galfridus

I used the Activité before moving to an Apple Watch (it's a good watch, but the activity tracking didn't work well for me), but regularly use the scale and the blood pressure cuff. It's all very seamless with HealthKit, but it really seems Nokia just let stuff wither on the vine and never really seemed like a good fit (it sort of looked like Google buying Nest, IMO). I hope that Carreel can really focus on good health devices that integrate well with all the platforms out there (though, obviously, I really want continued tight HealthKit integration). Having the ability to easily track our own health data is a massive turning point, I think, and Withings was definitely on the right track prior to the Nokia purchase.

Having used Apple routers since the original one, it's a bittersweet day... but I'm not really upset. I think Apple probably realizes, like external displays, this really isn't something they need to focus their teams on.

I use three AirPort Express units for AirPlay, so I'm concerned those will eventually become security risks on the network or that the original AirPlay will be deprecated, but other than those I moved off of Apple's routers two years ago when my last Time Capsule started to fail (second of three to do that). I placed a Drobo on the network to handle the backups and then moved to the Orbi when we bought a new house.

Now, I'm smarter than your average bear, yes, and I've run various firmwares (Tomato, DD-WRT, OpenWRT, etc.) in the past on a lot of different routers. I get that not everyone is going to enjoy moving to another router ecosystem. I personally kept coming back to Apple's because of ease of use, but the other manufacturers have really gotten to the point where they've surpassed what Apple was doing with hardware (much of the software still leaves something to be desired - for example, the Orbi app could really learn from the AirPort Utility).

I think the main loss here is the easy to place AirPlay ability. The fact you can drop that almost anywhere and have a S/PDIF output for a good set of speakers is a loss. We've used AirTunes/AirPlay for music and audio for 12 years or so and have gotten quite comfortable to the quality you can get out of those.

I'm hoping this means there is a HomePod/AirPort Express hybrid coming (a "HomePod Express"?). Something that has the S/PDIF output (and maybe a crappy internal speaker) and a decent mic array that can be dropped somewhere easily and let us use our preferred speakers. I'd love to see that. If Apple doesn't do it, I'm hoping someone steps into the fray and at least creates an AirPlay 2 WiFi node that replicates that function on the old Express.

I ran into much the same conclusions prepping for a few trips. Since there was no was to go C only, my answer to the charging mess was to get a brick that could handle C and A. I ended up with the Anker PowerPort+ 5 Ports USB-C (horrible name, but descriptive) and have found it's a great charger. I don't ever take my MacBook and my iPad on the same trips (MacBook on business, iPad on personal), so I don't have to fight for the lone C port (but I would prefer to see two C ports and two or three A ports).

Multi-user support is quickly becoming a necessity (and the first-party tools already exist in iOS for this). We (a family of four) have a HomePod in the dining room. I have a workaround with a fifth account that the HomePod is signed-in with and gets playlists shared to... but this is silly. It should be able to identify the voice and know it needs to look at that user's library and settings. On the Apple TV side: Yeah, if I watch something I don't want the kids watching, why are they able to see the thumbnails? Why are they able to browse my queue? If Netflix and Hulu and others can have multi-user profiles, then Apple can do it, too.

bageljoey said:

Seriously!  I just broke down and bought extra storage for my teacher account. Two days ago!!  Dang it!

Contact them. They're usually pretty good about refunds in cases like this.