I have the original iPhone, and WiFi is always coming and going when I try to access my AirPort base station in our home.
I've had similar experiences for about the past year (sorry, I didn't document when it was working but just know it's been this way for some time now). I have a 1st gen MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo bought in April 2006, running OS X 10.5.5 with all patches), and it works rock solid when I'm AT WORK (where we use Cisco Aironet units), AT HOME (where I connect to a Linksys WRT54G), or ON THE ROAD in various locations.
However, whenever I visit my folks, who have an original Airport base station, my wireless is constantly going between connected/disconnected (as in solid black radial icon in menubar to grey and back again). It's absolutely useless, so I've had to wire my laptop in to do anything truly useful. The strange part is, my old ThinkPad T21 (now ~8 years old) running WinXP SP2 works just fine, as does my dad's ancient ThinkPad 770Z using a Lucent 802.11b PCMCIA card.
The ONLY machine that has trouble talking to the Apple Airport base station is an Apple MacBook Pro!! That's a bit wonky.
I have a new MacBook 2.4GHz - it can't hold a wireless connection for long at all. It can't remember my network or the password. It's fine if I connect with a wire. Is this the same problem as the iMacs and new MacBook Pros have? I'd be grateful for any info.
I have the new MBP and haven't had any issues on multiple wireless connections. I have installed all the available updates. My connections are always very fast and responsive.
Apple has been using wireless for 9 years, there should be no fucking problem at all. Always form over function with those people.
New line of Apple Computers get a thumbs down from me.
Glass Screen, Wireless problems, no firewire on macbooks, no firewire 400, glass screen...oh I said that already, freaky no button trackpad, bad keyboards,
Apple has been using wireless for 9 years, there should be no fucking problem at all. Always form over function with those people.
New line of Apple Computers get a thumbs down from me.
Glass Screen, Wireless problems, no firewire on macbooks, no firewire 400, glass screen...oh I said that already, freaky no button trackpad, bad keyboards,
It's always the people that don't own them and had no intention of buying them who bitch.
Apple has been using wireless for 9 years, there should be no fucking problem at all. Always form over function with those people.
New line of Apple Computers get a thumbs down from me.
Glass Screen, Wireless problems, no firewire on macbooks, no firewire 400, glass screen...oh I said that already, freaky no button trackpad, bad keyboards,
I disagree about the new keyboards, other than the silly repositioning of some of the Fkeys, it has to be the best keyboard I have ever had. No doubt.
In fact I have been in stores where PC users have almost begged the salesman to sell them one to use on their PCs, except the salesman had to point out how the PCs would have trouble remapping the keys. Unlike OSX which is brilliant at remapping PC keyboards.
Hurray at last someone will talk about this. I have my suspicions this is due to the stupid aluminium cases these things come in. I have 2 previous model white iMacs which have none of the problems in identical locations relative to the Airport Extreme.
I have had this since June and have spent countless hours talking to AppleCare about it and being constantly told to wipe my hard drive and reinstall.
And that as we all know is the road to HELL!!!!
I had a black PLASTIC macbook (with the GMA 950) and it had the same problem.
I now have the new Al macbook and I have not run into ANY wifi problems in my apartment.
This problem has had me consider "switching" ... to a windows or linux laptop. I have been sitting next to a friend with a XP laptop - he could connect, I could not, OFTEN - and at other occasions I have been right next to my wife with her macbook (I have an early 2008 MBP) and again, she could connect and I could not.
A laptop with malfunctioning wireless is very nearly useless.
Search for wireless problems in Apple discussions for macbooks & MBPs and you will see this is a LONG running problem which apple has NOT fixed. Anyone remember the school district (NY?) that put their large MB purchase on hold because the wireless didn't work there? And, the most entertaining thing is: those afflicted can boot their mac laptops up in windows via Bootcamp and have flawless wireless, which pretty much makes it a lock that the problem is software, yes?
This should be an extremely high priority at Apple, and I fear it is not. Add to .. glossy only and (on low end) no FW on the new machines and I think Apple is trying to drive me away entirely, and they may succeed yet (and I've used macs for over 20 yrs).
purchased wifes MBPro back in August. worked fine till around the beginning of Oct.. Purchased a new model MBPro for myself late Oct. Issue affects both notebooks. setting up a static IP address seemed to help but, alas, the problem remains. Both are using 5ghz .11n via linksys. I will try the AES to TPIK setting this weekend and see if that helps. I will let you know.
How long ago did you implement this "fix"? Is it still working for you?
Honestly, I don't recall how I ran across that. I was chasing down everything I could think of and was determined to figure out, at the very least, a workaround for this problem. I'm still not sure why it happens, but I know that deleting your router from the ARP cache brings your wireless connection back. I've been doing this on all three wireless machines I have for 2 months now and all three have been perfect.
Quote:
Originally Posted by adamthecarny
If it is anything like when it happened to me, that fixes it for 5mins to an hour until it decides to drop again. Annoying.
Right, which is why I gave instructions to set it up as a cron task that repeats every 5 minutes.
It's a kludge, that's for sure, but it works, and deleting entries from your ARP cache is harmless. Your computer re-caches it the next time it needs to talk to the router. It's a basic function of TCP/IP to cache the MAC address of a host or router.
"I fixed the drop outs by changing my WiFi encryption from WPA2 using AES to WPA2 using TKIP. Seems the Macbook has an issue with AES as the encryption. Works perfectly with TKIP."
Quote:
Originally Posted by ByronVanArsdale
Thank you - THAT was helpful!
Glad SOMEONE read my post instead of ranting and whining about Apple. \
My story was similar to yours, right down to the "They'd never heard of it before".
It's long been apple's unwritten (?) policy to delete threads on their "help" site and deny problems until they come out with a fix (or not). Anyone remember the update last summer that toasted MBPro superdrives? There were about a million posts around the net but all of them on Apple's own site mysteriously disappeared, as did the update. They still don't publicly acknowledge the problem, but will fix the drive on out-of-warranty computers for free...
Also be aware that at some point Apple switched from using Atheros chips to Broadcom (end of 2006 maybe?). I wonder if there's any correlation between which client chips are being used? I have an Atheros 11n chip in my 15" MBP and it is rock stable all the time running 10.5.5 w/ the latest airport update. WPA2 Enterprise at work (Aruba Networks APs), WPA-PSK at home (old Airport Express).
Hurray at last someone will talk about this. I have my suspicions this is due to the stupid aluminium cases these things come in. I have 2 previous model white iMacs which have none of the problems in identical locations relative to the Airport Extreme.[/B]
Apple has had aluminum computers before. I haven't had trouble with my MacBook Pro.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gastroboy
I don't know what paying for Applecare has done for me. Apple wants you to always prove the problem before they will act, and always leave you under the threat of incurring charges for supposed software issues. Which this may be and of Apple's own creation.
In my experience, sometimes they are willing to replace even if it's not really necessary.
Quote:
Originally Posted by AHeneen
I had the problem with my mouse too. When I asked in the Apple discussions, 20 people condescendingly replied "Clean it with a wet napkin or towel" as if I was supposed to figure that one out on my own. Anyways, just wet a napkin or towel then flip your mouse over and run the trackball all over the wet napkin to remove dirt from the sensors (remember how dirt built up on the sensors in the old-style trackball mice?). Anyways, I still think it was stupid on Apple's behalf to make the ball inaccessible so you're stuck having to clean it every other week. Hope that helps you.
Yeah, it's not really a good solution because it's the design that was flawed. People have problems like that and there will always be at least one Apple fan, sometimes ten, that will blame the user for being messy, sloppy, grimy or something like that. It was like that with the white Macbook discoloration too, which I think was a bad batch of parts or contaminated material. The problem with that argument is that competing products don't get problems like that, and it's not as if there was visible cheetos dust anywhere. I get the impression that Apple keyboards, trackpads and mice need to be used in cleanroom environments.
My story was similar to yours, right down to the "They'd never heard of it before".
I have been having serious problems with wireless ever since I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, and Apple Care has insisted that the problem with with my notebook, not Leopard. They even said this when I had the problem on a MacBook Pro that was right out of the box. So now I don't buy Apple notebooks anymore. If wireless is unreliable then there is no point having a laptop.
I have an 802.11b/g and an 802.11n network in my house, both with WPA security enabled. I have many devices connected to these networks and working with no issues. I have 3 Macs:
- Mac Mini from a couple years ago. No issues.
- 20" Aluminum iMac purchased Oct 2007. No issues.
- 24" Aluminum iMac purchased Jan 2008. No issues (with Wifi).
However, one of my daughters recently purchased an iPod Touch (2nd generation). Wifi does not work with WPA/WPA2 enabled. This is a known issue. This product actually shipped with this defect and it has not been fixed yet. I'm wondering if the newer iMacs/notebooks are using the same Wifi chipset as the 2nd generation iPod Touch? Could be the source of all these 802.11 issues.
As a recent Apple convert, I must say I'm absolutely blown away with how poor Apple's quality is. Really inexcusable in this particular case. Seriously, how do you screw up 802.11 b/g these days? All Apple has to do is select a competent 802.11 chipset supplier. They've already had a working 802.11 chipset in previous products. Really amazing.
- iPod Touch (2G). Wifi doesn't work with WPA/WPA2 enabled. Last I checked, Apple does not acknowledge this on their support site. However, if you take the time to talk to a "genius" in the Apple Store, they will tell you it's a known issue. Suggested workaround: disable encryption and use MAC filtering. Yeah, right. Product has been shipping for 4+ months now with no proper solution.
- 3G iPhone. Ridiculously poor modem performance. On our 3rd replacement. They've all performed poorly. Previous phone was Nokia N75 on AT&T (3G phone) -- had no issues. In addition to the ridiculous modem performance, the apps crash all the time. Safari crashes at least once every 5 minutes. Again, no real acknowledgement on Apple's support site; however, all you have to do is talk to a "genius" and they'll gladly swap out your iphone for a replacement with no questions asked (and no explanations given). I suspect the modem performance is attributable to the new Infineon BB/modem. Not sure if the apps instability is purely s/w or possibly h/w (not enough RAM)? Again, product has been shipping for 4+ months now with no proper solution.
Good luck to all of you with iMacs/notebooks with wifi that doesn't work. I suspect it will be many months before Apple acknowledges/fixes your problems based on my iPod Touch/3G iPhone experiences.
As a recent Apple convert, I must say I'm absolutely blown away with how poor Apple's quality is. Really inexcusable in this particular case. Seriously, how do you screw up 802.11 b/g these days? All Apple has to do is select a competent 802.11 chipset supplier. They've already had a working 802.11 chipset in previous products. Really amazing.
There's nothing wrong with the hardware. This is demonstrated by the many posts from people experiencing problems in OS X but then booting into Windows on the same Mac and having no problems at all.
There's nothing wrong with the hardware. This is demonstrated by the many posts from people experiencing problem in OS X but then booting into Windows on the same Mac and having no problems at all.
Yes, I should've said chipset solution (HW + SW). Does seem like a SW issue.
This worked for me. My girlfriend and I both have MBP 2.0. I struggled with the problem first, then a few days later my lady started having the problem with her machine.
Tried this last night and have had relatively speedy connection and NO DROPOUTS!!!! (For 2 days at least so far).
Question - I have an SBC/U-Verse router which I was able to change to TKIP encryption and thusly solve the problem (as far as I can tell). I also have an Airtunes/Airport Express which I use to network our printer and, well, for Airtunes as well. I'm guessing that once I add the Airtunes network via 'add or extend ones wireless network' that the problem may return being that the Airtunes only provides encryption via AES??? (Hoping I'm making sense here...)
OR - does the Airtunes depend on the encryption of the 'host router' if its set up to 'extend the wireless network' using the same IP address yadda yadda yadda?
Thanks again! So far, the explanation of the issue and the resulting 'its working' makes more sense than anything I've read so far.
I'm also interested to see if posting on the Apple discussions on some of the longest threads over there will stay 'posted'...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Squuiid
"I fixed the drop outs by changing my WiFi encryption from WPA2 using AES to WPA2 using TKIP. Seems the Macbook has an issue with AES as the encryption. Works perfectly with TKIP."
Glad SOMEONE read my post instead of ranting and whining about Apple. \
I have a new iMac (post-April 08), and 2 laptops running Tiger.
My lone issue with this larger issue is:
If one of the laptops joins my wireless network, my iMac (and ONLY my iMac) will lose its connection to the Internet. It remains connected to my AirportExreme N base station, but cannot access the Internet. Has driven me nearly bonkers.
My "personal" - and temporary - fix: bought an older AirportExreme G base station for a pittance on eBay.
No problems with it - except the money that I threw out on the new base station. Well, I'm using it for a door-stop - so it isn't really useless.
Comments
I have the original iPhone, and WiFi is always coming and going when I try to access my AirPort base station in our home.
I've had similar experiences for about the past year (sorry, I didn't document when it was working but just know it's been this way for some time now). I have a 1st gen MacBook Pro (2.0GHz Core Duo bought in April 2006, running OS X 10.5.5 with all patches), and it works rock solid when I'm AT WORK (where we use Cisco Aironet units), AT HOME (where I connect to a Linksys WRT54G), or ON THE ROAD in various locations.
However, whenever I visit my folks, who have an original Airport base station, my wireless is constantly going between connected/disconnected (as in solid black radial icon in menubar to grey and back again). It's absolutely useless, so I've had to wire my laptop in to do anything truly useful. The strange part is, my old ThinkPad T21 (now ~8 years old) running WinXP SP2 works just fine, as does my dad's ancient ThinkPad 770Z using a Lucent 802.11b PCMCIA card.
The ONLY machine that has trouble talking to the Apple Airport base station is an Apple MacBook Pro!! That's a bit wonky.
Thanks
http://forums.appleinsider.com/images/smilies/1hmm.gif
Very strange.
New line of Apple Computers get a thumbs down from me.
Glass Screen, Wireless problems, no firewire on macbooks, no firewire 400, glass screen...oh I said that already, freaky no button trackpad, bad keyboards,
Apple has been using wireless for 9 years, there should be no fucking problem at all. Always form over function with those people.
New line of Apple Computers get a thumbs down from me.
Glass Screen, Wireless problems, no firewire on macbooks, no firewire 400, glass screen...oh I said that already, freaky no button trackpad, bad keyboards,
It's always the people that don't own them and had no intention of buying them who bitch.
Apple has been using wireless for 9 years, there should be no fucking problem at all. Always form over function with those people.
New line of Apple Computers get a thumbs down from me.
Glass Screen, Wireless problems, no firewire on macbooks, no firewire 400, glass screen...oh I said that already, freaky no button trackpad, bad keyboards,
I disagree about the new keyboards, other than the silly repositioning of some of the Fkeys, it has to be the best keyboard I have ever had. No doubt.
In fact I have been in stores where PC users have almost begged the salesman to sell them one to use on their PCs, except the salesman had to point out how the PCs would have trouble remapping the keys. Unlike OSX which is brilliant at remapping PC keyboards.
Hurray at last someone will talk about this. I have my suspicions this is due to the stupid aluminium cases these things come in. I have 2 previous model white iMacs which have none of the problems in identical locations relative to the Airport Extreme.
I have had this since June and have spent countless hours talking to AppleCare about it and being constantly told to wipe my hard drive and reinstall.
And that as we all know is the road to HELL!!!!
I had a black PLASTIC macbook (with the GMA 950) and it had the same problem.
I now have the new Al macbook and I have not run into ANY wifi problems in my apartment.
*I have a 2.4 Ghz model Al macbook
*Airport Express with 802.11n
A laptop with malfunctioning wireless is very nearly useless.
Search for wireless problems in Apple discussions for macbooks & MBPs and you will see this is a LONG running problem which apple has NOT fixed. Anyone remember the school district (NY?) that put their large MB purchase on hold because the wireless didn't work there? And, the most entertaining thing is: those afflicted can boot their mac laptops up in windows via Bootcamp and have flawless wireless, which pretty much makes it a lock that the problem is software, yes?
This should be an extremely high priority at Apple, and I fear it is not. Add to .. glossy only and (on low end) no FW on the new machines and I think Apple is trying to drive me away entirely, and they may succeed yet (and I've used macs for over 20 yrs).
How on earth did you think of doing that?
How long ago did you implement this "fix"? Is it still working for you?
Honestly, I don't recall how I ran across that. I was chasing down everything I could think of and was determined to figure out, at the very least, a workaround for this problem. I'm still not sure why it happens, but I know that deleting your router from the ARP cache brings your wireless connection back. I've been doing this on all three wireless machines I have for 2 months now and all three have been perfect.
If it is anything like when it happened to me, that fixes it for 5mins to an hour until it decides to drop again. Annoying.
Right, which is why I gave instructions to set it up as a cron task that repeats every 5 minutes.
It's a kludge, that's for sure, but it works, and deleting entries from your ARP cache is harmless. Your computer re-caches it the next time it needs to talk to the router. It's a basic function of TCP/IP to cache the MAC address of a host or router.
Thank you - THAT was helpful!
Glad SOMEONE read my post instead of ranting and whining about Apple.
Thanks for the feedback.
My story was similar to yours, right down to the "They'd never heard of it before".
It's long been apple's unwritten (?) policy to delete threads on their "help" site and deny problems until they come out with a fix (or not). Anyone remember the update last summer that toasted MBPro superdrives? There were about a million posts around the net but all of them on Apple's own site mysteriously disappeared, as did the update. They still don't publicly acknowledge the problem, but will fix the drive on out-of-warranty computers for free...
Hurray at last someone will talk about this. I have my suspicions this is due to the stupid aluminium cases these things come in. I have 2 previous model white iMacs which have none of the problems in identical locations relative to the Airport Extreme.[/B]
Apple has had aluminum computers before. I haven't had trouble with my MacBook Pro.
I don't know what paying for Applecare has done for me. Apple wants you to always prove the problem before they will act, and always leave you under the threat of incurring charges for supposed software issues. Which this may be and of Apple's own creation.
In my experience, sometimes they are willing to replace even if it's not really necessary.
I had the problem with my mouse too. When I asked in the Apple discussions, 20 people condescendingly replied "Clean it with a wet napkin or towel" as if I was supposed to figure that one out on my own. Anyways, just wet a napkin or towel then flip your mouse over and run the trackball all over the wet napkin to remove dirt from the sensors (remember how dirt built up on the sensors in the old-style trackball mice?). Anyways, I still think it was stupid on Apple's behalf to make the ball inaccessible so you're stuck having to clean it every other week. Hope that helps you.
Yeah, it's not really a good solution because it's the design that was flawed. People have problems like that and there will always be at least one Apple fan, sometimes ten, that will blame the user for being messy, sloppy, grimy or something like that. It was like that with the white Macbook discoloration too, which I think was a bad batch of parts or contaminated material. The problem with that argument is that competing products don't get problems like that, and it's not as if there was visible cheetos dust anywhere. I get the impression that Apple keyboards, trackpads and mice need to be used in cleanroom environments.
My story was similar to yours, right down to the "They'd never heard of it before".
I have been having serious problems with wireless ever since I upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, and Apple Care has insisted that the problem with with my notebook, not Leopard. They even said this when I had the problem on a MacBook Pro that was right out of the box. So now I don't buy Apple notebooks anymore. If wireless is unreliable then there is no point having a laptop.
- Mac Mini from a couple years ago. No issues.
- 20" Aluminum iMac purchased Oct 2007. No issues.
- 24" Aluminum iMac purchased Jan 2008. No issues (with Wifi).
However, one of my daughters recently purchased an iPod Touch (2nd generation). Wifi does not work with WPA/WPA2 enabled. This is a known issue. This product actually shipped with this defect and it has not been fixed yet. I'm wondering if the newer iMacs/notebooks are using the same Wifi chipset as the 2nd generation iPod Touch? Could be the source of all these 802.11 issues.
As a recent Apple convert, I must say I'm absolutely blown away with how poor Apple's quality is. Really inexcusable in this particular case. Seriously, how do you screw up 802.11 b/g these days? All Apple has to do is select a competent 802.11 chipset supplier. They've already had a working 802.11 chipset in previous products. Really amazing.
- iPod Touch (2G). Wifi doesn't work with WPA/WPA2 enabled. Last I checked, Apple does not acknowledge this on their support site. However, if you take the time to talk to a "genius" in the Apple Store, they will tell you it's a known issue. Suggested workaround: disable encryption and use MAC filtering. Yeah, right. Product has been shipping for 4+ months now with no proper solution.
- 3G iPhone. Ridiculously poor modem performance. On our 3rd replacement. They've all performed poorly. Previous phone was Nokia N75 on AT&T (3G phone) -- had no issues. In addition to the ridiculous modem performance, the apps crash all the time. Safari crashes at least once every 5 minutes. Again, no real acknowledgement on Apple's support site; however, all you have to do is talk to a "genius" and they'll gladly swap out your iphone for a replacement with no questions asked (and no explanations given). I suspect the modem performance is attributable to the new Infineon BB/modem. Not sure if the apps instability is purely s/w or possibly h/w (not enough RAM)? Again, product has been shipping for 4+ months now with no proper solution.
Good luck to all of you with iMacs/notebooks with wifi that doesn't work. I suspect it will be many months before Apple acknowledges/fixes your problems based on my iPod Touch/3G iPhone experiences.
As a recent Apple convert, I must say I'm absolutely blown away with how poor Apple's quality is. Really inexcusable in this particular case. Seriously, how do you screw up 802.11 b/g these days? All Apple has to do is select a competent 802.11 chipset supplier. They've already had a working 802.11 chipset in previous products. Really amazing.
There's nothing wrong with the hardware. This is demonstrated by the many posts from people experiencing problems in OS X but then booting into Windows on the same Mac and having no problems at all.
There's nothing wrong with the hardware. This is demonstrated by the many posts from people experiencing problem in OS X but then booting into Windows on the same Mac and having no problems at all.
Yes, I should've said chipset solution (HW + SW). Does seem like a SW issue.
This worked for me. My girlfriend and I both have MBP 2.0. I struggled with the problem first, then a few days later my lady started having the problem with her machine.
Tried this last night and have had relatively speedy connection and NO DROPOUTS!!!! (For 2 days at least so far).
Question - I have an SBC/U-Verse router which I was able to change to TKIP encryption and thusly solve the problem (as far as I can tell). I also have an Airtunes/Airport Express which I use to network our printer and, well, for Airtunes as well. I'm guessing that once I add the Airtunes network via 'add or extend ones wireless network' that the problem may return being that the Airtunes only provides encryption via AES??? (Hoping I'm making sense here...)
OR - does the Airtunes depend on the encryption of the 'host router' if its set up to 'extend the wireless network' using the same IP address yadda yadda yadda?
Thanks again! So far, the explanation of the issue and the resulting 'its working' makes more sense than anything I've read so far.
I'm also interested to see if posting on the Apple discussions on some of the longest threads over there will stay 'posted'...
"I fixed the drop outs by changing my WiFi encryption from WPA2 using AES to WPA2 using TKIP. Seems the Macbook has an issue with AES as the encryption. Works perfectly with TKIP."
Glad SOMEONE read my post instead of ranting and whining about Apple.
Thanks for the feedback.
My lone issue with this larger issue is:
If one of the laptops joins my wireless network, my iMac (and ONLY my iMac) will lose its connection to the Internet. It remains connected to my AirportExreme N base station, but cannot access the Internet. Has driven me nearly bonkers.
My "personal" - and temporary - fix: bought an older AirportExreme G base station for a pittance on eBay.
No problems with it - except the money that I threw out on the new base station. Well, I'm using it for a door-stop - so it isn't really useless.