charlesn

omasou said:

These Apple rumors are getting better and better. First Apple HomeKit cameras now router/repeaters.

Love, Love, Love it.

Except this isn't even a rumor. Literally NO ONE other than this writer is suggesting that Apple is even considering getting back into the router business. The widely circulating rumor is that Apple is designing its own wifi/bluetooth chip to replace the one it currently buys from Broadcom. Then this writer made the baseless leap into suggesting a resurrection of Airport, when one has nothing to do with the other. It's like suggesting that Apple is resurrecting LaserWriter because it will have its own wifi/bluetooth chip to put in it. Yeah, no.

Listen: Apple left the Airport business at a time when it could be argued that it had the best-in-class product for Apple users. In terms of design, functionality, performance and ease-of-use, the Airport Extreme Time Capsule was incredible. And STILL Apple left the business for what you have to assume were very good business reasons--my assumption would be insufficient growth and profitability, but that's just a guess. I don't know what would justify getting back into the business again when having the best product wasn't enough. 

Hmmmm... maybe this will finally address the iOS 18 bug that broke CarPlay in Mazdas and at least a couple of other brands of which I'm aware from Apple Discussion threads online about the issue. Essentially, most uses of Siri ("Siril, play BLANK album on Apple Music) causes an immediate crash after the command is given and you have to unplug/replug the phone. My wife's iPhone Pro is still running 17.x and continues to have no issues. 

Maybe it's just me, but this article made no sense. It seems strained and bizarre to try and draw a parallel between Airport and the rumored Proxima chip when their key functionalities are different. Airport's primary function was as a router and, in Time Capsule models, included an integrated hard drive for Time Machine backups. Proxima is neither of those things--it's an Apple-designed wifi/bluetooth chip designed to replace the same kind of chip it currently buys from Broadcom. That's it. Separately, Apple is rumored to be developing a modem chip to replace the one it buys from Qualcomm. I have not seen anything related to a combo wifi/bluetooth/modem chip, and it seems that Apple has been having a hard enough time just trying to design a modem chip on its own. 

I had a final gen model of Airport Time Capsule 2TB, and I practically went into mourning when the hard drive started to fail. I didn't think anything could ever be that good. But when faced with having to replace it, I did, and only wish I had done it sooner. The Asus RT-AX86U was a much better, faster router, and Asus makes automated Time Machine backups a snap. I plugged a Samsung T7 4TB SSD into the Asus, set the T7 as my Time Machine back-up drive, and that was it. Haven't looked back since. 

foregoneconclusion said:

$550 isn't really an "ultra premium" price range for headphones. It's really more a of mid-range. There are all kinds of products in the $700 to $1,0000 price range. 

Yeah, no. This is like saying the Mercedes G-Wagon is really more of a mid-range SUV because Lambo, Bentley, Rolls, etc SUVs can cost twice as much and MUCH more. $550 for wireless cans is an ultrapremium price tag relative to the rest of the market, overall, and certainly to Apple's most direct competition from Sony and Bose. 

I bought APM on the day it first dropped and for the two years plus thereafter, it was very, very rare to see another pair in the wild here in NYC. I honestly thought APM must have been a sales disaster for Apple. I actually didn't like wearing my APM outside of the house because I felt the very distinctive design and well-known high price tag essentially put a "Steal Me!" sign on my head. Anyway... by year 3, I started to see them show up more often, and over the past year, I feel like I see them everywhere now, like they've become the iPhone of headphones, even at 4 years old and the same high price. I don't know what explains this, but they seem to have been a late blooming success. 

All that said, I'm like Wesley--I rarely use my APM any longer and never when I travel because I prefer AirPods Pro 2. And it's not just the convenience--the sound quality and noise cancellation of Airpods Pro 2 are just incredible. FWIW, I have the original Lightning case version and recently bought the USB-C case model on sale -- while the sound quality and noise cancellation are supposed to be the same, I think the USB-C version sounds somewhat better. It's not a huge difference, for sure, but I thought it was noticeable the first time I listened. 

Maybe somebody wants this, but it seems HIGHLY unlikely it's enough somebodies to warrant manufacturing it. Consider Mark Gurman's comments this week about folding phones, which Samsung has now been making for five years, and has since been joined by Google, Huawei and others: 

"So far, the foldable concept hasn’t caught on beyond a core group of gadget aficionados, largely because the products are more expensive and clunky."

This is what you have to love about the technosphere echo chamber: foldable phones haven't caught on after five years--it has been a failed form factor in the marketplace--but people are always criticizing Apple for not making one! Meanwhile, Vision Pro has been out a year, sold out most of its first year's production run, but that's already declared a flop.