I still have my little AirPort Time Capsule tower. It’s been nearly a decade and that thing has been dutifully backing up my data every single day, save for a few hiccups over the years. I switched it from hourly to daily to maybe get some extra years out of it, but man. I absolutely love that product. The NAS marketplace even to this day hasn’t made a product as simple and seamless as the time capsule - plus it’s a great router!
I worked at Apple for 21 years in Comms QA and I had good times working with the AirPort base station guys. The tower AirPort Extreme was a great unit and I still have one brand new that I bought when I heard Apple was ending production. It doesn’t support all of the current bells and whistles, but it was just a good, solid unit. Sadly, the base station team has been scattered to the winds, but I memba.
Thank you. I have two of the towers, connected with ethernet. Full coverage of everywhere I care about, and they hand-off wifi calls seamlessly. I dread the day they die…they just work and full AC speed reliably.
I use Synology and for my backup. It’s been working great for me. Pretty easy setup, though not Apple easy, it’s the best experience for a redundant system I’ve seen
same, w have 2 synology and I still keep the time capsule going. I round robin backups between the 3 of them. (my home LAN has a wireless bridge over to my sister’s house, so one sits in a cupboard her place and gives a physical redundancy)
Definite ‘appliances’. So far they just sit and do their thing, no intervention necessary
You might want to do a test restore just to make sure the disk in there is still good. A decade is a long time for a mechanical disk, and you might just be writing your latest files to the disk dutifully every day while bad sectors linger elsewhere on the disk.
Just saying… verify your backups. And I mean by doing a restore, not Apple’s verify which doesn’t actually check every byte.
It’s usually good to have at least two backups anyway.
I bought an m3 iMac a couple weeks ago and used my time capsule to migrate everything. Worked perfectly!
I bought two of these with broken hard disks, installed new 3Tb disks and use them as NAS. Performance is great.
I still run my house on three of the last airport base stations placed around the house like a mesh network, and airport express scattered around the house for iTunes.
I had to scroll way down here to find people that still use them.
This is me right now https://i.imgur.com/MOUgJwL.png
Express are mostly for Airplay, but still serve WiFi.
I was informed by my fiber provider that my Airport Extremes were super insecure a couple years ago.
Your fiber provider is full of shit.
It hasn’t been updated in years, I’m sure it’s full of vulnerabilities
2019 was the last update… a full year after they discontinued it. They agreed to support it for five years, which would end this year.
I’m glad that “you’re sure,” now please provide actual evidence.
Most people never update their router firmware anyway.
I’m glad that “you’re sure,” now please provide actual evidence.
Googling is easy, but sure here’s a whole list of them
Most people never update their router firmware anyway.
And that impacts this conversation how? That just means that other routers are also vulnerable
Wow look at that, they’re all for non current firmware.
Nice self dunk
What’s with the downvotes, this is the way. Rock solid for 6 years with no resets ever.
Aren’t the express models pretty slow if you’re using a faster modern internet connection? They only have 100mbps ethernet. Or is the idea that you use them only in mesh and they rely purely on the wireless n?
Youre right about this. My Expresses are used only for airplay, so the WiFi mode is either off, or set to “join a wifi network,” depending on their proximity to an ethernet switch. They are basically acting like any other device on a wifi network, and not as a router.
I have three of the latest/last Airport Extreme towers, and two of those are the only ones with the wifi turned on to “Extend a network.” Since they are all on ac, theoretically there should be no slowdown to n speeds.
Ah interesting. I still have an express and an extreme I’m not using. I switched to google home routers but I’d love to still connect my express to the network and use it as an airplay device.
If they just made a HomePod that also worked as a WiFi router I’d buy the shit out of it.
I partially agree with you. The problem is that the wifi router requires an Ethernet cable to connect to the modem which limits where you can put it.
What would be cool is to have a base station that’s just a router (maybe with HomePod functionality), but then add-on mesh network hotspots that work as HomePods. These would be a lot more flexible for placement.
Would have been a great idea
Maybe as a mesh network, but then where i would place mesh routers are not exactly where I would place a HomePod.
I have been pleading for them to have all the various wifi enabled devices serve as a mesh network! Essentially idden and integrated into existing devices that “need” to be there and connected anyway…
I really thought that was the endgame for removing the airport series…
Would be great if they could collaborate with Ubiquiti about making such devices. Like a HomePod, but with UniFi built in. Or a Dream Router, with Apple TV built in…
If it meant native HomeKit on UniFi Protect gear it would be a win in my book. HomeBridge works, but native is where at.
Yeah Homepod is kind of a niche product as is, just adding a speaker and siri support to a Wi-Fi router would make more sense.
Man how I hate macaddress.
Because it’s a LTT channel?
I wish this wasn’t a sponsored video because I think there’s more natural options for AirPort replacements than the Asus products shown. eero for example “feels” much more like AirPort - simple, inoffensive designs that can fit in to a house’s decor with simple app-based setup that you’re not supposed to need to touch again afterwards at a much lower price than Asus’ offerings.
Eero is awesome
Also the content to advertisement ratio is ridiculous.
ASUS has products similar to eero with a more sedate design. The zen series comes in a range of shapes and isn’t tied to amazon.
Yeah I have an eero 6 pro 3 pack with HomeKit secure router. As much as I like eero, just having to log in with my Amazon account irks me to no end. And it tries to sell you on echo and Alexa stuff at every screen during set up.
What bothers me is that even if you buy (own) echo devices, it still puts that crap in your face all the time. Same for the Ring app. Crappy nuisance atop otherwise decent software
I wish it’s not a sponsored video as well but FWIW I looked hard into this half a year ago and decided that ASUS is probably still the best lineup in terms of being consumer friendly and privacy focused.
For example, eero requires an internet connection to use which to me is anti-privacy and very anti-Apple, which has usually focused on making their products workable without mandatory internet connections (e.g. no mandatory iCloud signins unlike Windows 11, etc).
ASUS routers also allow you to mix-and-match routers of different models for use in a mesh network whereas a lot of the other mesh routers require you to use only from the same lineup, which means you have to replace all your routers wholesale if you later on want to get new routers.
(I’m not sponsored by ASUS. Just summarizing what I concluded on when upgrading routers for my parents)
I’m not the biggest fan of the main LTT channel, but macaddress puts out consistently high quality content.
Can’t speak for the sponsored asus router they showcased, but I’m liking my google/nest wifi setup
Meh. Everything coming out of that group is clickbait.
Did you even watch the video? I found it genuinely interesting and learned new things, such as: Apple among 1st to feature WiFi Mesh, built-in WiFi in a laptop, and Multi-Room audio. The video is barely trying to sell anything, aside from the non-Apple sponsor, and the ONE unique feature remaining in old Apple Airport routers: Time Machine backups over WiFi, and these devices are dirt cheap 2nd-hand.
I miss my Airport network best working network setup I have ever had, untill Apple started removing features and settings
I loved it shipped with 802.11g, then they software upgraded it to 802.11n, added mesh networking, updated the WiFi spec & WPA, added Time Machine backups, and a bunch of other features. I had the Express, so I could use it as a bridge for Ethernet only devices and beam music wirelessly to my stereo optically all 20-ish years ago. I miss how simple and integrated it was and how simple it was to get non-WiFi devices on my network.
Mine is still sitting on my shelf, chugging along. Granted it’s the 2013 version, but I haven’t had any problems with it. Except once in a while the entire network stalls and reboots. I guess that’s an issue, but not something I’ve bothered fixing.
I loved mine. The app was super simple which made configuration and diag super easy.
I see lots of people really loved the Airport line and rave about it. what made it so special?
Apple does this a lot tbh, if they want a standard they’ll make it happen then abandon the less profitable infrastructure that others are now doing.
I had no idea that there were competing wireless standards and apple paved the way to make Wi-Fi the standard. But then again, I wasn’t aware of high tech details in 1999. I just thought the iBook was super cool.
I had an iBook about 21 or so years ago. It was the white one that came after those original green plastic iMac looking ones, and it was the first device I ever used wifi. I bought my first wifi router because of it, the classic Linksys black and blue, the 802.11b one, g wasn’t even out yet.
That was the first project I worked on when I started at Apple as a contractor in 2001.
This guys face is so punchable
Jonathan’s vids remind me of old snazzy labs — just some real good history and insight from an enthusiast that the major tech YouTubes gloss over
While I agree, this entire video was an advertisement for a 899 dollar (Canadian) Asus router with dubious marketing strategies. I really don’t enjoy that angle - but that’s me.
People need to eat, it wasn’t disingenuous at all
May I highly recommend Sponsorblock to go with Adblock
I had a couple of the airports. They were a hell of a lot easier to to set up than anything else being made at the time. I wish they still made them. They were expensive as hell, but practically bulletproof.
They were awesome, but AMPLIFI Alien is an easy, reliable and performant spiritual successor in almost every aspect to the airports extremes in my experience.
I honestly don’t get why anyone would want a new Apple Networking product at all when there are plenty of companies doing it all already. It’s not like their network hardware was anything special really.
No offense, I do give them props for adopting new network tech early (at a cost of course), like they are with 10GBs ethernet.
But nothing they make now will sale let alone break much ground. Their network hardware didn’t sale much either, with the exception of addon cards ultimately. Its not something Apple can lock down to their benefit ultimately.
Once upon a time, the ISPs would send you a modem and you had to buy a router separately. And then even for a while, they’d include a modem/wireless router combo, but it often sucked and a lot of people would buy a separate router anyway.
Nowadays? The ISPs are giving you free wireless routers that do everything the masses will ever need. My ISP, Verizon, even does little monthly self tests on the network and they’ll apparently send us free mesh networking nodes if they detect there’s an area where some of our devices aren’t getting good signal.
Why would apple even compete in this arena? When most users are having their needs met by their ISP for free? The only people really buying routers nowadays are the power users who want to be on the cutting edge of technology. And that’s an area where apple doesn’t like to compete. So it makes sense that they don’t.
I’ve been dreaming of a combo of an AirPort mesh WiFi, wired Smoke Detector, and Home Hub.
I’d have a WiFi hub on every floor. I’d be able to free up counter/cabinet space from my HomePods and Eeros that I don’t really need, and I’d be able to replace my Google Nest Detectors and remove the final Google and Amazon devices from my ecosystem.
