The ultimate question for consumers though is this: Are you better off in the Apple ecosystem? As bad as things are with Google, the answer is probably no. But not many have the time, tools, and training to be independent of either.
I dug out an old Airport Extreme when a Fritz!Box at the office had some issues. It worked fine as ever and even better, there was even a security update waiting. The device is from 2013.
The third generation Apple TV from 2012 had 120 months of updates (the last update was Apple TV Software 7.9 in March 2022).
So at the very least it sounds like they are doing pretty ok.
You are not better off in one walled garden over the other. With greedy corporations in the US pushing subscriptions for products that get discontinued and China spinning up cheap crap companies everyday, there is zero reason to invest in anything IoT in your home that is not fully open sourced or completely cracked.
Currently the best indicator is checking Home assistant's or ESPHome's integrations. I'm a little worried that they are guided by one company, Nabu Casa, but atleast the product is open source so the community can take over if they pull an OpenAI and completely reverse. They cater to a very combative group of customers that will absolutely take over the product if they get greedy.
