Top 5 Arguments in Favor of Apple's Return to the Wireless Router Market

Top 5 Arguments in Favor of Apple’s Return to the Wireless Router Market

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Apple produces a wide range of gadgets, most of which communicate with each other flawlessly. So why not extend that ecosystem to your home Wi-Fi? It’s been almost a decade since Apple stopped making Wi-Fi routers, but it seems like there’s never been a better time for the folks in Cupertino to get back in the game.

1 Apple Silicon Exists Now

One of the biggest changes since Apple stopped making its Airport series of routers is the rise of Apple Silicon. Apple now designs and makes its own in-house processors, and the results have been spectacular. Imagine the silicon found in the latest Apple TV 4K or even the original M1 chip at the heart of a router. We could have a router that handles high-speed traffic while also working as a streaming server, or a NAS.

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The processing power in current routers, even quite expensive ones, isn’t much to write home about, and Apple has the technology to supercharge the devices that sit at the heart of our home’s technology.

2 Apple Is All-In on the Smart Home

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Just about every Apple device has some sort of integration with HomeKit , Apple’s smart home standard. Right now, the closest thing to a HomeKit hub device might be the latest Apple TV streaming boxes, some of which have Thread radios built in as well. Slowly, but surely, Apple is building a network of devices that can all talk to each other, so why not include an actual router in that setup?

Even better, an Apple mesh router solution could take advantage of technologies like the Ultra Wideband chip that can tell exactly where another device is in 3D space. In my mind, this could make setting up and optimizing mesh nodes much better, and it might even be possible for some existing Apple devices to act as limited mesh nodes, such as an Apple TV relaying Wi-Fi traffic.

3 AirDrop and the Apple Ecosystem Could Use It Effectively

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If you look at all the cool things you can do wirelessly with Apple devices such as AirDropping huge files in seconds, or casting or controlling other Apple gear with anything from a smartwatch to a laptop, a router seems like a pretty good idea. Many Apple ecosystem features rely on your current Wi-Fi network anyway, or at least make use of it when available. If Apple made the router itself, I imagine they’d come up with new ecosystem functions, or at least ways to make their current party tricks work faster, with less latency, and more reliably.

4 Apple Seems Like a Privacy and Security Bastion

While I’m loath to suggest you trust any corporation when it comes to privacy and security, I have to acknowledge that Apple has a pretty decent track record here overall. In general, they don’t sell their customers’ data for extra cash. They’ll also stand up to the law when it comes to your data by refusing to provide a backdoor into their devices.

One would expect that a modern router created by Apple would continue its current practice of locking things down and protecting user data. To me, that would be a pretty attractive feature in a router system.

5 Router Design and Software Sort-Of Sucks

I currently use a TP-Link Deco M5 mesh kit , which is decent enough for my needs. However, there’s no denying that there’s room for improvement. Even with a mobile app, and a significant improvements over how routers used to be, current routers are still clunky. You still need to know more than you should about network jargon, and in the end you’ll probably find someone tech-savvy to help you set it all up.

I really think Apple could make the whole experience of installing and operating routers much better for the average person. This is the same company that figured out how to make TV color calibration dead easy . So I’m sure getting a mesh network set up with the click of a button isn’t out of reach.

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