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Rayz2016 said:.

More absurd than backing up to a device sitting in the same room as your computer?

My time capsule is not in the same room as my computer and often not even in the same building as my laptop. I mainly use my laptop when I am away from home, but when I open my laptop at home it automatically starts backing up. 

I would like like to back up to the cloud, but I don't have the bandwidth or the money for enough cloud storage. 

jameskatt2 said:

Airport is being nixed because:
1. Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch and AppleTV can adapt to any router.  

2. Time Machine always worked best with a hard drive directly attached to the Mac - not on Airport
3. iCloud has taken on much of the remaining functionality of Airport.
4. Other companies can make cheaper routers that work "good enough" that Apple doesn't have to compete in this area and can focus on their core.

1. IPhone can not send music to the audio output of other routers
2. Wireless back up works anytime you connect to wifi, DAS backup only works when you are connected. Apple just not want you to connect USB-A devices, that is why they took away the USB-A ports. When my got a Macbook, I gave her an external drives for backups. She never backed up her machine. Now we use a time capsule and he machine is always backed up.
3. ICloud does not open the ports I need to run Mac OS server or airplay automatically, iCloud does not provide an easy to use app to set up my router.
4. I agree that others can make decent routers. When it comes to radios, they are probably better. I hope that Apple at least works with them to create Apple configurations for those routers that enable time machine for attached drives and set up port forwarding for Apple services.

rogifan_new said:

red oak said:

This, if true, is a bad move.  3rd party solutions are (still) a mess.  Their software absolutely sucks.  There is no integration with Apple products.  

This, plus the decision not to make their own monitors, makes Apple very unreliable has I look at my personal tech roadmap.  I increasingly can't count on them 

I don't get it as why wouldn't Apple want people to buy this stuff from them. Why cede accessories to other companies? The less of this stuff Apple produces the easier it is for people to leave the Apple ecosystem.

I don't get it either. I mainly use mac not because of the OS, but because of the ecosystem. That ecosystem used to justify the higher margins. I have read through instructions to set up time machine on a NAS and I rather pay $100 more for a router than having to deal with setting that up and troubleshooting that.

I think the problem is that the Mac is no longer the center of the ecosystem. The iPhone is now the center and the Mac is an accessory used to sell more iPhones. The routers are not as important as iPhones don't use time machine. Apple prefers that you back up to iCloud.

Even Microsoft seems to be moving away from the PC OS being their main product. After a failed attempt to move to mobile, they are now focusing their attention on cloud applications and enterprise cloud computing. Ironically, Google is now now getting in the router and PC business.

The issue with the dongles is not so much the price (you can buy dongles from competitors), but that you never have the right dongle with you when you need one. You can off course glue a dongle to your laptop, but then it is not a thin laptop anymore. You can always buy the previous model though. You can probably get a good deal on that one. 

paxman said:

Cord cutting is great and all but if you thought it would somehow reduce cost... think again.

I cut the cord 6 years ago and saved a lot of money. I went from paying $80/month for Dish to less than $25/month Netflix, Hulu, and sometimes an iTunes rental. That is about $4k saved. 

I don't care about live TV though. For people that want access to all shows as soon as they first air, cord cutting will not save money.