Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
Today I upgraded to Lion. At first, everything seemed to be fine. Then I noticed I didn't have Air Drop in my Finder window. I then upgraded my Macbook Pro to Lion and it does hav Air Drop. I've looked online and this was a common bug when developers were testing Lion.
Does anyone know if Apple is aware of the problem and is planning on fixing it? If they aren't then it looks like I'm going to have to do a clean install.
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)
Okay, yeah. I'm guessing my chipset on my iMac isn't supported. I would have kinda like a headsup from Apple saying they wouldn't be able to support everyone though.
You mean this page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html
Where it says:
AirDrop
supports the following Mac models:
Yeah, but why didn't they have that under "What's New" next to the AirDrop section.
My Mac Pro has this
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x87)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.10.131.36.11)
The MacBook Pro has a Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x168C, 0x87)
Firmware Version: Atheros 5416: 2.1.14.9
Are they not fairly vanilla Apple Components?
They are two different manufacturers for a start.
One of which does not support AirDrop in thier hardware.
That maybe but shouldn't the Airdrop Icon show even if it has a line or the classic Cicrle with line through it.
There seems to be something disingenuous about the whole thing.
Disappointing
You really think Apple are trying to hide that one feature is not available to some machines?
If it is that big a deal then contact Apple and ask for your money back. All $30.
There are many things in Lion that have specific requirements to be available, they are all listed on the Tec Specs page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html
This has been the case with ALL OS updates, some will get everything some will not.
Apple provide the information and it is the USERS responsibility to check BEFORE they purchase.
It is disappointing that you did not check before you purchased that you had hardware fully compatible with all OS Lion features. Only you can do that. Apple can't check it, they can only provide the info for you to do it.
Ian...appreciate your feedback but I'm not sure your responses are based on anything but guesses since we haven't heard the REAL reason from Apple. Yes, there are two manufacters of Airport hardware but apparently that isn't the only issue since many of us have the Broadcom chipset and it still doesn't work. There's a difference between Apple disabling a feature because the hardware cannot support it and Apple disabling a feature because they didn't want to include older machines in their testing. There are many cases where Apple prevents new functions from working on older hardware even though that hardware is capable of running the function. They may simply feel the performance isn't good enough or don't want to test it on those machines. What I'm trying to understand is what prevents AirDrop from working on Intel machines that aren't on the supported list. If the wi-fi chip can't handle it...fine. I'm not happy but that's an answer. If Apple just decided not to enable it for testing and support reasons, then I'm sure someone will enable it through a hack. Either way, let's get some facts so we know the full story.
PS. Note to Apple...System Profiler shows my Machine as iMac 8,1, not iMac 2008. Please update your support docs to reflect the naming convention used in your own software so we know what machines you're talking about.
Dude Chill.
It just seems not a "Best Practices" type of thing .
Airdrop is talked about as being able to connect to computers that are near- they don't talk about specs in there promo statement.
They kist incompatible software why not list incompatible hardware
They seem to promote it as a Bonjour plus - and yes I know Bonjouris a different technology but seems a bit confusing.
Hey Dude have a good evening I'm over it and out of here,
Namaste!
Repling to my own comment here. I finally was able to get the answer I was looking for from Glenn Fleishman who writes for Tidbits. He wrote:
"I'm working on something for Macworld about this in depth. It's the age of the chips. There's a particular PAN (Personal Area Network) function that was only built into chips at a certain point. Apple didn't upgrade all its Macs to use these chips uniformly, which is why some are ok as of 2008 and others in 2010. They clearly didn't have a strategy to use the feature across the product line until late (like early 2010 or late 2009).
It's definitely not a switch they disabled. It's a specific hardware mode that has to be in the chip."
So unfortunately AirDrop will never work with older machines. That's disappointing given my Macs are still fairly new but as others have pointed out, not without precident. Apple does this all the time with IOS updates and has even done it before with OSX (some annimations come to mind that require certain graphics cards). I think what bugs me about this one is it's listed as one of the top 10 features of Lion but you have to dig into the fine print to see what machines are actually supported.
Thanks to Glenn for replying back with facts so quickly.
I appreciate everyone who has commented on this, and thank you Eric D. for getting that quote from Glenn Fleishman (he is a good writer).
In reply to Ian: I do not want my money back from Apple, and I also do understand that there is a chance that some features in a new OS won't all work on everyones Mac as they need some specific and newer hardware. But all we were asking on this discussion is why AirDrop wasn't showing up on certain Macs.
It might be naive of me that I didn't check, but quite frankly, I don't consider my iMac to be obsolete - therefore, I didn't think I needed to.
At least now we know that AirDrop works with certain chipsets.
Thanks once again to everyones contribution in this discussion.
Looks like I'll be sticking with DropCopy then!
Regards,
Shawn
Ian Parkinson wrote:
You really think Apple are trying to hide that one feature is not available to some machines?
If it is that big a deal then contact Apple and ask for your money back. All $30.
There are many things in Lion that have specific requirements to be available, they are all listed on the Tec Specs page:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/specs.html
This has been the case with ALL OS updates, some will get everything some will not.
Apple provide the information and it is the USERS responsibility to check BEFORE they purchase.
It is disappointing that you did not check before you purchased that you had hardware fully compatible with all OS Lion features. Only you can do that. Apple can't check it, they can only provide the info for you to do it.
Yes but previous updates have been far more backward compatable with hardware, Lion is clearly an attempt to force users to update their very expensive hardware at a time when the world is running on empty...
As a long time MAC user who has intel chipped equipment that will run Lion, I expect to be able to run all aspects of Lion, after all the upgrade to SL from L was just that, an UPGRADE not a downgrade. I don't agree that someone who ownes a two year old mac should expect it to be obsolete already.
I understand how older macs can't set up a PAN. But why cant airdrop be set up for older macs to only work when both macs are hooked up to an existing wifi network? and only disable airdrop when no network is present? I don't know the specs for this hardware, but maybe someone can explain.
On my MacBook 5,1 the profiler (now called System Information) under Network, WiFi says:
Card Type: AirPort Extreme (0x14E4, 0x8D)
Firmware Version: Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (5.100.98.75.6)
MAC Address: xxxxxxxxxxx
Locale: FCC
Country Code: xx
Supported PHY Modes: 802.11 a/b/g/n
Supported Channels: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 60, 64, 100, 104, 108, 112, 116, 132, 136, 140, 149, 153, 157, 161, 165
Wake On Wireless: Supported
AirDrop: Supported
Status: Connected
On my MacBook 2,1, the AirDrop: Supported line does not appear! (nor Wake On Wireless)
Air Drop isn't showing up.
