Apple Discontinues Its AirPort Router Line (9to5mac.com) 189
9to5Mac reports that Apple is officially exiting the wireless router business and selling off its remaining inventory of AirPort products. This includes the AirPort Express, AirPort Extreme, and both models of the AirPort Time Capsule. "We're discontinuing the Apple AirPort base station products," Apple said in a statement to 9to5Mac. "They will be available through Apple.com, Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last." From the report: While the news is disappointing for fans of Apple's routers, the end of the AirPort line is no surprise either. Bloomberg reported back in November 2016 that Apple had disbanded the team responsible for developing Apple's routers, and in January 9to5Mac was first to report that Apple Stores started selling third-party. At the time, Apple told us that its AirPort line would remain -- with the mesh Wi-Fi routers adding a solution for larger homes: "People love our AirPort products and we continue to sell them. Connectivity is important in the home and we are giving customers yet another option that is well suited for larger homes."
Orphaned technologies (Score:4, Interesting)
So what becomes of orphaned technologies like Time Machine and AirPlay? Do they plan to finally license them out to other vendors?
Re: Orphaned technologies (Score:3)
Re: Orphaned technologies (Score:2)
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So what becomes of orphaned technologies like Time Machine and AirPlay? Do they plan to finally license them out to other vendors?
Neither of those technologies depend on Apple Routers.
Time Machine doesn't do anything other technologies do, anyway. They just made it drop dead simple to implement, and built the backup-browser into MacOS.
As for AirPlay, it does use some semi-proprietary texhnology, I guess; but considering there are already multiple third-patty AirPlay broadcasters and receivers, on multiple platforms (including Android, frinstance), I don't think that the loss of Apple Routers makes any difference.
I will say, however, t
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They will probably leave them as-is an not invest any more development effort in them.
They've discontinued the financial incentive they had.
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How is Time Machine "orphaned"? It still works with a locally-attached hard drive... not nearly as convenient as with a Time Capsule, but it's still fully functional.
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Netatalk [wikipedia.org] is an open source implementation of Apple's Filing Protocol, which is what Time Machine uses.
There's lots of instructions for setting this up on Linux. IIRC I had less problems with this than tracking down odd SMB settings.
Worked flawlessly for years when I was using it (no Macs in the house, at the moment).
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Time Machine is Apple's backup / restore program. It is not going anywhere.
AirPlay (formerly AirTunes) is Apple's proprietary network stack for streaming. It's used by many hardware venders to synch wireless speakers. I believe AirFoil uses it. It's not going anywhere either.
Time Capsule is an AirPort Extreme with an integrated HD used for Time Machine. It is going away.
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Orphaned how? A Time Capsule device is just their Time Machine feature wrapped in a piece of hardware, but the feature exists without the Tim Capsule, and is, in fact, how most users are using it already. All you need for Time Machine is a hard drive connected to your Mac. The Time Capsule was just a simple way of putting that drive on your network instead of next to your machine.
Likewise, AirPlay works fine over any WiFi network, Airport or not. The only thing the Airport line brought to AirPlay was the ad
Pity about the express (Score:2)
Small, good sound. Guess HomePod sealed its fate ;
useful range extenders (Score:5, Insightful)
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We've been able to set up those features with ddwrt, openwrt on other routers for years if not a decade now.
It's nothing special, nor has it been expensive.
Unless you wanted an Airport router.
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Unless you wanted an Airport router.
Or something that works.
Or something that can be set up in under two minutes.
Or something that doesn't require flashing your router's firmware.
Or something an average person or their parents can use, and not some L33t haxxorz wanna-be kludge.
I have a Time Capsule, and its wifi signal extended through THREE AirMacs across my property. ("AirMac" is the old Japanese branding for Airport Express.) They all work perfectly. All the time. The only time they've been reset is when the power went out a few years a
Apple's 'achievements' (Score:5, Insightful)
Things Apple has added:
Emoji Bar
Dongles
Watch Bands
Earbuds that need to be thrown out when the batteries degrade
Keyboards and mice that need to be thrown out when the batteries degrade
Things Apple killed recently
Airport
Time capsule
Airports
Cinema Displays and displays with matte finishes
Headphone Jacks
USB Ports
MagSafe
iPods
SD Card Readers
Wired mice and wired keyboards
Machines with PCI cards
Things that are effectively dead
Mac Mini
Mac Pro
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Apple still sells wired keyboards.
But you also forgot these items that Apple discontinued:
- Floppy drives
- Apple-branded rechargeable AA batteries
- Apple-branded DVD-ROMs
- Apple-branded dialup modems (The last one was built into the original iTit Airport)
- Apple-branded scanners
- Apple-branded digital cameras
- Apple socks (iPod cozies)
- Apple-branded printers
Fortunately, the Wintel equivalents will live forever in discount Chinese websites thanks to Microsoft lemmings.
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First Commodore and now Apple. We won't have any good computer brands left in a few decades.
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AE is a great Airplay Device with optical out. (Score:5, Informative)
A little known fact is that you can AirPlay to an Airport Express and it'll output digital PCM to whatever's on the other side. I have a bunch of them feeding into different stereos all over the house, for cheap whole-home audio. Pretty good for a $30 device (used).
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And that is a problem for playing a bit of music why?
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If they're only acting as a audio receiver/bridge, that won't matter too much. Unless you have audio to stream that's also too large to fit over the optical S/PDIF pipe.
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A little known fact is that you can AirPlay to an Airport Express and it'll output digital PCM to whatever's on the other side. I have a bunch of them feeding into different stereos all over the house, for cheap whole-home audio. Pretty good for a $30 device (used).
And by "little known," you mean specifically listed on the box, in the manual, in iOS, in iTunes, and on Apple's website?
Speaking of used Airports, a great place to get them cheap is Goodwill. I know a guy who picked up a lot of four for $20.
The big question: (Score:3)
Too bad -- they were fantastic routers. (Score:5, Informative)
This is really too bad, because the Airport line were fantastic routers, and had a pile of functionality that you can't easily get in any other package.
Back int he mid 2000s, the "flying saucer" routers were designed with institutional use in mind, supporting up to 50 simultaneous connections. They were one of the first home routers that provided IPv6 functionality, both native and tunnelled, right out of the box. They support the Bonjour Sleep Proxy service (I'm not aware of any other router that does), permitting Bonjour services for devices that switch to a low-power mode, along with wide-area Bonjour that can automatically register hosts and their services with a suitable DNS (akin to dynamic DNS, but with services as well). The Expresses have excellent Airplay support, accepting streaming Apple Lossless audio and outputting via either standard analog or digital optical. And the Time Capsules have out-of-the-box support for TimeMachine backups.
They are also very easy to mesh together, and have had it for fifteen years now. The configuration tool will even dynamically generate a connection diagram for all your Airport devices, showing how they interconnect (and whether connections are wired or wireless).
All in all, great routers for the money. I know of no other routers that provide all of these features in one box. Hopefully Apple will partner with someone so we don't lose Bonjour Sleep Proxy and wide-area Bonjour support in particular. And at least my existing installations will continue to work for many years yet. Still a bit of a sad day -- Apple used to be ahead of the curve, but let the market slip past them.
Yaz
Re:Too bad -- they were fantastic routers. (Score:4, Insightful)
They were fantastic. My AirPort Extreme I think I bought new in 2003 still works. It's slow so I only use it when my other access points quit. I think I've been through six of other brands since then so I've had to resort to using it many times, but it just keeps working unlike all of the other ones I've ever bought. The next closest one was the good old Linksys WRT54G that I think worked for four years before it started locking up and requiring cycling the power.
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They were fantastic. My AirPort Extreme I think I bought new in 2003 still works.
I have one as well, and it also still works. I haven't used it in over a decade, as it capped out at 802.11a/g and I relaxed it with the 802.11n version (and later the 802.11ac version) when they became available.
Some other cool features that people may have forgotten about -- as the Airport Express was designed for travel, it supported up to five "profiles" you could pre-load into it for connecting to different networks. So you could have one profile for home, and one for use in different hotels (for exa
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Don't forget they were one of the only routers that was virtually impossible to brick since they were fully link-local ipv6 aware. They were nearly impossible to kill as well.
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Sure there are good routers out there -- but do they have all of the protocol support the Apple routers have?
I mean, it if doesn't have Bonjour Sleep Proxy or Wide Area Bonjour (and yes, I use both), regular Bonjour advertisements (for services provided by the router itself), and doesn't have Airplay support, then I'm _losing functionality_. A small speed bump doesn't make up for that.
Besides which, Amplifi's IPv6 support is anemic compared to Apple's. According to their own docs [amplifi.com] they only support DHCPv6
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I suspect that Apple will be cloud-nudging and cloud-pushing for things like printing, music playing, and sharing so lack of Bonjour and Airplay is a feature (to them) not a bug.
They can't get rid of Bonjour. It underpins so much of Apple's cloud strategy in the first place. Wide Area Bonjour and Back to My Mac are already Cloud powered, and Wide Area Bonjour needs Bonjour Sleep Proxy if it's going to be able to deal with devices that can go into low power (sleep) mode. When it comes to Bonjour, it's as if you made the statement that Apple doesn't need to support TCP/IP anymore because "Cloud". Even with the cloud, you still want/need Service Discovery.
As for Airplay, consideri
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Fantastic as they may be, and innovative they once were, well, the rest of industry has pretty much undercut them.
Apple routers were expensive at several hundred bucks each. Sure they're better than the $20 daily special at Best Buy (or the $5 sepcial at Alibaba), you could get some very high end routers with the latest WiFi for less. And even "enterprise class" routers from the likes of Ubiquity Networks (UniFi WiFi APs, AmpliFi routers and mesh networks).
And a lot of them didn't require a Mac or iOS devic
Replacements? (Score:2)
--So, does anyone have any good recommendations for something to replace AirPort routers ?
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You can probably manage to either replace the Airport's ease of use, or the functionality, but not both.
Custom firmware like DD-WRT [dd-wrt.com] on ASUS routers was what I was using up until moving to pfSense on a small atom board. The ASUS hardware was decent enough, and less eye-wateringly priced than some competitors. I still have one in use as a dumb access point.
I've seen instructions for compiling Netatalk [wikipedia.org] for DD-WRT for a more complete AirPort replacement. I've used Netatalk on an Ubuntu box as a TimeMachine sour
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I like Unifi a lot, but I am not sure it is really a great replacement for an AirPort-- it is a significant upgrade with external APs. Personally, as I look forward to eventually having gigabit internet, an external AP becomes a huge benefit.
But, Ubiquiti also has their AmpliFi all-in-one line, which hits the same market pretty well and offers solid mesh capability.
a uniquely great product abandoned (Score:2)
I don't care so much about the router-only models, which can be replaced with competing commodity routers. But the Time Capsule model has no equivalent, and was one of Apple's best ideas... OK, half of one of their best ideas. The other half is Time Machine, which is hands down, the best personal-computer backup system I have ever seen: set it up, and forget about it until you need it. Working over wifi, it's like "cloud" backup, but faster, no monthly fees, and low probability of data breaches.
I gently pus
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They've proven time and again they don't want good products unless they are mass appeal now.
They already dropped legacy Final Cut Pro (and broke it entirely in High Sierra), have no good Mac Pro line anymore, and even hobbled their Macbook Pro with useless keyboards.
Will Google WiFi be next? (Score:2)
I love my Google WiFi system. For the first time, I have no dead spots in the house. It just works, and it has all the features I want, and then some.
BUT when Apple decided to remove the headphone jack from the iPhone, the other phone makers started to follow suit.
I hope Google doesn't, in this case, but I'm certainly not sure.
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Google won't do that. It's a great way to get to know their customers even better. Even when you use VPN they can follow every move you make on the interwebs thanks tto their wifi equipment.
Free wifi routers (Score:2)
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Yep. And they go on forever. I bought mine ten years ago and they still work.
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In general anything supplied by a consumer isp will be garbage...
I had my house wired up with ethernet in every room, and cables in the ceilings in strategic locations for ceiling-mount wifi devices. Considering that internet access is now ubiquitous in many countries i'd expect all new houses to be built this way then you can just configure your router to talk to the isp's service.
Spreadsheet ROI Cook again (Score:2)
In ye olden days, the saucer Airport was a revelation. Apple could control the set up experience, and it showed. Other routers existed, but none were so simple to set up. You can argue a many have caught up with that now, and I will also totally agree that others have surpassed it i
A victim of their own success (Score:3)
The Airport line were a victim of their own success.
The people posting here about their personal experiences with Airports (myself included) all have similar stories.
They tried several other routers which had a wide variety of problems. They then bought an Airport ~10 years ago and everything has been perfect since.
You can't build a business like Apple's on single purchases unless the word of mouth was incredible. Unfortunately people don't discuss buying routers all that much. They just go to a store and buy one.
Honest? (Score:2)
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Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up. There are much more flexible and cheaper alternatives.
Yes, less alternatives is ALWAYS better for the consumer.
Fucking idiot.
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How many consumers do you know that will go out of they way and buy Mikrotik or Ubiquity for $60 when they can buy the $200 device at apple when they are buying their MacBook/PRO? Forcing people to do research is good.
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You can get AirPorts on Amazon cheaper than the router I bought (since I did my research and wanted a quality router to put Tomato on). And the AirPort does a lot of stuff the bargain routers don't do. I don't have one but people I know who did have one always liked how easy it was to set up; you can even set it up from your tablet or phone. And AirPort express seems to be $99.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
"default credentials are the most likely cause"
"Things cleared up when both Anubhav found users complaining on the MikroTik forums about defaced devices, admitting they were using default or no credentials."
"Looks like somebody made a script that logs into unprotected devices and changes the identity name," said a MikroTik spokesperson. "[MikroTik] RouterOS devices do have a password and firewall by default, but many remove those for unknown reasons."
Totally the manufacturers fault.
Better solutions (Score:2)
There are better solution than that.
On some brands of router, the default password isn't something simple (like "admin"), but each device has a random string generated as a default password and wifi, just as each device has its own serial number (it might be that one is generated from the other on-device), with those printed out on same sticker as the serial number on the box it self (there is no default password in the manual, as there is no series-wide password) so in an emergency you can reset to these l
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
That was just the first Google hit. MikroTik in particular have a long, long history of 0day in their firmware.
A quick search in the CVE database shows that MicroTik with all their products combined have the same number of vulnerabilities than the AirportExtreme alone, and the number is 7. You're full of shit, fanboi.
Firmware security (Score:2)
Mikrotiks, on the other hand, as easy to re-install with a good opensource firmware (like OpenWRT/LEDE, etc.).
Same with tons of cheap chinese routers (though not all have enough flash/ram to support all features including filesharing over IPv6, at least they can have good basic router functionality).
The same cannot be said for Apple's hardware.
- 3rd party firmware has always been difficult.
- apple discontinuing them means no way to get a 1st party secure firmware either.
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Apple entered the wireless access point market because it wasn't competitive. There were few players and there was a big premium for 802.11g parts (many of which were crap), and Apple wanted to sell support for 802.11g as a feature on the PowerBooks. This feature was largely worthless if the expensive 802.11g WiFi interface on the laptop was always running in downgraded 802.11b-compatible mode. Something similar happened with 802.11n. By the time 802.11ac came along, the market was competitive enough th
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Apple entered the wireless access point market because it wasn't competitive. There were few players and there was a big premium for 802.11g parts (many of which were crap), and Apple wanted to sell support for 802.11g as a feature on the PowerBooks. This feature was largely worthless if the expensive 802.11g WiFi interface on the laptop was always running in downgraded 802.11b-compatible mode. Something similar happened with 802.11n. By the time 802.11ac came along, the market was competitive enough that there was no need for Apple to do anything: if they did nothing, people were still able to get 802.11ac working well. In addition, 802.11ac was much less of a selling point. The jump from .11b to .11g was the difference between nice toy for demos and generally useful. The jump from .11g to .11n meant that the WiFi was typically not the bottleneck for most users. The jump to .11ac means that WiFi is even less of a bottleneck, but it's well past the point where most people care.
Interesting bit of history, thanks!
However, I still like Apple's Routers because they are the ONLY people I trust not to slipstream-in NSA backdoors into the Firmware.
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However, I still like Apple's Routers because they are the ONLY people I trust not to slipstream-in NSA backdoors into the Firmware.
That's not true. Huawei, for example, doesn't install NSA back doors. More seriously, how do you know that the NSA hasn't injected vulnerabilities into Apple's firmware? If you've followed the story of how the Juniper backdoor was introduced, you'll know that it doesn't necessarily require anyone in the company to be aware...
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However, I still like Apple's Routers because they are the ONLY people I trust not to slipstream-in NSA backdoors into the Firmware.
That's not true. Huawei, for example, doesn't install NSA back doors. More seriously, how do you know that the NSA hasn't injected vulnerabilities into Apple's firmware? If you've followed the story of how the Juniper backdoor was introduced, you'll know that it doesn't necessarily require anyone in the company to be aware...
The truth is, I don't know.
But, I at least am fairly certain that Apple would at least not be COMPLICIT, based on their Corporate History. But you raise a good point.
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His blind faith in apple and ignorance of all other tech keeps him strong.
Nice try, ignoramus. Take your Apple Hate and GTFO.
It is not "Blind Faith"; it is Experience. And your are sadly mistaken that I have an "Ignorance of all other tech". Just because I like Apple stuff as a general rule, and have had nearly universally good experiences with their products; doesn't at ALL mean I don't deal with, or know about, "other tech".
For example, I work for a small software Consultancy, developing Microsoft-based business s/w, and I assist in some of the IT. A couple of years ago, I spec
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up.
While the Airport might indeed be essentially an overpriced router, the Time Machine is pure genius.
Essentially it's a hard drive attached to a router, but it will seamlessly set up backups for your macbook.
If your disk gets hosed, you can restore almost everything, with diffs taken something like every hour.
While some /.'ers might point out the ability to do this with cheaper hardware and rolling your own using rsync, I defy you to find a similarly simple solution.
Literally I just told my parents to buy a time machine, and their mac is backed up. Nothing else I need to do, brain dead simple!
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While some /.'ers might point out the ability to do this with cheaper hardware and rolling your own using rsync, I defy you to find a similarly simple solution.
You don't even need to "roll your own r-sync" anything. You can set up an AFP share on a FreeNAS server and point Time Machine to it. You might need to configure user permissions for the machines to access the dataset they back up to, but it's a pretty easy one-time thing, and you can make a homemade "Time Capsule" this way with redundant hot-swappable disks through ZFS. A more robust backup solution than Apple's appliance.
Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
You can set up an AFP share on a FreeNAS server and point Time Machine to it. You might need to configure user permissions for the machines to access the dataset they back up to
I think you just proved his point.
Re:Good (Score:4, Insightful)
This does sound a lot like a certain type of Linux user that always claims to do something better with a few scripts and poking at /proc, all while claiming it's "simple". Yes, if you're a power user, go ahead (I do use linux). But sometimes it's nice to just plug something in and have it work. So I'm going to go visit my mom in a few weeks, and one of those chores will be to backup her windows computer again, and I wish it were as easy as backing up my Mac at work.
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Windows isn't as easy as just plugging in a time capsule, but if you're on Windows 10 then File History is pretty simple.
Just point it at your external drive, define how frequently it should back up and away you go. The only time it gets a bit more complicated is if you want to define locations outside of your libraries - but the inte
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I've set up AFP on a FreeBSD machine for Time Machine backups. Doing it with netatalk 2.x was quite painful. With 3.x, it works out of the box. It is slightly more effort to set up than a Time Capsule, but it's also more powerful. For example, my Time Machine backups go to a ZFS filesystem, which is periodically snapshotted.
Time Machine occasionally corrupts backups (colleagues have reported this on both Time Capsules and external disks, though I haven't seen it for a few years) and if it does then t
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Yes but he did it stupidly. He could also have just plugged his HDD into pretty much any modern router and pointed Windows Backup to it as well.
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I have a Time Capsule, and it has been working flawlessly since I got it, as an internal router. It has been regularly patched, and although it doesn't have advanced functionality (manual ACLs in and out, so I can block port 25 outgoing just for sanity reasons), it has been decent. The Time Capsule also is a decent NAS, although with it being a single drive unit, one still needs a secondary backup system for documents, just in case.
For being a primary backup device, with documents backed up via a separate
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I just hope Apple opens the Time Capsule "protocol".
They did. They have documented the extensions to AFP that Time Machine uses and they have been supported by netatalk for many years. I've been backing up to a ZFS-based FreeBSD machine with Time Machine for about 8 years. It mostly worked with netatalk 2.x, with netatalk 3.x it's been flawless.
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I defy you to find a similarly simple solution
You mean like the countless cloud providers that cost pennies and that don't force you to buy proprietary overpriced hardware and operating systems?
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Ya, that'll work great over DSL. Seriously, backing everything up to the cloud even on moderately good broadband would take forever, never mind people with slower internet connections who aren't the power users to figure out other ways to back up the system.
At work for awhile they kept pushing a cloud backup server (it's like they never even heard about security when think up stuff like this). After a week it still hadn't finished backing up my laptop, and later even incremental backups would take a few d
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I used to use Backblaze for cloud backups. Back then I was "only" backing about 200GB. When I tried to restore the data it took almost a week. And I'm on a 1Gbps fibre optic line.
My Time Capsule would do the same in a few hours at worst, or if I plug my Mac directly into the Ethernet port of the Time Capsule even faster. Cloud backup is just no solution for full HD backups. Nowadays my internal HD is 1TB and almost full. I'd never consider cloud backups for that. It's just not practical. I have a Time Ca
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In my experience, the Time Capsule functionality was very buggy for a long time. There were people with a Time Capsule in their house that I eventually had to tell just to get a USB hard drive and use for Time Machine. Their backups were getting corrupt and refusing to back up. The solution was to delete the entire backup history and set it up from scratch. Each time.
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Time Machine on OSX is awesome, nothing on Windows comes close (never mind the habit of Microsoft to change backup formats on every major release). And that's with just an external plugin harddrive. The wireless harddrive is an option for those who just want to keep doing backups just as simply without plugging stuff in.
It uses hardlinks to present a full copy of all your files in a normal volume. This makes handling incremental backups trivial, and you can restore files from the command line easily, and
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The easiest solution I could imagine is get a Synology NAS, which has a point and click UI via your browser and you can setup TimeMachine backups via point and click, however this is still a complex process and not for the casual user
https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/Backup_Restore/How_to_back_up_files_from_Mac_to_Synology_NAS_with_Time_Machine
And considering that the cheapest Synology NAS isn't particularly much cheaper than an Time Capsule and you'll need a compatible WiFi do
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While some /.'ers might point out the ability to do this with cheaper hardware and rolling your own using rsync, I defy you to find a similarly simple solution.
My dad has a run of the mill D-Link router. Plugged a HDD in there, told him to click the "Setup Windows Backup" button, and he was done with a full system backup. For a bonus I told him to go to the control panel, click File History, and click enable. Done.
Complete backup and file history enabled and possible on pretty much any router with a USB port and Windows 8 or later. The backup works just the same on Windows 7 but the File History does take more than 1 click to setup.
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I do the same with my Qnap NAS - and I agree, it's stupidly simple.
Controversially, my wife's laptop (Windows 10) uses file and directory backups, which just go onto a regular SMB share (so no server side, as such). When I turned them on, I figured it's better than nothing but I should probably get something else to finish the job. A lot longer than I should have left it later, and it's still chugging away and working just fine - and her files are all 'time machined' in the archive. It's not a whole machine
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Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up.
While the Airport might indeed be essentially an overpriced router, the Time Machine is pure genius.
Essentially it's a hard drive attached to a router, but it will seamlessly set up backups for your macbook.
If your disk gets hosed, you can restore almost everything, with diffs taken something like every hour.
While some /.'ers might point out the ability to do this with cheaper hardware and rolling your own using rsync, I defy you to find a similarly simple solution.
Literally I just told my parents to buy a time machine, and their mac is backed up. Nothing else I need to do, brain dead simple!
At least rsync is going to work on the 95% of PCs out there which aren't Macs.
It's not simple if it only works for 5%.
Re:Good (Score:4, Informative)
Nice to see another brand of highly overpriced routers fold up. There are much more flexible and cheaper alternatives.
I disagree with the sentiment. I have two airport expresses, and frankly they're wonderful. One of them is plugged in behind the Bose and has a cable running to the aux input of the Bose. With an easy touch of a button I can easily play music from my iphone or laptops to the Bose. That's been a nice feature. And, yes, I know about bluetooth, but I was doing this 10 years ago.
The other one was useful back when internet was spotty in hotels years ago. I always traveled (and still do) with the airport express and a short ethernet cable. If wifi is unable or sucks but a wired connection is available, I plug that thing in and have wifi. It's the size of a macbook charger, so it's easy to take along.
Re: Good (Score:2)
I bought one for exactly the same reason when I was doing a lot of business travel 12 years ago. My colleagues even started trying to get a room near mine when we visited Shanghai just to get some reliable WiFi.
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One of them is plugged in behind the Bose
Of course it is. You need to hook an overpriced sound system to an overpriced Airplay receiver.
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Apple in Bose in the same sentence. I hope you used Monster cables to connect all of these.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
The are not cheap, but after going through several iterations of "home" routers, Linksys, Belkin, Netgear... you name it. Had to reboot them constantly, only some stuff would successfully connect. None of them were reliable. Most died within a year. Dropped connections. hung connections.. you name it. I hate Windows, and Linux won't run everything I need for work, so I bought a Mac. VERY reliable. I finally got fed up and decided maybe ... just maybe I might find something that 'just works'... I bought an Airport out of desperation. My Apple router is almost 10 years old. It has crashed once after lightning caused a power spike that was strong enough to cause the Power suppression unit it is plugged into to clamp the circuit. I have yet to find a single device that failed to connect. I haven't rebooted it since the last security update. I, for one, am sad to see them exit the market leaving it to the 'cheaper alternatives'. Maybe the EdgeMax UniFi might work.
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Same here. I always thought they were pricey and went with all the cheaper choices. Buffalo, Netgear, you name it. First of all the setup was always a pain in the butt via browser UIs that looked like a nightmare from the 90s without any consideration of usability. And then these things were really unstable. I had to reboot them sometimes several times a week to get them back to normal.
Then I first bough an Airport Express, because I wanted to use AirPlay audio, but I fell in love with it, because of its si
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My story is similar. Though I haven't used any of our Macs in years, the
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I had gotten a router that wasn't one of the cheap things. The cheap built in wifi from u-verse was terrible, it only did 2.4GHz which meant I collided with all the neighbors and trying to stream to my TV was bad. I knew I could put Linux on the new router if I needed too, but I stuck with the default OS for awhile. It was pretty terrible, it would start stuttering at times only to get going a minute later (I suspect some headaches with DHCP lease expiring but I never found a configuration). And this was an
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How many of them provide data backup services with Time Machine?
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A number of routers with USB ports and AFP support are able to do it. Same with many NAS devices. Now that Apple seems to prefer SMB, there are even more options. The only difference is that most of these don't advertise Time Machine service over Bonjour. So you have to manually point Time Machine to the volume after connecting.
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When AirPort was new it was great. The alternatives were far more clumsy and difficult to use. Sure, it was more expensive, but then most consumer electronic products are cheap in price because they're cheap in quality.
Re: Good (Score:2)
I don't know; their routers are very good quality, fast and very stable and easy to setup. Not only is the wifi chipset good (Broadcom) but even things like the AC/DC transformer is built with quality components that seem to go beyond regulations (granted that may just add at most a few dollars to the BOM).
I use an Asus router because I enjoy tinkering with settings but many don't.
I feel having lots of choice in the market is a good thing, even if some are things I don't buy for myself.
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Synology, NetGear, Asus, QNAP, probably others too, all have curated app stores and easy to use web interfaces.
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The older iMacs were much better, but how did they fucking work? (i.e. magnets?!)
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