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Comment by addicted | Hacker News Reader

I think the answer is margins.

If you're not making 40+% profit margins you're bringing the company's overall margins down and have to go.

That's the bean-counter mindset that ruins companies. (See the auto industry.)

Apple had an integrated vision for computing. Wireless routers were never going to be more than a round off error on their balance sheet, but they did it anyway because they wanted it done right.

With apple giving up on monitors, it's been a sad year: the bean counters are clearly in control.

>That's the bean-counter mindset that ruins companies.

I was laid off from a semiconductor company years ago because the product we were supporting was aging, and their projections for the successor product did not show a 40+% profit margin, so they decided to simply exit the market altogether and dump their customers, who were really pissed.

Its not about margins (well, it is, but not primarily): its about story.

The AirPort line was born during a time when your ISP only provided you with a modem, if that. Wireless connectivity was a brand new world that required new hardware.

We're not in that world anymore: ISPs set up (and support!) wireless access with their networking at no extra charge. To most consumers, the AirPort went from being the simplest gateway to wireless coverage to being an accessory for the Apple-centric household. That's why you saw so many features added to the AirPort over time (hard drive, print server, airplay server). Bluetooth speakers, airplay receivers, AirPrint, etc. have over time obsoleted these uses.

There's another story for the Mac Pro - although many professionals who look to the Mac as an option among many systems probably won't like it.

The ISP story you're talking about does not apply to the entire world. There are hundreds of ISPs who still charge for a WiFi router separately. No firmware updates coming in is a huge concern for all these routers and devices.

Indeed. And where I live, pretty much everyone has municipal fiber. There is no ISP-provided default router—just an ethernet jack in your wall.

Yeah, but it's not just AirPort that's shrank. Apple appears to retreating on a whole bunch of fronts.

ISPs also charge you monthly for these services on top of your already existing service.

Usually for very mediocre equipment, and (if you have Comcast) it broadcasts publicly by default.

All of this makes sense if the routers they give you worked well. They don't. I find it impossible to airplay to the apple tv over the default comcast gateway, for a couple different reasons. So the idea that their products will 'just work' with the default setup is STILL laughable.

Not that their Airport Extreme is the best on the market, but it's still something substantially more reliable than whatever ships with your cable modem.

As others have said, ISP wireless routers are terrible and many charge you monthly. A big, still unsolved issues with wifi is coverage. Most people only have one router and dead spots. Wifi repeaters exist, but have issues of their own and aren't user friendly. My ISP charges me monthly and my neighbor wanted my WiFi password because his won't reach the other side of his house.

Acquiring something like Eero would help improve that story. Integrate it into a bunch of Apple devices would help the ecosystem.

I feel like Apple has given up a bit on Wifi and moved to out of band wifi and Bluetooth. I wish they had stuck to Wifi. I can't really use AirDrop because my laptop is too old and doens't support out of band wifi. I was very confused why two AppleTVs showed up when trying to use AirPlay until after googling I found out one was Bluetooth and the other was WiFi.

You're probably right, but if so, Apple is taking a short-sighted view.

We're moving on from product and platform wars to ecosystem wars, and the core feature of Apple's ecosystem is all Apple software and hardware working together (preferably to the exclusion of non-Apple products, but not always). Having control of everything gives you the best chance of making everything just work.

Dropping products (X-Serve, monitors, routers etc) and neglecting products (Mac Pro, Mac mini etc) makes the whole ecosystem weaker.

For comparison, the main rival ecosystems are Google and Microsoft. Google's is based on doing everything online and creating a complete Google stack. Microsoft's is based on supporting everything cross-platform (Windows, iOS, Android, MacOS and increasingly Linux) both online and offline.

You could also argue that it makes the ecosystem smaller and easier-to-manage. It can make it so small that the ecosystem fails to be an ecosystem at all.

Maybe it's the margins. But I prefer cash in the bank. Revenue dollars up, net income up. If you add up all the "mini product lines" together that will move the needle. They can't continue to have blockbuster products and too risk to rely on that. Samsung can burn their phones and be OK since they have other product lines.

Margins don't matter. What matters is ROI and ROA.

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