The likely reason Apple stopped making Wi-Fi routers

Before the iPhone, Apple had a brand of wireless routers called AirPort. Launched in 2003, Apple abruptly disbanded its AirPort team in 2016, before completely killing the brand two years later. Since then, there’s been no indication that Apple wants to get back into the mesh router rodeo, and the real reason they did this? If you guessed “silver”, you get a gold star.

Speaking to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman at the time, Apple confirmed that the company had decided to refocus on “the consumer products that generate the bulk of its revenue.” Apple actually had a weak moment in 2016, as it saw its profits fall for the first time since 2001. iPhone sales were down, and overall they sold 8% less than in 2015. They would begin a recovery in 2017, with the rejuvenation of the iPhone with the iPhone X and iPad Pro models hitting the shelves.

AirPort routers were popular with users who owned them, but as Apple let the hardware languish, other brands began replacing them. This was especially true when it came to Gigabit connections and modern Wi-Fi standards, which enable much faster speeds and traffic on the network. However, AirPort functioned as a multi-layered network device in later models, with the AirPort Extreme being able to function as a network-attached storage (NAS) device, or the Time Capsule, which provided an internal hard drive and network-wide backups.

As we mentioned above, these older AirPort routers have now aged a bit in terms of performance. They can be found for $20 to $100 online, depending on condition, but should not be used as a central wireless system. The last potentially useful feature, Time Capsule, had support removed in the macOS 27 version of Time Machine Backup, so it will no longer work with hardware.

For those still clinging to their AirPort hardware, especially Time Capsule, there is now TimeCapsuleSMB, which brings updated versions of Samba back to the table. Samba is the protocol behind SMB server connections, often used on NAS devices, and Time Capsule only supports Apple’s now-deprecated protocol and SMB1, which Apple abandoned years ago. The routers should still work as expected, but again, this is old hardware that you can do much better than at this point.

Apple may be out of the network router game, but not entirely out of the networking game. It began to give way to other cellular modem suppliers like Qualcomm, as it did with Intel and its processors, by choosing to use its own. The iPhone Duo and 18 Pro will feature the C2, its third cellular modem, and the N1 chip, offering Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and interconnectivity via Thread radio.