Q: Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 13'' Wifi Issues

Nowhere in Apple's advertising for the MB Pro does it say its wifi only works properly with Apple routers, so that's a non-starter. I wouldn't be leaving a Genius Bar appointment with that as the only proposed 'answer'.

i can confirm that. I got an airport extreme and it showed the same problems again. I returned it and got a Netgear R6300v2 now, NO disconnects there on 5GHz!

Your other option is an external wifi adapter, some people in this thread have done that.

Or you keep waiting for a driver fix, but it might never happen.

If a "Genius" proposed this to me, I'd accept it as advice on the basis that Apple amends its MB advertising and tech specs to say its wifi only works properly with Apple routers.

DON'T WASTE ALL YOUR TIME GOING TO THE IDIOTS BAR REGARDING THIS ISSUE. THEY WILL TEST IT ON THE SPOT AND PING THE SPEED. AND THE RESULT WILL HAVE NO ISSUE I GUARANTEE. BECAUSE THEY ARE F***ING USING A 5GHZ BAND AND FREAKING FAST WI-FI. SO IF YOU ARE USING 2.5GHZ BAND YOU WILL STILL HAVE PROBLEM.

APPLE SOLUTION:

BUY A F***ING 5GHZ OR AC ROUTER AND THAT'S IT! THEY WILL NEVER FIX THIS ISSUE EVEN WHEN THEY MAKE OS 10.10+ AND MACBOOK PRO 2014 AND UP THIS WILL STILL HAVE THE SAME WI-FI ISSUES AS BEFORE. SO EITHER DEAL WITH A WINDOWS MACHINE OR MAC OS X MACHINE. THEY WILL NEVER EVER FIX THIS.

Been to the Genius Bar 4 times and had 5 phone calls to Apple. The MBPR is completely useless and is only 1.5 years old. It's been having problems since the day I got it. One of the "Genius Bar" idiots told me that because it wasn't having the problem at Apple then there shouldn't be a problem at home. He wiped my internet history and got rid of as much excess files off my computer as he could, then sent me on my way. I could have done that! The past 3 times it was sent to Apple. The first time they replaced the network card, the second time they replaced the entire wifi system, and the last time they replaced... wait for it... the battery.

I have no idea what the **** they did other than the battery replacement the last time, but after starting it up when I got it back it is no longer able to function at all. I tried moving a screenshot to the recycle bin, waited 3 hours for it to try and complete this... difficult task and then cancelled it. This cancellation request took another 2 hours before I gave up and rebooted.

Then again rebooted is probably the wrong word as it didn't boot back up at all. If anyone happens to come accross this discussion when trying to decide between the standard Macbook Pro and the one with Retina Display. DON'T GET RETINA (plus your eyes will thank you too).

since so many people here are having the same problem, I was wondering if anyone from Apple would actually read this at all? Otherwise they gotta do something about it.

no such luck. its a user-to-user forum. apple just runs it. they couldn't care less about what is posted here.

By the way, my replacement MBPr has the exact same problems.

I give up. I'm betting that all of them have the problem and Apple doesn't want to address the issue or recall the MBPs.

Pretty sad for World's No.1 Tech Company.

I just tried this and it has been ok for the past 36 hours.  fingers crossed....

http://osxdaily.com/2012/11/30/resolving-stubborn-wi-fi-connection-problems-in-m ac-os-x/

Deleting the plists has been mentioned here before. As the article itself says, that it may not address the problem of waking up from wifi seemingly connected without any packets moving.

Since you said that's you're problem (and it's mine) I'm pretty surprised to hear this. My own attempts to delete the plists and regenerate them only worked until I put my macbook to sleep over night.

If you're leaving it on and pinging for 36 hours and haven't tried at least a 15 minute sleep, you might not have tested it.

If you have slept and woken the macbook after an hour or so, and your problem is gone, please let me know, and I'll try this again. Also did you only do the plist deletion or also go to the dhcp renewal and mtu shortening.

I also tested pinging for 12 hours straight right after wake up to see if at any point it will at least slowly start sending a fraction of the packets. It did not. So far only turning off the wifi and on again (and you can conversely reset your wifi router, but you're doing the same thing, and no other device needs you to do that) has worked for me after waking up.

The early 2013 model has a different airport card (broadcom) hardware, and a different driver to match it. That one doesn't seem to have this issue. I'm suspecting that the one person who says their problem went away with a new card got one of these older cards. And I'm not sure that's fair since the late 2013 model is supposed add 802.11ac and bluetooth 4 which the early 2013 model doesn't have.

While I think this is a failure in the Apple QA process, I don't know if these drivers are by Apple or just packaged by Apple (by Broadcom, who probably would get a long time consulting group to do it). You could swap either end of your connection, but it my experience I can't quite predict which routers have the issue (a list would be nice, I have the [cisco] Linksys EA3500) AND no other device using the router has a similar issue. If I were taking it to a genius bar (and I won't) I'd bring the router and some other device to also connect to the router.

Also if earlier posts are to be believed the drivers packaged with Win8.1 work via boot camp... which either means there's some fixes in that packaged driver yet to be ported to the mavricks packaged driver, OR there's some architectural differences in the way the OS calls into those drivers that reveal bugs in the driver under one OS but not the other. Either scenario would be a QA failure.

ifixit says the card is: AirPort Card with WLAN 802.11ac, Broadcom BCM4360 for 5-GHz-Band (bis 1,3 Gbps), Broadcom BCM20702 Bluetooth 4.0, Skyworks SE5516 Dual-Band 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WLAN Frontend-Module so, you know, it could be a bad power sleep/wake of the front end module too.

I just want to say that anyone who writes as though Apple is knowing selling crap to them and refusing to address the problem... well. Don't act surprised, nor expect stating the way you feel to change anything. Apple's a little more secretive about what problems they know exist and which they can or can't do anything about. It's very frustrating, and it might never get fixed, but you can't know. They're a little better than say Samsung or Sony who might release a new batch of hardware, that changes everything and fixes a long standing issue, but refuse to go back and patch an issue with the just discontinued hardware. Basically every piece of Apple hardware I've had has some corner case for users who aren't getting what they expect (most commonly heatsink/cooling related; in the 90s there were a lot of doesn't wake from sleep issues). But I see that with a lot of companies' products. I agree that some other companies can be good about saying, "okay, you will be happier if I replace this with something that works," and they do. Apple has shown me repeatedly to be highly reluctant of anything along those lines. The only time it's been really unnacceptable (to me) is when they do start replacing some people's products with the exact same problem I have, but only if you happen to call within the right 2 month period. Not before (even a year before), nor after, and don't expect them to deliver the good news of a limited free replacement roll out by following up on that problem report you made that left you with an "it's just you, did you try not using it that way." That stung me enough to bring it up again now.

4rk wrote:

 

Also if earlier posts are to be believed the drivers packaged with Win8.1 work via boot camp... which either means there's some fixes in that packaged driver yet to be ported to the mavricks packaged driver, OR there's some architectural differences in the way the OS calls into those drivers that reveal bugs in the driver under one OS but not the other. Either scenario would be a QA failure.

i definitely have no problems under Win 8.1, it works perfectly on 802.11g, n and ac. On Mavericks there are various issues with the wifi since the day i bought it. And if thats not enough of a proof for a faulty driver, i had the whole notebook replaced and the new one was the same.

But what really amazes me is that so FEW people are complaining here. I mean, the disconnects and especially the slow speed on 802.11n networks are a huge problem for me, i wonder how so many MBP owners can live with that.

But what really amazes me is that so FEW people are complaining here.

Perhaps others are not having much of a problem.

I don't know how to say this without sounding like a complete and utter jerk. But one possibility is that you have a problem caused by something that you do differently than most other users, and not a fundamental flaw in Mac OS X (or at least not one that EVERY user encounters).

hm, now this might sound a bit odd as well, but i was curious and i asked two colleagues that own MBPr's as well if they are having issues with their WiFi. Guess what, they do. One of them just lives with it and the other one is using the Thunderbolt-to Ethernet Adapter now. But they may have bought these computers mainly for the style-factor, so i guess its not a big deal.

This thread is full of people reporting problems and i have had two machines with excellent wifi under windows and terrible wifi on Mavericks (on the same network) tested on 802.11g, n and ac. And you still believe its a user-related problem? Wow.

I've been having this issue here and there. What I finally decided to do is install SleepWatcher and have it turn Wifi off and on immediately after the system wakes up. So everytime it wakes up I see it turn off and back on, takes about 2 seconds, and it connects right away to my network.

This will get me by until there is a fix supplied by Apple.

Grant Bennet-Alder wrote:

But what really amazes me is that so FEW people are complaining here.

Perhaps others are not having much of a problem.

...

It's a flaw in software (since there's a couple of confirmations that the same hardware with windows 8.1 doesn't have the issue).

It doesn't happen to everyone because it happens only on certain types of wireless networks. Even the one spec type (802.11n) has many variations, from whether it's 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz or both, or b/g/n just n, the number of TX and RX antennas (1x1 1x2 2x2 2x3 3x3), channel hopping or not, and which mode of encryption (at least 5 options there) all to combine to 2^3*5*5 not to mention differences in implementation to the spec by vendors that don't present any options. People do expect thier network adapters to work with all networks that support the spec, but this laptop's adapter does not. The specs have variations and it could be that there's a common variation that shouldn't be allowed by the spec if you read it Apple's way, but is practially in use, and it triggers the problem.

So I know that I only see this issue at home and at a couple of random cafes. My workplace is doing just fineon a 5Ghz 802.11n connection that seems almost like the one I use at home except my home one is using a PSK and not a certificate for encryption.