19 ms·

Ugh, this is the first news that I've seen that I feel is really bad. Monitors were ok, that seemed understandable since they were for professionals to go with

by abakker 10y ago

Ugh, this is the first news that I've seen that I feel is really bad. Monitors were ok, that seemed understandable since they were for professionals to go with the mac pro. Apple's monitors were at best "prosumer". Wifi though has always been a very big PITA for consumers, and Apple's hardware/software integration has always been a better bet for ease of configuration, and honestly, reliability. The optimist in me hopes that maybe they'll have something better for us, or are making an acquisition to replace their current product lineup completely. The pessimist in me thinks that maybe they're leaving this market to avoid needing to develop hardware that meets its publicly stated standards for protecting consumer privacy. Potentially they have been approached/mandated to enable some kind of backdoor in it, and they chose to stop producing it, rather than comply. /tinfoil_hat

aeharding 10y ago
On the other hand, consumers seem to be better at configuring wireless routers today than 5 years ago. I rarely see an unsecured router with the default configuration any more ("linksys" SSID, no password). I did enjoy using Apple's wireless routers, though.
- cmg 10y ago
  I don't know that people are getting better at it, rather it seems to be because routers are coming with randomized passwords printed on a sticker on the unit itself. And it's anecdotal but my neighborhood is littered with base Comcast & AT&T SSIDs.
  - icebraining 10y ago
    That's certainly what happened in my country - people started getting pre-configured wireless routers with their ISP contract. Nowadays a good third of them even have Fonera enabled, which is nice.
- csydas 10y ago
  I think the set up has become a bit more consumer friendly and appliance like, which may in part lead to better security. Most of the major vendors are even pretty good about disabling commonly exploited functions of older firmwares; there are fewer and fewer routers that are vulnerable to reaver by default now because the WPS function is either disabled or removed completely. This of course doesn't address lesser known more threatening holes, but still it's a start. But I do concur - I will miss the ease of the Airport tech (not so much the most recent prices though).
tptacek 10y ago
I've had Apple base stations. I don't anymore. Not because I don't like the Apple base stations, but because I just don't care. I almost never interact with my wireless router (the only time I've done it in the past year was to accomplish something that the Airport Express can't even do). I didn't find my current wireless router to be any more difficult to set up than the Airport was. Also: don't most people get their wireless service from their cable router now? I don't think Apple has a comparative advantage in providing wireless routers. That's not to say that there's no advantage to be found in producing excellent wireless routers: there are companies trying to do this today, but Apple isn't one of them.
- whitepoplar 10y ago
  What do you think is the best router for general home use, given your security expertise?
  - ryao 10y ago
    I am not the one you asked, but I have become a fan of Ubiquiti's ER-X due to the performance of the small queue, its low cost and Swiss Army knife like feature set. I have not run into anything that it cannot do yet (unless pushing more than 180Mbps through the smart queue counts).
  - jlgaddis 10y ago
    I'm also not who you asked but I'll jump in anyways. I'm a network engineer and use pretty much "enterprise" gear across the board at home. A couple of years ago, though, I yanked out my Cisco ASA firewall (connecting my home network to my ISP) and replaced it. I'm now using a (expensive) "RouterMaxx 1106" [0] (PDF) as my home router. It was designed for and shipped with Mikrotik RouterOS but I replaced that with pfSense, initially, and then switched, later, to OpenBSD. It Just Works(TM). The hardware, for the most part, doesn't matter too much. The software you choose is much more important, in my opinion. Choose something that can be tuned and locked down as needed and, critically, gets updated regularly. I'm a "CLI guy" and quite comfortable with OpenBSD and a terminal so this setup works for me. For those desiring a point-and-click web-based method of administration, pfSense, OpenWRT, and similar may better serve their needs. n.b.: FWIW, my router doesn't provide Wi-Fi, only (6 x 1000 Mbit) wired Ethernet. I have been using an Aerohive AP330 access point but am currently replacing it with a Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC PRO. [0]: http://www.balticnetworks.com/docs/routermaxx%206%20port.pdf http://www.balticnetworks.com/docs/routermaxx%206%20port.pdf (PDF)
ChildOfChaos 10y ago
Who cares? Who uses these? You're provider gives you a free router when you sign up and you plug it in, type in your password on your devices and boom you never think or worry about it again. There is no need for Apple to be in this market, there is no problem to be solved for 99.9% of people.
- ceejayoz 10y ago
  > You're provider gives you a free router when you sign up and you plug it in Time Warner charges $10/month for theirs, and they're awful.
- DocTomoe 10y ago
  > boom you never think or worry about it again. Experience tells me this is not actually the case. Provider-provided routers are a major PITA if you want them secure and stable.
- bnastic 10y ago
  I use one (Time Capsule), and have used them for years. They have a pretty convincing value add story... let alone the fact that I also have a few Express stations around the place for music streaming.
- 72deluxe 10y ago
  I had a router from BT that despite having won awards, could not resolve its external IPv4 address internally. It knew what its external address was and knew that it had to DMZ everything to an internal address, but if you attempted to resolve the external address (expecting it to go to your DMZ'd machine), it'd fail. I also had a router from another UK ISP that would crash and hang if you sent it a malformed IP packet (ie put its respond-to address as itself); it'd go mental replying to itself and then processing the messages it sent to itself. Not quality. The EE broadband router I had would hand off its internal web admin session to external visitors if they connected whilst a web admin session was in progress. Yes, let's hand our internal web admin session page to an external visitor.... BT sent another hub that looked identical and worked correctly; underneath it was a Siemens instead of a Thompson I think. So all in all, I have found that the ISP boxes were never really finished, and some (like Sky's box) needed rebooting periodically as I recall, so buggy too.
ChildOfChaos 10y ago
Who cares? Who uses these? Your provided gives you a free router when you sign up and you plug it in, type in your password on your devices and boom you never think or worry about it again. There is no need for Apple to be in this market, there is no problem to be solved for 99.9% of people.
nextos 10y ago
If you want a good router, and have a bit of time to spare, I think the best route is to buy a low power machine [1], or assemble one yourself and run BSD or Linux. Hopefully, in the near future we can have this done with libre hardware. Cheap POWER stuff would be great. [1] http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/fitlet/ http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/fitlet/
- jeremy7600 10y ago
  I did just this in the 90s and into 2000s with an amd dx4-100, FreeBSD, two network cards and a hub. Best firewall I could have asked for, reports out the wazoo, and was very reliable. And it was all free!
specialist 10y ago
I switched to AirPorts because they're plug and forget. I just want something that works with my other Apple gear. Doubly so when I'm doing tech support for friends and family. $200 is reasonable, compared to all the time I've spent farting with other brands of WiFi routers, including whatever piece of crap my ISP sent me. Now what's the no-brainer WiFi router choice? ASUS something, Ubiquity (sp?)? Read some reviews, order what seems the best, marvel at the weird new mutant feature set... Oops, that's another afternoon wasted. Oh darn, my offbrand WiFi router had another security exploit, 6 months ago, and I just found out. And so forth. Hopefully the silver lining is Apple is anticipating metro WiFi (WiMax?), though I wish they were helping drive that transition. Like I had hoped Google was... Oh well.
- Aaargh20318 10y ago
  > Now what's the no-brainer WiFi router choice? ASUS something, Ubiquity (sp?)? Read some reviews, order what seems the best, marvel at the weird new mutant feature set... Oops, that's another afternoon wasted. Ubiquity. Or in general: stay away from consumer-grade network equipment.
  - pixelcloud 10y ago
    The irony is the Airport Extreme performs better than the equivalent Ubi AP. Airport is amazing for consistent throughput and reliability.
    - givinguflac 10y ago
      It really is; I'm going to go buy one as a backup. I purchased the original first gen time capsule, and it ran for over two years straight without even rebooting the damn thing. Short of a hardware malfunction (which is exceedingly rare in my troubleshooting experience, but power surges happen..) they just work.
    - Aaargh20318 10y ago
      > The irony is the Airport Extreme performs better than the equivalent Ubi AP. Consumer-grade routers usually are faster. What they are not is more reliable, or easy to use/manage.
jdc0589 10y ago
there are lots of consumer grade routers just as good or better than Airports. Problem is finding them amidst the sea of absolute crap. Option 1: look and see what all the DDWRT/tomato/etc... guys are suggesting. Chances are the hardware is decent, and you know it will have support for the good 3rd party firmwares if you ever want to try it. Option 2: Abandon all consumer grade gear. Just get Ubiquity stuff. Option 3: Google just released their routers (like last week), which support automatic mesh networking when you use multiple. Way too early to make a call, but its something to keep an eye on.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Why bother? My ISP gives me a decent router with built-in wifi. The wifi is N, but I wanted AC, so I bought a Netgear and put it in access point mode. Took all of 30 seconds. If you don't trust your ISP provided firewall/router then you probably have bigger problems. Both big ISPs in my area offer to turn the router into a bridge-mode device I can plug into a box running pfsense if I desire it, but frankly, that sounds like a PITA. Their routers work well enough. I think going forward we will just buy access point, not routers. The router problem has been solved for a long time. >Abandon all consumer grade gear. Just get Ubiquity stuff. I'd argue Ubiquity is really consumer stuff, just small business friendly. Their performance, price, stability, etc isn't that much better than a Netgear in access point mode. They just have a java-based controller which is handy for managing multiple AP's. Inside, they're kinda crappy. >Google just released their routers (like last week), which support automatic mesh networking when you use multiple. Google wifi is actually a latecomer. You can get residential friendlier Ubiquity-style solutions via Orbi or Eero, which is what Google is copying here. I believe Google's 3-pack beats both on price currently. edit: modems and routers are completely different cases/devices and performance/stability are different than money saving. Regardless, my ISP doesn't charge me for my modem, so there's no incentive for me to buy my own.
  - harryh 10y ago
    You're probably paying a monthly rental fee for the router/modem from your ISP. There's a good chance you'll save money in ~12 months or so if you buy instead of rent.
PaulHoule 10y ago
If you really want high performance networking, use wired. It is stupid to connect a television set, for instance, via WiFi. You should plug in anything that doesn't move around, and leave the limited bandwidth WiFi for those who need it. People won't listen though because in 2016 it seems most people think wires are ritually unclean.
- Kurtz79 10y ago
  What about mobile phones, tablets, laptops ? It is a given that wired is a better option, but I cannot imagine any modern SOHO environment without a wireless router/access point.
  - PaulHoule 10y ago
    Using a wired network for things that can be wired frees up capacity for mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. For instance, if you are moving files to and from a server, you get way better performance if the server is wired than if the server is wireless too because the server->hub and hub->client links interfere with each other. Mesh networks are just going from the frying pan to the fire. I am not saying that people "don't need wireless" but that if having a reliable WiFi network matters to you, the best way to speed up your WiFi network is to move anything that you can possible move to wired to free up bandwidth for WiFi. That includes turning off the rouge access points that are created by printers, game consoles, phones, etc.
  - izacus 10y ago
    Noone is saying that, but there's very limited bandwith available in the air (especially in the 2.4GHz band). If you move datahungry devices like TVs, NAS, etc. off the air, you gain a lot of free spectrum for the phones and tablets.
    - PaulHoule 10y ago
      Exactly, the gains from proper engineering are vastly greater than from buying expensive consumer routers, particularly when you consider reliability.
joesmo 10y ago
Why do you think Apple's routers might be backdoor free but other companies' routers won't be? What makes Apple so special in this regard? I understand they challenged the government on the San Bernardino cell phone, but that's irrelevant as they also cooperate with the government like all other major companies. Is this idea simply based on some public statement or policy and if so why do you believe that given Apple's track record of cooperation that continues to this day?
weaves 10y ago
Lack of Airport improvement was one of the biggest reasons why we started eero.
- iNerdier 10y ago
  I was curious until I looked at your website and found that it's 1) US only and 2) requires not only a smartphone but a US phone number to set up. I mean really, this is the kind of thing you can/should be able to log into from a web page, why does this all have to be locked behind an app?
BinaryIdiot 10y ago
> Apple's hardware/software integration has always been a better bet for ease of configuration, and honestly, reliability. Meh. I worked at AppleCare for about 1.5 years and when I got calls regarding issues with the MacBooks I'd say 99% of the time the internet connectivity issues was with the AirPort Extreme and it had to be hard reset (I've had to walk through this process so much I could essentially recite it in my sleep back in the day). That's only an anecdote but consumer grade networking, including Apple's, just always seems to suck. Nowadays I try to spend a little more and get some sort of small business type of router. So, in my mind, their customers are not missing out on much. Though I'll admit the App for getting it up was nicely than browsing to some IP address like many routers at the time.
- evanelias 10y ago
  Totally agree -- these things seem to have major quality problems. Many years ago I spent $200 on an Apple router. It died completely in just over a year, literally a few weeks after the warranty period. It wouldn't even power on. Granted, just an anecdote with a sample size of 1, but after that experience there's no way I would ever consider buying another Apple router. Especially since my previous router (a Linksys) was still chugging along after like 7 years.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  Now Comcast and FiOS get those calls because they ship WiFi routers with their modems. That's the real reason Apple is getting out of consumer WiFi routers: for most consumers it is an optional aftermarket accessory that makes things more complicated, not less. Even my crappy DSL modem is a WiFi router. To attach my preferred router I had to login and set it to bridge mode. Why would Apple want to sell a product that requires people to do that?
  - BinaryIdiot 10y ago
    > Now Comcast and FiOS get those calls because they ship WiFi routers with their modems. The best part of working on fixing an internet issue was the second it looked like it could be an issue with the cable modem we had to get off the call. Even if it's likely turning it off and on would have worked. We were told to have the customer call their ISP and refuse to help with even any ideas let alone walking through something. Which, I get, you don't want to be diagnosing some third party hardware. But I'd say about half the time when someone made it to me they have already called both Apple Care AND their ISP at least 1-2 times and they continue to blame each other.
nicky0 10y ago
Having never owned or seen the need for an Apple router, can you explain what is so great about them?

by abakker 10y ago

aeharding 10y ago

On the other hand, consumers seem to be better at configuring wireless routers today than 5 years ago. I rarely see an unsecured router with the default configuration any more ("linksys" SSID, no password). I did enjoy using Apple's wireless routers, though.

cmg 10y ago
I don't know that people are getting better at it, rather it seems to be because routers are coming with randomized passwords printed on a sticker on the unit itself. And it's anecdotal but my neighborhood is littered with base Comcast & AT&T SSIDs.
- icebraining 10y ago
  That's certainly what happened in my country - people started getting pre-configured wireless routers with their ISP contract. Nowadays a good third of them even have Fonera enabled, which is nice.
csydas 10y ago
I think the set up has become a bit more consumer friendly and appliance like, which may in part lead to better security. Most of the major vendors are even pretty good about disabling commonly exploited functions of older firmwares; there are fewer and fewer routers that are vulnerable to reaver by default now because the WPS function is either disabled or removed completely. This of course doesn't address lesser known more threatening holes, but still it's a start. But I do concur - I will miss the ease of the Airport tech (not so much the most recent prices though).

tptacek 10y ago

I've had Apple base stations. I don't anymore. Not because I don't like the Apple base stations, but because I just don't care. I almost never interact with my wireless router (the only time I've done it in the past year was to accomplish something that the Airport Express can't even do). I didn't find my current wireless router to be any more difficult to set up than the Airport was. Also: don't most people get their wireless service from their cable router now? I don't think Apple has a comparative advantage in providing wireless routers. That's not to say that there's no advantage to be found in producing excellent wireless routers: there are companies trying to do this today, but Apple isn't one of them.

whitepoplar 10y ago
What do you think is the best router for general home use, given your security expertise?
- ryao 10y ago
  I am not the one you asked, but I have become a fan of Ubiquiti's ER-X due to the performance of the small queue, its low cost and Swiss Army knife like feature set. I have not run into anything that it cannot do yet (unless pushing more than 180Mbps through the smart queue counts).
- jlgaddis 10y ago
  I'm also not who you asked but I'll jump in anyways. I'm a network engineer and use pretty much "enterprise" gear across the board at home. A couple of years ago, though, I yanked out my Cisco ASA firewall (connecting my home network to my ISP) and replaced it. I'm now using a (expensive) "RouterMaxx 1106" [0] (PDF) as my home router. It was designed for and shipped with Mikrotik RouterOS but I replaced that with pfSense, initially, and then switched, later, to OpenBSD. It Just Works(TM). The hardware, for the most part, doesn't matter too much. The software you choose is much more important, in my opinion. Choose something that can be tuned and locked down as needed and, critically, gets updated regularly. I'm a "CLI guy" and quite comfortable with OpenBSD and a terminal so this setup works for me. For those desiring a point-and-click web-based method of administration, pfSense, OpenWRT, and similar may better serve their needs. n.b.: FWIW, my router doesn't provide Wi-Fi, only (6 x 1000 Mbit) wired Ethernet. I have been using an Aerohive AP330 access point but am currently replacing it with a Ubiquiti Unifi AP AC PRO. [0]: http://www.balticnetworks.com/docs/routermaxx%206%20port.pdf http://www.balticnetworks.com/docs/routermaxx%206%20port.pdf (PDF)

ChildOfChaos 10y ago

Who cares? Who uses these? You're provider gives you a free router when you sign up and you plug it in, type in your password on your devices and boom you never think or worry about it again. There is no need for Apple to be in this market, there is no problem to be solved for 99.9% of people.

ceejayoz 10y ago
> You're provider gives you a free router when you sign up and you plug it in Time Warner charges $10/month for theirs, and they're awful.
DocTomoe 10y ago
> boom you never think or worry about it again. Experience tells me this is not actually the case. Provider-provided routers are a major PITA if you want them secure and stable.
bnastic 10y ago
I use one (Time Capsule), and have used them for years. They have a pretty convincing value add story... let alone the fact that I also have a few Express stations around the place for music streaming.
72deluxe 10y ago
I had a router from BT that despite having won awards, could not resolve its external IPv4 address internally. It knew what its external address was and knew that it had to DMZ everything to an internal address, but if you attempted to resolve the external address (expecting it to go to your DMZ'd machine), it'd fail. I also had a router from another UK ISP that would crash and hang if you sent it a malformed IP packet (ie put its respond-to address as itself); it'd go mental replying to itself and then processing the messages it sent to itself. Not quality. The EE broadband router I had would hand off its internal web admin session to external visitors if they connected whilst a web admin session was in progress. Yes, let's hand our internal web admin session page to an external visitor.... BT sent another hub that looked identical and worked correctly; underneath it was a Siemens instead of a Thompson I think. So all in all, I have found that the ISP boxes were never really finished, and some (like Sky's box) needed rebooting periodically as I recall, so buggy too.

ChildOfChaos 10y ago

Who cares? Who uses these? Your provided gives you a free router when you sign up and you plug it in, type in your password on your devices and boom you never think or worry about it again. There is no need for Apple to be in this market, there is no problem to be solved for 99.9% of people.

nextos 10y ago

If you want a good router, and have a bit of time to spare, I think the best route is to buy a low power machine [1], or assemble one yourself and run BSD or Linux. Hopefully, in the near future we can have this done with libre hardware. Cheap POWER stuff would be great. [1] http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/fitlet/ http://www.fit-pc.com/web/products/fitlet/

jeremy7600 10y ago
I did just this in the 90s and into 2000s with an amd dx4-100, FreeBSD, two network cards and a hub. Best firewall I could have asked for, reports out the wazoo, and was very reliable. And it was all free!

specialist 10y ago

I switched to AirPorts because they're plug and forget. I just want something that works with my other Apple gear. Doubly so when I'm doing tech support for friends and family. $200 is reasonable, compared to all the time I've spent farting with other brands of WiFi routers, including whatever piece of crap my ISP sent me. Now what's the no-brainer WiFi router choice? ASUS something, Ubiquity (sp?)? Read some reviews, order what seems the best, marvel at the weird new mutant feature set... Oops, that's another afternoon wasted. Oh darn, my offbrand WiFi router had another security exploit, 6 months ago, and I just found out. And so forth. Hopefully the silver lining is Apple is anticipating metro WiFi (WiMax?), though I wish they were helping drive that transition. Like I had hoped Google was... Oh well.

Aaargh20318 10y ago
> Now what's the no-brainer WiFi router choice? ASUS something, Ubiquity (sp?)? Read some reviews, order what seems the best, marvel at the weird new mutant feature set... Oops, that's another afternoon wasted. Ubiquity. Or in general: stay away from consumer-grade network equipment.
- pixelcloud 10y ago
  The irony is the Airport Extreme performs better than the equivalent Ubi AP. Airport is amazing for consistent throughput and reliability.
  - givinguflac 10y ago
    It really is; I'm going to go buy one as a backup. I purchased the original first gen time capsule, and it ran for over two years straight without even rebooting the damn thing. Short of a hardware malfunction (which is exceedingly rare in my troubleshooting experience, but power surges happen..) they just work.
  - Aaargh20318 10y ago
    > The irony is the Airport Extreme performs better than the equivalent Ubi AP. Consumer-grade routers usually are faster. What they are not is more reliable, or easy to use/manage.

jdc0589 10y ago

there are lots of consumer grade routers just as good or better than Airports. Problem is finding them amidst the sea of absolute crap. Option 1: look and see what all the DDWRT/tomato/etc... guys are suggesting. Chances are the hardware is decent, and you know it will have support for the good 3rd party firmwares if you ever want to try it. Option 2: Abandon all consumer grade gear. Just get Ubiquity stuff. Option 3: Google just released their routers (like last week), which support automatic mesh networking when you use multiple. Way too early to make a call, but its something to keep an eye on.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago
Why bother? My ISP gives me a decent router with built-in wifi. The wifi is N, but I wanted AC, so I bought a Netgear and put it in access point mode. Took all of 30 seconds. If you don't trust your ISP provided firewall/router then you probably have bigger problems. Both big ISPs in my area offer to turn the router into a bridge-mode device I can plug into a box running pfsense if I desire it, but frankly, that sounds like a PITA. Their routers work well enough. I think going forward we will just buy access point, not routers. The router problem has been solved for a long time. >Abandon all consumer grade gear. Just get Ubiquity stuff. I'd argue Ubiquity is really consumer stuff, just small business friendly. Their performance, price, stability, etc isn't that much better than a Netgear in access point mode. They just have a java-based controller which is handy for managing multiple AP's. Inside, they're kinda crappy. >Google just released their routers (like last week), which support automatic mesh networking when you use multiple. Google wifi is actually a latecomer. You can get residential friendlier Ubiquity-style solutions via Orbi or Eero, which is what Google is copying here. I believe Google's 3-pack beats both on price currently. edit: modems and routers are completely different cases/devices and performance/stability are different than money saving. Regardless, my ISP doesn't charge me for my modem, so there's no incentive for me to buy my own.
- harryh 10y ago
  You're probably paying a monthly rental fee for the router/modem from your ISP. There's a good chance you'll save money in ~12 months or so if you buy instead of rent.

PaulHoule 10y ago

If you really want high performance networking, use wired. It is stupid to connect a television set, for instance, via WiFi. You should plug in anything that doesn't move around, and leave the limited bandwidth WiFi for those who need it. People won't listen though because in 2016 it seems most people think wires are ritually unclean.

Kurtz79 10y ago
What about mobile phones, tablets, laptops ? It is a given that wired is a better option, but I cannot imagine any modern SOHO environment without a wireless router/access point.
- PaulHoule 10y ago
  Using a wired network for things that can be wired frees up capacity for mobile phones, tablets, and laptops. For instance, if you are moving files to and from a server, you get way better performance if the server is wired than if the server is wireless too because the server->hub and hub->client links interfere with each other. Mesh networks are just going from the frying pan to the fire. I am not saying that people "don't need wireless" but that if having a reliable WiFi network matters to you, the best way to speed up your WiFi network is to move anything that you can possible move to wired to free up bandwidth for WiFi. That includes turning off the rouge access points that are created by printers, game consoles, phones, etc.
- izacus 10y ago
  Noone is saying that, but there's very limited bandwith available in the air (especially in the 2.4GHz band). If you move datahungry devices like TVs, NAS, etc. off the air, you gain a lot of free spectrum for the phones and tablets.
  - PaulHoule 10y ago
    Exactly, the gains from proper engineering are vastly greater than from buying expensive consumer routers, particularly when you consider reliability.

joesmo 10y ago

Why do you think Apple's routers might be backdoor free but other companies' routers won't be? What makes Apple so special in this regard? I understand they challenged the government on the San Bernardino cell phone, but that's irrelevant as they also cooperate with the government like all other major companies. Is this idea simply based on some public statement or policy and if so why do you believe that given Apple's track record of cooperation that continues to this day?

weaves 10y ago

Lack of Airport improvement was one of the biggest reasons why we started eero.

iNerdier 10y ago
I was curious until I looked at your website and found that it's 1) US only and 2) requires not only a smartphone but a US phone number to set up. I mean really, this is the kind of thing you can/should be able to log into from a web page, why does this all have to be locked behind an app?

BinaryIdiot 10y ago

> Apple's hardware/software integration has always been a better bet for ease of configuration, and honestly, reliability. Meh. I worked at AppleCare for about 1.5 years and when I got calls regarding issues with the MacBooks I'd say 99% of the time the internet connectivity issues was with the AirPort Extreme and it had to be hard reset (I've had to walk through this process so much I could essentially recite it in my sleep back in the day). That's only an anecdote but consumer grade networking, including Apple's, just always seems to suck. Nowadays I try to spend a little more and get some sort of small business type of router. So, in my mind, their customers are not missing out on much. Though I'll admit the App for getting it up was nicely than browsing to some IP address like many routers at the time.

evanelias 10y ago
Totally agree -- these things seem to have major quality problems. Many years ago I spent $200 on an Apple router. It died completely in just over a year, literally a few weeks after the warranty period. It wouldn't even power on. Granted, just an anecdote with a sample size of 1, but after that experience there's no way I would ever consider buying another Apple router. Especially since my previous router (a Linksys) was still chugging along after like 7 years.
snowwrestler 10y ago
Now Comcast and FiOS get those calls because they ship WiFi routers with their modems. That's the real reason Apple is getting out of consumer WiFi routers: for most consumers it is an optional aftermarket accessory that makes things more complicated, not less. Even my crappy DSL modem is a WiFi router. To attach my preferred router I had to login and set it to bridge mode. Why would Apple want to sell a product that requires people to do that?
- BinaryIdiot 10y ago
  > Now Comcast and FiOS get those calls because they ship WiFi routers with their modems. The best part of working on fixing an internet issue was the second it looked like it could be an issue with the cable modem we had to get off the call. Even if it's likely turning it off and on would have worked. We were told to have the customer call their ISP and refuse to help with even any ideas let alone walking through something. Which, I get, you don't want to be diagnosing some third party hardware. But I'd say about half the time when someone made it to me they have already called both Apple Care AND their ISP at least 1-2 times and they continue to blame each other.

nicky0 10y ago

Having never owned or seen the need for an Apple router, can you explain what is so great about them?