Apple has officially announced that its entire AirPort product line is being discontinued, and that the company will not be making any more wireless routers in the future. In a statement to 9to5Mac, Apple said “We’re discontinuing the Apple AirPort base station products. They will be available through Apple.com, Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers while supplies last.” This includes the full AIrPort Extreme and Time Capsule models as well as the smaller AirPort Express. Although Apple hasn’t pulled any of its AirPort models from sale, meaning that they can still be purchased while supplies last, the company hasn’t announced any price drops either, although of course third-party retailers may opt to do so in order to clear out stock of the now-discontinued products.
The news comes as little surprise considering Apple dismantled its wireless router division entirely in late 2016, with reports that it had in fact gradually been reassigning team members to other areas for at least a year prior to that, and the company had not released any new wireless router models since 2013, leaving Apple lagging even more significantly behind than usual in adopting new standards. Nonetheless, Apple’s AirPort routers offered an unmatched level of integration into the Apple ecosystem along with the user-friendly setup experience typical of most Apple products, and the unique benefit of AirPlay support for streaming audio from Mac and iOS devices. To help fill the void left by Apple’s own routers, the company has also published a support document to assist users in choosing the best Wi-Fi router to use with Apple devices. 9to5Mac has also published a helpful list of tips and recommendations for finding alternatives to some of the AirPort routers’ more Apple-centric features.
