Airport Utility 6.0 is regressive vs. 5.5

Hi !

Thanks for your help and detailed answer.

I was surprised by what I thought to be a mac adresses access controll airport bug,

because with previous firmware release I could have differents settings for each

device and I was using this possibility to dedicate each airport express to

connect with specific devices.

Ill manage other way for instance for the one dedicated to music streaming

to my Hi Fi by not allowing this one to have clients.

I agree with you,

being now aware that the Time Machine / Time Capsule issue

we were so many to experience after Mac Os Lion 10.7.2,

was due to the presence of a Western Digital software used by

an external W.D. Mybook disk using a Plist launch daemon file

blocking the acces of T.Machine to T.Capsule after every

reboot of the computer.

But it is a bit surprising anyway,

when you know W.D. External disks are recommended by Apple

in its Apple Store,

and that if I understood things correctly,

my own Imac native built-in disk has been manufactured by W.Digital ...

And Apple care people took about 4 months to find out ...

I spent myself several hours on the phone with an Apple Care

2nd Level ingeneer with no result ... except I learnt a bit more

about using my Mac. (Restauring system etc...)

But as said in the last words of a famous moovie dialogue ...

"Nobody is perfect" !

And I remain an Apple-Addict anyway !

So if I understood you corectly,

I have to :

1°) update from Airport Utility v5.5.3 to v6

2°) download the separate AirPort Utility 5.6.

3°) update T.Capsure & A.Express(s) firmware to 7.6.1.

(I thought this was only necessary to .b or .g devices - I have only .n)

4°) upgrade from lion 10.7.2 to 10.7.3

Thanks again for your help,

Jean.

1°) update from Airport Utility v5.5.3 to v6

Yes, and for now, I would ignore v6 until Apple has updated it to include the missing features.

2°) download the separate AirPort Utility 5.6.

Yes, and use this one until v6 has been updated. Once v6 catches up in features you will be able to delete v5.6.

3°) update T.Capsure & A.Express(s) firmware to 7.6.1.

(I thought this was only necessary to .b or .g devices - I have only .n)

Yes, I don't believe 7.6.1 will even work on the b/g only Apple routers.

4°) upgrade from lion 10.7.2 to 10.7.3

Yes, if you want to. It is not required.

Also, I made one error in my previous post above regarding MAC address access control. You can configure this on any AirPort router in the Extended group. I was thinking DHCP reservations when I made the statement which can only be configure on the main router.

Hi again !

I went precisely the way you said through theese steps including Mac Os 10.7.3 upgrade,

on my MacBook air.

Everything turned out fine.

The only point being again this automatic duplication of mac adress access control settings

on my three Airport devices.

This is not very important as I told you before I just revoqued the authorisation to accept clients

to the airport express dedicated to hi fi music stream, because I noticed that if my Iphone or MacBook

would connect to this airport express it happend to brake the music stream.

Well now I think I am going to go through the same steps on my Imac.

I really thank you for your great help,

patience and understanding with a Mac begginer like me.

I have been working as a programmer and ingeneer on "Big Blue" computers for 15 years,

and a lot with W****** operating PCs connected to IBM mainframes to manage worldwide

databases for dataware house use by financial audit people

I had always been fond of Apple philosophy,

and picked-up this plateform for personal use when I retired to get into "pleasure" computers world

after having been struggling a lot with W****** ...

I wish one day being able to be as usefull to others as you are on this forum 😊 !

I wanted to mark your answer as being correct to lift up your points level,

but couldn't find how to do ...

Wish you a pleasant evening,

Jean.

Not a problem Jean. Glad I could help. With all your experience I'm sure that you will be teaching us a thing or too in no time.

As for the points, only the person who started the thread can mark answers as correct or helpful. Thanks anyway.

Thanks again !

I just finished Airport Utility and Os 10.7.3.

on Imac and everything went flawlessly,

and looks like working fine by now.

Wifi seems even much more speedy and stable than before.

The only criticism I would make to Apple is not to guive some

guidance concerning updates relying on forums to help

users solve their problems - or maybe I didn't know where to look

to get the right processing.

Anyway thank you so much,

its a real relief for me,

I hate keeping unsolved problems

running in the back of my mind.

Jean.

Apple should fix this. We need the missing features back.

For those of you answering the initial question with "just install and use 5.6", isn't that really just a band-aid? The real question is why Apple thinks it necessary to remove these features and go forward with version 6. It is also degrading to those of us who continue to use Airport 801.11g devices which are eliminated in Airport Utility 6. Also, how long do you think they will continue to upgrade 5.6? Going by Apple's past history -- not long! And, if 6 is NOT completely re-written yet (as some have suggested), then it should have been released as a beta, and not as an official Software Update.

I would say the second real question is :

"What power do I have as a simple user

in front of the choices made by Apple " ?

Except expressing myself on this forum,

and try to find a solution to the problems

I meet from other more experienced

users than myself ?

Is there any Apple team dedicated to watch those

forums and paying attention to users comments

and requests as far as new releases and software

improovements and philosophy are concerned ?

Jean.

What benefits are there to the 802.11n Airport Express? Better extension of the wireless network? I have two of the older models.

So I've read all the posts in this discussion, having had precisely this issue tonight (2 Airport Expresses, one older than the other which is no longer supported by Airport Utility 6.0) and while I appreciate there is a lot of detailed technical discussion, as a relatively non-technical person I'm left with the simple conclusion that I should use the older version of the software cos it's better than the new version....or have I missed something?

Hi !

There are three different points:

1) The firmware (inner software) release you use on the airport express itself.

2) The Airport utility release you use to manage your airport devices and upgrade or downgrade

if necessary the airport express firmware for instance to fit with old airport device.(see point 1)

3) The fact Airport utility 6.0 is not a fully achieved release and not allowing you to downgrade airport

express firmware (see point 2)

you can do this :

Download AirPort Utility 5.6 wich will cohabitate with Airport utility 6.0,

and allow you to get 5.5 features back like mentionned in point 3 if necessary.

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1482

Jean.

I was searching for this information recently. This article helped me -- Thanks!

One thing I found in my search was the Apple article here: http://support.apple.com/kb/PH5091 which says the following:

"AirPort Utility 6.x: Control access to your wireless network

Helped me too. Unfortunately, if you click on the link shown within Airport Utility:

"This version of AirPort Utility doesn't support this base station. Use AirPort Utility 5.6 to configure or manage this base station. AirPort Utility 5.6 is available at...."

it will take you to 5.6.1 - I fell for that one. That download does not work in Lion. You need to click on the link to 5.6 mentioned above which takes you to the Lion compatible software. Everything works for me now (thanks all) but for an hour I had believed two previously workable 'old' Airport Expresses had suddenly become expensive and redundant legacy hardware.

I can understand Apple's introduction of parallel software but not their apparent failure to explain what's happening. This is actually triplicate software, not just parallel. Thank goodness for the contributors on these forums doing Apple's work for them.

Downloading 5.6 solved my problem :-)

V6 of the utility looks nice, but that's abput all. It laks so many essential features and therefore is close to beeing useless. Design before function :-( that's the wrong way!

6.1 is out and has the timed access option added back in.

-Update to 6.1 with software update.

-open Airport Utility

-click the Airport router you want to edit settings for, click Edit button

-click network tab

-click 'timed access control...' button

-add or edit as needed.

Restores the functionality that 6.0 ditched for some reason. Belated thank you Apple! (not belated because *I* was late though! 😉)