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Mac 911

Problems with an Apple AirPort? It could be a hardware failure

Hardware fails in very different ways. Sometimes, it’s catastrophic and abrupt, and you hear terrible sounds coming from inside your hard drive. Other times, it’s subtle, and a failing component or system causes hardware to limp along, throwing out errors you can’t troubleshoot, because they aren’t consistent. I spent months with one of these problems in early 2015.

However, it’s much clearer resolving issues with Apple’s seemingly now-retired line of AirPort and Time Capsule base stations. Apple hasn’t commented on the record as to whether the products will ever be updated, and the most recent versions remain on sale. But it’s been years since the last hardware improvements, and reports indicate the AirPort product team was disbanded.

Apple’s base stations unfortunately had a long history of not having a, uh, long history. For a long time, despite their high cost relative to competitors with similar general features, I recommended Mac and iOS users purchase Apple Wi-Fi routers, because of the better integration and

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