From Gurman’s Power On note posted Sunday to Bloomberg Technology subscribers:
Five years ago, Apple Inc.’s Mac business was a mess.
The MacBook Pro dropped key ports, added a confusing Touch Bar and sacrificed performance in favor of a thin design. The Mac Pro was a disaster for professional users, and key models such as the Mac mini and MacBook Air hadn’t been updated in years. Just as worrisome was Apple backing away from its Mac peripherals: The company stopped making external monitors and Wi-Fi routers.
The story today couldn’t be more different. The latest M1-based Macs have a fair blend of performance, battery life and aesthetics, and the company is also back to making monitors...
Now when you navigate to Apple’s old AirPort website, you’re referred to three Linksys mesh routers with HomeKit support that Apple sells on its online store. It doesn’t have to be this way. Apple should develop a modern mesh network version of the AirPort Extreme.
My take: Another "Apple should" from Gurman. Friend-of-the-blog Dave Emery has been saying this for years.
I’m still using an Airport Extreme. But with the much newer Macs and iDevices connected to it, the Airport has developed a really bad case of ‘buffer bloat’. (This manifests when the internet connection just stops. It doesn’t time out, but nothing moves. It’s particularly a problem with asymmetric networking like my twinned DSL internet connection.)
So yeah, just connecting a Mac/iPhone to a router is easier than it used to be. But the problems that a new Airport product should address are there, and they’re harder to understand and to resolve.
My plan, by the way, is to replace the Airport with a PFSense box, -IF- I can get help to configure it. That will do just about everything but wash the dishes, but you have to know what you are doing to configure it….
I too would like Apple to re-enter the market. I adored and owned the various Airport products and the Airport Utility was, and to my mind still is, the most intuitive and easy to use piece of wifi-related software so far produced.
As to the size of the market I would suggest that it is at least every Mac and iPad user. They all use wifi in their home and/or office. As we know, an Apple product is remarkably attractive because users admire and trust the brand and are willing to pay a premium for that.