What's the story with the Intel Mini's Airport?

dalledalle
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
A LOT of users of the new Intel Mac Minis have reported problems with the Airport and Bluetooth performance on the early models (serial numbers lower than YM613...). See the 300+ posts in the Apple Discussions thread http://discussions.apple.com/thread....7407&tstart=0.



What's the inside story on this, does anyone know? It seems the antenna design, cable types and/or brand of AP/BT subassembly has been changed in the newer models and in the units repaired (including mine).



Was this a design fluke that has silently been updated? Or was there a quality control problem on the assembly line in China? One of the "corrections" is apparently to add a bend-restraint on the Airport-antenna cable; maybe some of these were over-bend in assembly - something that surely will affect a 2.4 GHz signal.



Hans.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    noah93noah93 Posts: 168member
    Will AppleCare fix this? I have two intel minis with serial numbers YM608, and both of them 'see' my wireless network, but whenever I try to connect i get a ' an error has occured while trying to connect to ...'. Oh boy, I knew I should not have been an early adopter.



    Noah
  • Reply 2 of 4
    gsxrboygsxrboy Posts: 565member
    The first rev intel minis do seem to have issues with wireless distance and connections.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    dalledalle Posts: 21member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by noah93

    Will AppleCare fix this? I have two intel minis with serial numbers YM608, and both of them 'see' my wireless network, but whenever I try to connect i get a ' an error has occured while trying to connect to ...'. Oh boy, I knew I should not have been an early adopter.



    Noah



    It seems this is (slowly) being recognised as an issue by AppleCare and many users have had their antenna package replaced. In the beginning (up until mid-April), AppleCare insisted that it was a firmware problem and would be fixed by a coming update. When OS X 10.4.6 and Mac Mini Firmware 1.0.1 failed to solve the problem, it seems they realised that a hardware replacement is needed (week 13 models (serial YM613...) an beyond apparently already had a different type antenna, etc.). Of course many users who use their Mini's hardwired or placed next to the wireless basestation may not experience any problem...



    Hans.
  • Reply 4 of 4
    jpenningtonjpennington Posts: 476member
    I don't know if you saw it, but I had the thread about the mac mini in the kitchen. I had a bluetooth keyboard and mouse (the apple ones) laying around and tried to use those at first. It was maybe 5 feet and it didn't work. I have a logitech S530 (?) set on my desktop and brought that it and it worked all over the room. I ended up just buying another s530 set and connecting it, but I thought the distance was just a limitation of bluetooth. I don't use bluetooth for more than five feet usually.
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