Macworld on the end of the Apple Airport

I've been thinking a lot about Apple's decision to kill the Airport Wireless router line. Yesterday I went searching for this post that I remember someone writing after Steve Jobs passed away. The post relayed a story from one of the people in a meeting with Jobs at a time when they were talking about adopting wireless networking -- and the vision that Jobs had to look beyond the cost of the technology at the time and drive the vision of WiFi on all of their systems. It was such a great story that it still sticks with me today.

In the search for that story, I came across this article from Macworld, Requiem for the AirPort base station: A testament to everything Apple was and isn’t anymore. The subhead for the post is, "Apple just doesn't think this way anymore." While it wasn't the story that I was originally looking for, it does capture a great deal of what's been going through my mind following the EOL decision on the Apple Airport. These days, we're supposed to believe that thinking differently means a different color enclosure on iPhone design or an edge-to-edge display where unusable active screen space is, well, useful.

Over the years, AirPort evolved into a full wireless solution that worked with any and all devices, but the ease-of-use Apple revolutionized with the original AirPort never went away. From the remarkable Airport Express to the ingenious Time Capsule, Apple’s wireless products were always designed with the consumer in mind. It took a complicated system and made it easy, a mantra that Apple has gotten further and further away from as it has grown.

In many ways, Apple's Airport was just a router, but like so many other Apple innovations, it was filled with potential that the current Apple business has simply abandoned. Take the whole wireless "mesh" devices. Long before you had these systems, you had Apple Airport Express wireless devices that could either extend your existing network or function as a compact wireless router for up to 10 devices. From the wifi extension perspective, these devices also included a USB connector so that you could connect a printer and an audio port so that you could connect music devices for a multi-room, wireless audio system. While it had a few issues here and there, it was an incredible system on the whole.

And that whole piece was built around Airplay, another awesome Apple feature -- until it wasn't. Eventually, Airplay got so bad, we just quit trying to use it. Theoretically, there are rumors of Airplay2, but I expect that to go the way of Apple TV and Siri, interesting ideas that the current Apple has transformed into technology flops.

But, back to the Apple Airport -- here's another reason why I loved the Airport Express, it was great for traveling. While WiFi network availability has grown, in some places (like Japan), not all hotels have WiFi access. Additionally, some places that you travel to might impose limits on the number of devices you could use. In these environments, the Airport Express was great. You could simply plug it in, and you'd suddenly have your trusted WiFi network available throughout your hotel room. Plus, any of those handy needs-to-be-on-the-same-wifi-network features also worked.

But modern Apple isn't about this kind of functionality any longer. Sure, the cost to run the WiFi router group is probably a fraction of a percent of the hardware revenue of the iPhone business. Sure, there are more Apple buildings and more Apple employees around than there ever were. But today's Apple wants to repeat one aspect of Steve Jobs' approach -- eliminate and focus -- they just want to focus the money. Baby. Out. Baby. Out. Baby. Out. And now we have a nice tub full of dirty water than we can focus on.

As I've written before. I didn't abandon Apple so much as they abandoned me.