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

Posted by BeauHD on from the gone-with-the-wind dept.

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."

2 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. AE is a great Airplay Device with optical out. by mveloso · · Score: 5, Informative

    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).

  2. Too bad -- they were fantastic routers. by Yaztromo · · Score: 5, Informative

    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