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from the stick-to-what-you-are-good-at dept.
Apple Inc. has disbanded its division that develops wireless routers, another move to try to sharpen the company's focus on consumer products that generate the bulk of its revenue, according to people familiar with the matter.
Apple began shutting down the wireless router team over the past year, dispersing engineers to other product development groups, including the one handling the Apple TV, said the people, who asked not to be named because the decision hasn't been publicly announced.
Apple hasn't refreshed its routers since 2013 following years of frequent updates to match new standards from the wireless industry. The decision to disband the team indicates the company isn't currently pushing forward with new versions of its routers. An Apple spokeswoman declined to comment on the company's plans.
Routers are access points that connect laptops, iPhones and other devices to the web without a cable. Apple currently sells three wireless routers, the AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and AirPort Time capsule. The Time capsule doubles as a backup storage hard drive for Mac computers.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday November 25 2016, @04:10PM
These days, whose internet doesn't come with a wireless router (if it's still cable bound) or is completely wireless at all? There's simply no point in providing such stuff to a shrinking minority of people while they aim at the 80% of easy revenue. Which leaves the Time Capsule thingy. If they continue to support it, they enlarge the support hellhole of heterogenous home networks. If they drop it, every Mac user who doesn't want the inconvenience of external HDD plug orgies has to subscribe to their backup cloud. Easy decision, inni?
That said, for the time being I'm well done with them after having all of the latest and greatest gear affordable to mortals (and in the case of a IIfx even beyond that) since the Apple II plus. I didn't like the direction of the OS past SL much in the first place, but an ongoing support nightmare with a decked out Retina MBP whose logic board's soldered on 16 GB of RAM crapped out after less than 4 years is the straw that broke the camel's back. That and the fact that a little Linux machine runs my home routing means I am not and never was in the market for an Apple wireless base station, so I don't care about them dropping the devices - but then, I don't belong to these 80% they now go for.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 25 2016, @05:44PM
Plenty of reasons not to blindly accept the WiFi from your ISP. Aside from security reasons, some even charge you more to use it.
That said, i'm not trying to imply apple Airports were the ideal choice, so not a huge loss here.. ( tho time machines, were pretty cool )
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 26 2016, @12:35AM
any time there is a loss of competition, I consider it to be a bad thing. The winners become motivated to settle for average, without something to be better than.
And routers are not access points. Access points are wireless hubs.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Saturday November 26 2016, @02:04AM
In this case the winners are TP-Link and their ilk. Basic wireless router (4x 100 Mbit Ethernet) 16 EUR retail, new. You don't get a dedicated AP with a single RJ-45 for less. Deluxe wireless router with DSL Modem, 6-Antenna abgnac, 4xGBit Ethernet, 2 USB Ports, OpenWRT capable, 66 EUR. Does what it needs to, more than good enough. Good luck with thinking up "value add" features to compete there.
And Apple's current target demographic has no clue what any of the technical terms in above paragraph mean. They don't have any "reasons not to blindly accept the WiFi from their ISP" either.