WiFi Issues With MacBook Air

Absolutley disgraceful peformance by apple, bought a brand new 11inch MacBookAir when it came out back in August continued problems with wifi, not connecting and not recognising networks, now intermittent connection problems with my mouse and keyboard.

my laptop is currently sat on top of the reuter and it is now the *5th time I am trying to write on this forum.

Shame on you apple.

Same here, MacBookAir, bought in August, ap unreachable if more then 10 meters away, it never reconnect to known wifi, connection sometimes drops, speed always ridiculous.

Because of this once I needed to restore it and thanks to apple internet restore it showed days as time to download, I had to buy and connect by cable.

For a 1150€ laptop, its really -REALLY- annoying 😠

2 Months ....no ******* update.

Lost a ******* ebay bid.

Have retyped about a dozen emails that didn't get ******* sent.

About to throw this ******* thing at someone.

Oooops, I apologize for my language. I hope someone from the upper eschelon of Apple Communities doesn't happen to read this and actually take ******* notice of the problem.

****.

Same here as well. At my university network the connection is instantaneously, but at home I have to connect with the network manually. Very, very annoying. I would have expected better, Apple. Now, please fix it.

This may not be the ideal fix for everyone but for now it is the best fix I have been able to find. The whole reason I purchased a macbook air 11 inch was because of its mobility. Since it lacks an ethernet port without wifi the device is not very useful to me. So what I did is I simply disabled the wireless password on my modem through the main computer that the modem is connected to. Like I said it is not the ideal fix because it opens up your wireless network to your neighbors but so far it has been the only thing that has worked for me. Luckily I know both my neighbors but if you live in an apartment this could be a problem.

Hmm, I have no idea then. I purchased my macbook air 11 inch about a month ago and since day one it has caused problems with the wifi. I even had to contact timewarner a few times and they reset everything which only fixed the problem for a day or two. I tried every security setting on the list for the modem (WEP, WPA, etc) but nothing worked. It still said network timed out. I tried disconnected all other devices on my network's wifi and even the direct connections and still no luck. Today I decided to turn off the password and leave it as an open network and it has been working perfectly since I did that. I hope Apple fixes it soon because I would like to put the password back on eventually.

I also have a 2011 Macbook Air and it recently had a pixel issue. I brought it to Genius Bar, where they happily and quickly replaced the display within 24 hours. I was impressed!

THen I get home, and my Internet is crawling. No matter where I speed test, I get such slow speeds. All my other devices can connect and get blazing fast speeds.

I got an Air because itr's supposed to be the best - but it needs proper WiFi. Why is this happening???

I've troubleshot it all, including but not limited to router and modem resets, updates, clearing caches and permissions, doing an Apple hardware diagnostic check,. changing and adding Internet locations and disabling/enabling passwords, getting a NEW router.

Now what? I can't believe I spent so much and I can't even view a lo-res YouTube video without waiting for 5 minutes of buffering. Ugh!

~Josh

PS - APPLE! Fix this please. I paid a lot more than I can afford to for what I thought was the best brand. Fix it, ASAP!

Where are the press/tech blogs regarding this mess?

I'm having the exact same issues you've described. I've just been going along with it, waiting, hoping that somehow Apple fixes this.

My iPhone 4S, iPad 2, and iPod Touch 4G...all connect and stay connected to my apartments wi-fi router, yet my Late 2011 OS Lion X MB Air 13" (which costs as much as all the others combined) can not connect on Wake, and will not stay connected consistently. This morning alone, just while browsing and chatting on Adium, I've had to turn the Wi-Fi On/Off 3 times to reconnect, because it was just disconnecting randomly.

I called Apple Support, they said they could not help me unless I had the Apple Care for my MBA, which clearly has an issue which is not under my control and is a known issue. They told me that they could make me an appointment at the Genius Bar, but this is a known issue with Macbook Airs, I doubt replacing it will do anything at all.

After all there are 100,000 views, and nearly 400 posts regarding this mess - which I also directed the Apple Care agent to.

I for one, will not be purchasing a MBA in the future, and will be warning my family & friends (many of whom do purchase other Apple products).

Apple needs to pay attention to this thread, or they are going to lose a lot of business.

I HAVE THE SOLUTION!

You may not like it, but it is the solution.

The issues of

- Bluetooth has a delay with audio

- Networking unstable, dropped connections to WiFi points

- Jitter and packet loss

- Interference between the bluetooth adapter and wifi unit

Can all be resolved by removing the Apple OSX system.

Those of you who don't want to use Windows because they like to swipe things around on their apple screen like poofters and look cool like the guys with tattoos and skateboards at the genius bar, this solution will be okay for you as well, you don't need to lose the pretty apple oS.

After installing Windows 7 on this machine, i have a fast stable remote desktop to my server in London, my Voip phone works properly and the machine gets a better networking connection without timeouts and the bluetooth headset is now working in real time. I can boot into windows for work and apple when i want.

Heres how it is done.

1) Download and install Refit (google it)

2) Get an ISO image of Windows 7 64 bit

3) Run boot camp , and attach an external USB hard drive - Bootcamp will create a windows drive out of the free space on your apple disk.

4) Boot camp will format the drive, and it will put the windows setup on it

- then it will ask you if you want to download support files for windows, say yes, save them onto the external drive

5) Restart the machine holding down the control key (its ALT on the macbook air)

6) Choose windows setup and off you go

- I had a n issue with windows setup recognising the internal hard drive i could see it but not format it, i had to delete the partition i made and reformat it and reboot a few times then it worked.

7) When done boot into windows and you will be able to install the drivers, from the folder you downloaded them to with bootcamp. Theres 1 exe that installs them all.

8) You're done.

Anyway, this works guys, forget OSX it's no use for serious people.

<Edited by Host>

Also, apple telephone support is in Ireland, the cool guys in the Genius bar and the support in Ireland have no idea about the design in China or the american based developers who have made the bad drivers and the **** OS. Thats why you cant get help - they have no idea what you are talking about.

Great post ^ nickfromadenhead. Not so sure about bashing or stereotyping the Irish but....

I'm a very long term user of both Apple and Wintel computers but have almost exclusively stuck with Apple for my personal/home computers. Unfortunately this one has been a huge let down. I wouldn't be suprised if this went class action at some point. Too bad the plaintiffs don't really benefit in class actions, only the lawyers...

Anyway:

-Totally agree that most of the "Genius" bar folks are tools. Reset PRAM, reinstall OS, etc., etc., blah, blah, blah. No panaceas whatsoever.

-Absolutely love the irony - fix your Mac by installing Windows! Someone needs to make a youtube video of this showing this actual problem and solution. I'd pray for such a video to go viral. Talk about getting Apple ****** off... That would be fantastic.

-With agreement on these points I will say that in general the reliability and robustness of Windows has been improving and catching up to the Mac. I still prefer Mac hardware and software but NEVER AGAIN will I buy a rev 1.0 for both hardware and software at the same time. (Clarification: I call 10.7 a 1.0 version. Although my Macbook Air is not an entirely new hardware revision is it a 1.0 in terms of having the Core i7).

I sure do hope 10.7.3 comes soon and fixes this. So frickin tired of waiting. Not only waiting but being disappointed - I though there was a good chance 10.7.2 would fix this.

No real news or fixes so just a place to check in periodically and B.S. with folks as I'm doing here...

Bad Apple, bad....

I have been struggling with this same issue for months since upgrading to 10.7.2. I think I may have stumbled across a solution. Click on the wireless icon - Network Preferences - Click drop down in lower left hand corner - Set Service order. Make Wi-Fi the top selection. You may have to disable your bluetooth as well. I am still seeing jitter, but at least I am connected.

Hey MDC68,

Thanks for the post, I feel like you're on to something. My problem is the only two choices that appear in my "Service Order" are "Main" and "Bluetooth DUN" and "Main", which may stand for "Main House" was on top to begin with....grrr!

Any ideas on how to add a particular wireless "service" that'll show up in that order?

Also, are you suggesting we turn off Bluetooth only to insure this order, or before every sleep or power-down?

Thanks,

Christian Hunter

Austin, Texas

Well, this worked for me. Connected immediately on Wake, did this twice and it was instant.

It can't be that simple, can it?...

Apple CS (and myself...) are a morons if the solution is really this easy.

I cant believe the solution was this simple for me. Someone better rush to go make a Youtube video about it and make a quick buck off advertising, lol.

So far this has worked for me. Under System Prefs>Network, I clicked the action icon on the bottom left hand side, changed the service order in both "Internet" and "Automatic" so that Wifi was first. Now my wifi connects almost immediately after waking up from sleep.

Hallelujah! A Christmas miracle!