Apple exited the home Wi-Fi market at the wrong time | Hacker News Reader

Apple exited the home Wi-Fi market at the wrong time

9to5mac.com

21 pointswalterbell16 comments

On the contrary, I think Apple exited the home Wi-Fi market at the perfect time. They had a premium-priced product that didn't have the features that the new premium products were about to offer.

I bought the Eero during their 3-pack pre-order and have been using it since their first batch shipped to their first customers. It's a wonderful product and I tell everyone who asks how much I like it.

But... I can't help but get the feeling that they are having trouble building a sustainable business. They've kind of set themselves up as a service company that sells one-time-purchase hardware. I get sales emails from them all the time trying to get me to buy into their "subscription" service, which is offering things that I couldn't care less about. And at the same time, I have a nagging feeling that they are collecting data about me and will someday monetize it when they are desperate for cash.

If Apple is observing the market, they could sweep in with a product that offers everything that people want while respecting privacy and has a sustainable business model. Just because they left the market doesn't mean they have to stay out.

I replaced an aging Apple Airport system with eero and I’ve noticed the same. They are somewhat aggressive about trying to upsell subscriptions (malware protection, filtering for kids, etc).

I hope they have a sustainable business on hardware alone because it’s the only system I was able to get working in this house and it’s very reliable.

Still running a 2009 AirPort Extreme at our house. I haven't yet brought myself to replace it, even though I'd probably see a significant benefit from 802.11ac support and better ipv6 support

It has been reliable for nearly a decade with barely a few thoughts. Much more than I can say about any previous router I had.

I can't decide whether to go as open-as-possible-but-more-expensive, or with something like Ubiquity, or what.

It depends on the home. I use 2.4GHz and disable 5GHz because it causes a lot of issues.

The latest issue I have is where the phone I'm writing this on keeps switching from 2.4 to 5GHz when in the bedroom. However, when it switches from 2.4 to 5 it becomes unusuable due to the poor SNR ratio. I wish I could pin it to 2.4GHz, instead I keep having to wait for it to drop the connection and renegotiate on 2.4GHz.

I'm also running a 5+ year old Time Capsule, extended by an Airport Extreme that was given to me. It covers our house just fine, and even though there are newer technologies, I don't think it would make much of a difference since we only have 18 Mbps service. The TC has started conking out a couple times a week, but I don't know when I'll actually replace it. Having a wireless backup is handy, but unfortunately my Airport Extreme isn't new enough to support this functionality (only the 2013 model does). For now, I'll put up with moderately frequent rebootings to make sure that my machine is always backed up.

I have wondered why homepods don't include the ability to act as a network extender, at least for just Airport networks. From a hardware perspective, it obviously could serve this purpose, and adding in a functionality like this would help justify the high price.

My guess is that future versions of homepods will offer additional features like this, and hopefully the long-distance charging that Apple seems to be working on: https://www.computerworld.com/article/3234911/mobile-wireles...

As an aside, I just bought my second homepod and was disappointed to learn that one cannot use a linked pair of homepods to listen to anything from a Mac other than iTunes content. This is bizarre because a pair of homepods can be used as the output device for any app on iOS. But if you want to watch that youtube/hulu/netflix video on your computer? Tough luck — you can't use the homepods as a stereo pair.

I thought this would be a simple "hey mesh routers now cost more" but the author thought of some interesting use cases that they have forgone.

Apple made the only router that my parents could setup. I’m guessing the Google WiFi probably has a similarly friendly user experience, but I’d rather not sell them out to Google.

It was a shame that Apple abandoned the airport.

My personal experience: I got 2 airports express for my parents. Both of them died within a year (permanent orange LED meaning the circuit was fried). Now they are on Google Wifi, and so far it works.

Fair enough. I’ll have to read their privacy policy in detail. I’d love the trust I have in google for security updates, but am wary of the potential data collection.

I set up a google WiFi system, it was extremely easy to set up and worked really well. They haven’t complained to me about it. It was one base and 3 extenders in a fairly sprawled out house with a pool house.

Apple does seem to be in a good position to advertise network privacy oriented features on their devices. This made me feel nostalgic for a time when Apple made complicated things simpler.

The iPod is history, except that it lives on inside every iPhone. I wonder if Apple considered including a full-featured AirPort router inside the 2018 Mac Mini?

I'm not sure this would work. Many people that I've noticed seem to hide their networking gear, usually in whatever room the service comes in from the ISP (which is more often than not basements), because that's the most convenient place without running wires all over the place. People are typically using their systems everywhere but those rooms, because WiFi makes it simple to put a system wherever it is most convenient. Even if assuming, say, 40% of users have their main system in the same room as the modem/router, it's unreasonable to expect a lot of those users to use such a feature. Adding the cost, complexity, and size to a system for a feature very few users would use seems almost ridiculous.

Although, you could probably argue it already has one - macOS has native capability to share your ethernet connection wirelessly. No idea how many devices this could support, and it obviously lacks any features you would find in a router (firewall, port forwarding, etc.), but it's certainly an option.

Converted my house from slow, intermittent apple wifi system to google wifi. Night and day better. Apple makes consumer products, google makes hi-tech "cloud" services.

You'll need to explain it more than that.

How was the Apple Airport slow? What kind of diagnostics did you do? What does the Google WiFi do different that makes it work so much better?

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