have them. I already have one, of course, but – like the iPod Shuffle I wear every time I go to the gym – I anticipate a day will come eventually when I'll need a replacement. And Apple won't have anything like it.

Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Craptacular non-compliant garbage that didn't want to work with a real network.

too bad apple is such a poor small underdog

[Anonymous Coward]

it is so sad that apple is a poor small underdog company that lacks sufficient resources to be able to maintain a dozen different products.
if only they had the money, i'm sure they wouldn't have left all their fans hanging in the breeze like this.

Will Google WiFi be next?

[Tony Isaac]

I love my Google WiFi system. For the first time, I have no dead spots in the house. It just works, and it has all the features I want, and then some.

BUT when Apple decided to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone, the other phone makers started to follow suit.

I hope Google doesn't, in this case, but I'm certainly not sure.

Re:Will Google WiFi be next?

[tsa]

Google won't do that. It's a great way to get to know their customers even better. Even when you use VPN they can follow every move you make on the interwebs thanks tto their wifi equipment.

Free wifi routers

[sit1963nz]

My experience with ISPs that supply a free WiFi router is that they will supply the cheapest POS that they can. The WiFi has been crap with drop outs, dead zones requiring the whole thing to be reset. My Airport express has always just sat there, working, excellent coverage. I have my USB printer plugged into it, and that works just fine. I guess after all the promises and delays the Mac mini will be DOA too as will the Mac Pro.

Re:Free wifi routers

[tsa]

Yep. And they go on forever. I bought mine ten years ago and they still work.

Re:Free wifi routers

[Bert64]

In general anything supplied by a consumer isp will be garbage...
I had my house wired up with ethernet in every room, and cables in the ceilings in strategic locations for ceiling-mount wifi devices. Considering that internet access is now ubiquitous in many countries i'd expect all new houses to be built this way then you can just configure your router to talk to the isp's service.

Get used to it

[Anonymous Coward]

You better get used to it because Tim Cook Apple has has started on the downward spiral that has consumed many other former tech Giants. I wouldn't be surprised if we see nothing but fail for apple in the years ahead.

OpenWRT

[Anonymous Coward]

OpenWRT (w/ Atheros chips) FTW !

Spreadsheet ROI Cook again

[mccalli]

This isn't a good move. I'll bet it looks like a good move from an ROI spreadsheet, but we're seeing daily that Tim Cook really isn't a 'product experience' person at all. He's losing what made things integrate and be special.

In ye olden days, the saucer Airport was a revelation. Apple could control the set up experience, and it showed. Other routers existed, but none were so simple to set up. You can argue a many have caught up with that now, and I will also totally agree that others have surpassed it in configurability and modern wifi standard support, but you're then left as a shop that sells somebody else's product. Your initial experience is no longer "go to the Apple Store, buy a MacBook Pro and an Airport, come home and have it all Just Work with lots of friendly Apple software and Apple videos etc. to help if necessary". You're back into the old computer land thing with a 100 choices to make before you've even bought the stuff. And if 'it' goes wrong...what's gone wrong? Your MBP's wifi, your router? Who do you call when Apple says it's the router and the router manufacturer says it's Apple?

As tech knowledgable people on this site (sic) that not only wouldn't bother us much but would likely be seen as an advantage. But as standard home user...nope, choosing between 20 router manufactures and then hoping it works well when you set it up is simply not a friendly experience.

Consistent whole experiences is what drew people to this simplicity. Losing it because the ROI on one bit isn't as high as the ROI on another is thinking the wrong way - you need to look at the full experience, the full ecosystem. Jobs knew that, seems to me that Cook doesn't.

A victim of their own success

[MMC Monster]

The Airport line were a victim of their own success.

The people posting here about their personal experiences with Airports (myself included) all have similar stories.

They tried several other routers which had a wide variety of problems. They then bought an Airport ~10 years ago and everything has been perfect since.

You can't build a business like Apple's on single purchases unless the word of mouth was incredible. Unfortunately people don't discuss buying routers all that much. They just go to a store and buy one.

Asus

[Anonymous Coward]

The are not cheap, but after going through several iterations of "home" routers, Linksys, Belkin, Netgear... you name it. Had to reboot them constantly, only some stuff would successfully connect.

When I got a new router, I went with Asus. It was used to replace an old AirPort Time Capsule (which I only use for the Time Machine functionality now).

The default Asus software doesn't generally suck, and you have third-party firmware with both Merlin and DD-WRT.

Honest?

[tysonedwards]

Isnâ(TM)t it more that they were finally honest with people that 6 year old products that havenâ(TM)t been refreshed or even discussed have been discontinued long ago and they forgot to tell the public?

Better solutions

[DrYak]

There are better solution than that.

On some brands of router, the default password isn't something simple (like "admin"), but each device has a random string generated as a default password and wifi, just as each device has its own serial number (it might be that one is generated from the other on-device), with those printed out on same sticker as the serial number on the box it self (there is no default password in the manual, as there is no series-wide password) so in an emergency you can reset to these long random default.

Firmware security

[DrYak]

Mikrotiks, on the other hand, as easy to re-install with a good opensource firmware (like OpenWRT/LEDE, etc.).
Same with tons of cheap chinese routers (though not all have enough flash/ram to support all features including filesharing over IPv6, at least they can have good basic router functionality).

The same cannot be said for Apple's hardware.
  - 3rd party firmware has always been difficult.
  - apple discontinuing them means no way to get a 1st party secure firmware either.

Follow the money

[Anonymous Coward]

This is just a move to put a cellular data chip in every computing device so they can get a piece of the monthly service fee, versus Wi-Fi which has no service fees. Greed plain and simple.

Probably for the best

[HuguesT]

I've been using Apple routers for a long time with mixed results. The express line is simple but not fast or very robust. ISP provide their own wifi routers now, so why bother? My time capsules have always failed (typically shortly after the warranty period expired) so now I'm just using a large NAS.

Routers entangled with spooks and spying

[Btrot69]

I liked apple routers, because they were reliable, simple enough for non-techies, they got regular security updates, and they were based on BSD.

But, routers are super political.
Control of routers is control of the internet.
The hacking of routers is central to the operation of every national spy agency.
Snowden revealed the NSA's detailed "map" of the internet, which showed that they had tables from just about every router out there.
Every router seems to have some exploit and open-source projects are always being disrupted (by "agent-provocateurs" ?).

Apple has been dealing with a lot of political pressure to cooperate with the spooks on iPhone encryption.
They were undoubtably getting to same pressure RE their routers.
They probably decided that the business wasn't worth the risk to their reputation.

Too bad ;)

I hope they give us some way to upgrade to an open source BSD router in the future.

how to hack

[Anonymous Coward]

This man assisted me in hacking my CHEATING HUSBAND Facebook account and he is a very good hacker for services like :WhatsApp, call logs, test messages etc. He delivers in 2hrs or less you can contact him via:
Email: E N R I Q U E H A C K D E M O N 11 ( a t ) G M A I L d o t C O M.
WhatsApp: + 1 ( 6 2 8 ) 2 0 3 - 7 0 0 5
Text/Call: + 1 ( 4 0 9 ) 9 9 9 - 3 4 7 7 .He might ask for who referred you to him say MONIQUE.

Time capsule functional equivalent?

[notbob]

I use a time capsule at both my primary locations for backup and have more than loved this device for many reliable years. I donâ(TM)t want to put terabytes of data in the cloud or have hell restoring a laptop. Ever broke a laptop and been back to work in hours? Itâ(TM)s epic good.