Apple Officially Exits the WiFi Router Business ⇥ imore.com

Rene Ritchie, iMore:

Apple is ceasing production of its AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and AirPort Time Capsule Wi-Fi routers. I had a chance to speak to Apple briefly about the decision, and here’s the statement I was given:

“We’re discontinuing the Apple AirPort base station products. They will be available through Apple.com, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last.”

This has been expected for a while, but it’s still a bummer. The AirPort Extreme that this post was transmitted through I’ve owned for about six years and it’s still going strong; my parents’ Extreme is ten years old and it works just fine.

Zac Hall of 9to5Mac points out that most of the AirPort lineup’s functions have been eclipsed by a bunch of other stuff Apple has introduced since the last time they updated anything in the AirPort range. One thing that doesn’t yet have a replacement, though, is the Time Capsule’s backup functionality. Almost no third-party routers support backing up a Mac over WiFi, and even though I would love to see the introduction of Time Machine in the Cloud, backing up my Mac would occupy about half of my 2TB storage plan, which costs about twice as much per month as Backblaze.