Q: New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems

Apple has indicated they have a fix pending release and that it is a s/w issue not h/w.

this post started:Jun 13, 2013 5:55 AM

almost 1 year to find the FIX and still pending. means not even sure will fix it. Seems it is a way to say: keep waiting. if the wifi card doesnt work or software whatever send the machine to fix no? this situation seems absurd...you buy a laptop and cant even go in internet in a solid way?

What is the point of these forums?

Apple dont care

My wifi works but sometimes takes ages to connect. Only have 2 connection point on my list, tried everything else.

conecting to vigin is even worse very intimitant.

APPLE CHECK YOUR FORUMS

Dear meighancardenas,

my first thought was that it had to do with power saving, as mine disconnects every time the screen saver kicks in. If it was indeed the case, it would have been a *very* easy fix, to add a (say command-line) switch to parametarize the aggressiveness if power saving in the WiFi.

Agreed, MacAirs are great machines, I also own two if them, but the previous one has absolutely no problems with WiFi and the newer one does. It is a pitty!

-Dionisis

Kind of sad that, the "New" Macbook airs are no longer "New", (MBA got a small refresh recently) and the problems still ain't fixed

Anyone had a chance with the refreshed version and had the same problem?

I drastically reduced drops and slowdown by setting google dns and custom MTU size to 1453 (last tab in wifi advanced settings)..it's a week im testing both those settings, the situation improved a lot, drops are really rarely now..about happy

Sadly changing the MTU settings to 1453 or even 1280 did not change my drop outs with my problematic base station.

I've since implemented other work arounds at that work site but I'm not happy knowing that my compatibility with some(?) base stations is limited, since the MacBook Air is designed to travel around a lot, and I may not have alternatives to connecting to a base station which crashes my Macbook Air's wifi.

I hope 10.9.4 is going to address this because as far as I can tell upcoming 10.9.3 won't.

APPLE DONT CARE

Tony:

tonywong wrote:

 

I'm not happy knowing that my compatibility with some (?) base stations is limited, since the MacBook Air is designed to travel around a lot, and I may not have alternatives to connecting to a base station which crashes my Macbook Air's wifi.

 

I had the problem of my Air not connecting when "on the road" (I do a lot of presentations in universities, schools, conference centres, hotels etc), and it was not a nice experience.

My solution is an AirPort Express. Provided that the venue has an Ethernet cable and/or socket, you can connect your APE to the Ethernet, and then connect your Air to the wireless newtork created by the APE.

Of course, if the venue doesn't have an Ethernet cable/socket that you can have access to, this isn't a solution.

But at least you have a chance - you'll need an APE and an Ethernet cable, but these don't weigh much or take up much space. Just having them in my bag means I feel less nervous when travelling to give presentations.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the suggestion, John.

I may as well go whole hog and get a USB -> wifi dongle, as I already carry a thunderbolt -> ethernet adapter when I travel. Another piece to lose or break when the built-in unit should be functioning as designed.

I'm lucky I didn't find out about this problem whilst travelling. I was using my 2011 MacBook Air quite heavily on a 30 day photographic expedition to Antarctica, and it was all ad-hoc wireless to trade files and present photos.

There was no Apple Store nor Best Buy at the bottom of the world, surprisingly. Having a problem like my 2013 MacBook Air would have been a disaster.

I resolved the "on the road" connection problem by sharing the smartphone (Samsung s2) wi-fi. For some reason this system has worked flawlessly.

Just got off the phone with Apple, this tec pointed me to a download I just installed.  Don't know if it works yet but if anyone wants to give it a try here it is:

http://support.apple.com/kb/dl1672

This update fixes an issue that in rare instances may cause an intermittent loss in wireless connectivity, an issue with Adobe Photoshop which may cause occasional screen flickering, and an issue which may cause audio volume to fluctuate during video playback.

darrbee,

Are you running 10.8? My MacBook Air is the correct model (mid 2013, 6,2) but the installer says the "software is not supported by my system". I'm running Mavericks (10.9.3, 13D45a).

Looking into the updater pkg contents, it doesn't look like a firmware update is applied but three extensions are updated, AppleHDA (sound), AppleIntelFramebuffer (graphics) and the IO8211Family (networking).

The networking bundle only updates the plugin for 2013 MBA, Broadcom chipset 4360 to version 6.3.1.

Unfortunately my current version of the plugin is 8.3.1, so I don't know what effect will happen by trying to change the plugin to the older manually. I might get desperate enough to try, but it's my guess that the patch you reference could have never been rolled into 10.9... I'm not savvy enough to decompile the driver to know what is going on with what the patch did to 10.8 nor what the 10.9 plug in looks like to prove that a regression happened either.

great! thanks ! just wonder is this fix is already included in the maverics 1.9.2 or not....

@tonywong

I am running Mavericks

OS X 10.9.2 (13C1021).  The tech on the phone said this was not included in firmware update (10.9) and for me to install it.  I did not get any error messages during the install.  Since this is my first (and at this rate the last) MAC and am just learning sorry I couldn't be of anymore help.  I purchased at xmas and thankfully I used Amex so I am pretty confident I can either get my money back or an exchange which I won't except.  I like everything about it, but if it won't stay connected it is useless to me.