AirPort Express (2004)
Presented by Apple as the world's first mobile 802.11g base station: it plugged straight into the wall and, with AirTunes, sent iTunes music wirelessly to any stereo in the house.
© Jared C. Benedict (redjar) · CC BY-SA 2.0 ↗ Resized, no crop or retouching.
Specs
| Connectivity | 802.11g · 54 Mbps · ~45 m |
| Price | $129 |
| Key feature | AirPort Express 802.11n (2008) · AirPort Express (2012) |
Launch
Apple unveiled AirPort Express on June 7, 2004 as the world's first mobile 802.11g base station, aimed at both Mac and PC users. Its single-piece design, with an integrated power plug and no external power brick, weighed just 6.7 ounces: it could be tossed into a laptop bag to bring wireless broadband to a hotel room. It started shipping on July 14 with more than 80,000 pre-orders, at $129 in the United States. The announcement came as a press release.
Marketing
The hook was not just portability but music. With AirTunes and iTunes 4.6, the computer detected the remote speakers and streamed music to any stereo connected through the base's combined analog and optical digital audio output. Presenting it, Steve Jobs summed it up: it was not only the first mobile 802.11g base station, but a way to play the iTunes library on any stereo in the home without wires. Apple sold travel Wi-Fi and whole-home music in one $129 device.
Flaws and fixes
AirTunes only streamed audio from within iTunes, a limitation of the computer's software rather than the base's hardware: once AirPlay arrived in OS X Mountain Lion (2012), the Mac could send its full system sound to the base. The base was 802.11g; 802.11n speed only arrived with the March 2008 revision, and it had a single Ethernet port, with no LAN sockets for wired devices. The succession was long: a square redesign with two Ethernet ports in 2012; AirPlay 2 support came in 2018, only for that 2012 generation; and that same year Apple ended the entire AirPort line when it exited the router market, according to 9to5Mac.