Comment by johnklos
4 years ago
I think this will make for an excellent litmus test for companies that make wifi products. Is this a critical fix? No. Is it important, if not critical? Yes.
Some vendors aren't going to care about this in the least and won't offer any updates.
Some will only fix this in new and future devices.
And perhaps some will update all their devices going back several years.
Currently I buy used 802.11ac Airport Extremes for wireless for people because they're simple, they stay out of the way, and the last time there was a major update, Apple updated every Airport model all the way back to the Airport Express from 2008.
But I want to be able to buy new wifi devices, and how vendors handle this will inform me about which ones I'll buy going forward.
As far as I can tell Apple has not released an update for my Airport Express since 2018 :/
Maybe because it's the same year they announced they were dropping support for it?
Time to get a newer piece of gear. This is the problem with software - it doesn't age like a fine wine; it has to be maintained - and that usually means someone is going to have to be paid to do the not so fun work of maintaining and fixing old stuff that is no longer "OoOh tEh sHiNeY!"
I don't think it's so much the paying of programmers for maintenance, as the desire for forced-obsolescence, so they can sell new stuff.