Q: Macbook Airport Drops Connection

you're right... they should have someone from tech support or something here in this forum.. like people from M-Audio... they have one person answering all the questions, comments, complains, etc....

what happened to CUSTOMER SERVICE? and addressing CUSTOMER NEEDS?

My MacBook Pro (2.2 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo) just started experiencing this horrible blinking on and off dropped wireless connection thing during the past week (happens about 3 or 4 times a day that i've noticed so far).

I actually had just taken my MBP into an apple store last week where they replaced a faulty battery (2nd one i had to have replaced) and a faulty DVD drive that stopped reading DVD-Rs. Before finding all they thousands of replies, i though maybe they had dropped it and damaged the antenna or something (i see no visible scars of this).

The other change in my setup is I lost my airport express on vacation so i bought a used one off of ebay. The light is always green and my wife's HP laptop never loses its signal during the times my MBP's wifi is spazzing out.

*Important news:*

*A friend of mine yesterday try SNOW LEOPARD buld 7000. The appleairportbcm.... .kext is 4.0 driver version and leopard 10.5.6 has 3.5 version.*
*With snow leopard there's NO PROBLEM, Wifi works without problems, if he reboot on leopard 10.5.6 wifi don't work.*
*PLEASE APPLE UPDATE AIRPORT BROADCOM DRIVER TO 4 VERSION!!!!!!!*

PaoloMactux wrote:

*PLEASE APPLE UPDATE AIRPORT BROADCOM DRIVER TO 4 VERSION!!!!!!!*

Is there a way of updating the airport driver to version 4 on your own. Can you do that with Leopard AND Tiger?

I don't have snow leopard so I can't do it. My friend tried to take the appleairportbcm4311.kext from snow leopard and put it into leopard but don't works, probabily beacuse is a 64 bit driver and leopard 10.5 have 32bit driver.

build is 10A222, not 7000, sorry

How to get snow leopard?
Does it work?

Not sure if anyone has done this yet, but if you haven't, submit a bug fix report to Apple in regards to this widespread issue . Maybe this will jog them out of their apathy.

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbook.html

Just sent one off. Thanks for the link.

Just out of curiosity to everyone who's affected, what are your transmit rates? When I wake up my macbook from sleep, I get around 11-12mbs. After a while before I get booted off, I get around 1-2. If you don't know how to check your transmit rate hold down the option key and click on your airport tool in the upper toolbar.

I actually have a Macbook pro, but I'm also having trouble connecting.

One thing that I found interesting is that my router can display the signal strength of connecting devices and the Macbook Pro always has VERY low strength, even in the same room. I usually get about -88db with the MBP when the iPhone and a PC two floors up usually connects at about -60db. It appears that the airport card is underpowered.

What signal strength are other people getting? Not the strength of the router, but the strength of the computer.

Assuming I'm reading mine correctly, I'm getting a 52

I can now confirm that it is not a hardware issue. After booting from my friends external HD with Snow Leopard installed, my internet works fine. THEREFORE, the cause is indeed 10.5.6. I'm glad I tested this out because I was going to buy a new airport card, now I know that's not the reason. APPLE PLEASE FIX THIS ISSUE!!!

I brought my macbook into an apple store and they tried replacing the airport card and booting up from an external hard drive and it didn't fix the problem. I brought it into a repair center and they replaced the airport card with a two antenna on verses a three antenna card. I haven't picked it up yet but they say it's working. Could this be part of the problem, a three antenna card?

llee8820 wrote:
I can now confirm that it is not a hardware issue. After booting from my friends external HD with Snow Leopard installed, my internet works fine. THEREFORE, the cause is indeed 10.5.6. I'm glad I tested this out because I was going to buy a new airport card, now I know that's not the reason. APPLE PLEASE FIX THIS ISSUE!!!

I agree that APPLE SHOULD DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!

But the problem is not just with Leopard. Lot of people on this thread, other people I know and myself who run tiger (10.4.11) are having the same problems.

Why can't apple just modify the snow leopard airport driver for a 32 bit system and update it through a software update? Is it some other compatibility issue with the driver they're using for snow leopard and leopard and tiger? Dare I think that Apple would stoop so low as to not fix this issue so that people would be motivated to upgrade to snow leopard? i hope not.

I would encourage anyone reading this thread and want apple to address this issue to, as mentioned in a previous post, to send feedback to apple about their macbook (pro):

http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbook.html

There has to be a fix for this from apple.