Wow, so no more simple Time Machine backup product, and no more to stream music to (maybe they couldn't accept that they had a headphone jack?). This sounds like it's actually quite the departure from their previous strategy to have a digital hub with numerous features about the home.
I honestly think they have become myopic. They aren't seeing the big picture of what some of the less profitable products and features are accomplishing. They just aren't making enough income.
Hmm, pretty much any NAS out there (Synology, QNAP or WD) will expose itself as a TimeMachine target as soon as you turn it on. What's not simple about those (+ they give you actual protection from HDD failure)?
It used to be just one small neat white box, and now it becomes two less neat boxes: a router with pointy antennas and a NAS. More things to plug, more wires to run, more devices to setup.
Yeah I had a Linux TimeMachine for a time, I had to completely restart the TimeMachine pretty consistently. So I didn't much trust the NAS implementations of TimeMachine. But then again I have used TimeMachine through Mac OS Server and it started doing the same.
I honestly think they have become myopic. They aren't seeing the big picture of what some of the less profitable products and features are accomplishing. They just aren't making enough income.