Q: New Macbook Air - wifi connectivity problems

I have found a solution. At least it works for me so far. I used to have constant dropouts before.

All you need to do is to boot into internet recovery, partition your drive using the disk utility tool and install a fresh copy of Mountain Lion. That's it.

Let me know if it works for you. As I said, it worked for me.

After testig my MacBook Air with more than 10 different routers i never had problems. Yesterday i met a guy at my office who also have a new MacBook Air. He has these kind of problems with loosing connections, so we tested 3 different WLANs with his and mine MacBook Air. In all cases i never lost connections but he had problems with all of the different WLANs. We have the same configuration and the same software installed so what the **** is it? I dont understand why Apple should take broken MacBooks to analyze them if this is a software issue. They could simply take MacBooks from the store. I also think that these problems only belongs to some of the MacBooks. If I would have these kind of problems I would give it back to get a new one and if this also have these problems I would give it back again.

Hi guys,

This morning I installed the wifi update v. 1.0. I tested for only 30 min my MBA but now thera are no crash to wifi. Before the update, only 4/5 min the connection crash.

In the coming days I want to test for more time the MBA to see if the problem is solved.

But it remains a problem: when I turn off the computer (or sleep mode, or when I close MBA) and then power back up does not automatically reconnect to the network. the icon on the status bar searches the network for a few seconds but without success. I have to manually select every time my network. It does not happen if the network is unprotected.

I bought one of these beasts for my son. Home network is an Actiontec DSL modem.wifi router, with one of the new Time Capsules extending the network (mostly so we can use it for Time Machine). He is connecting via 804.11n - so is connected to the Actiontec, not the TC which would offer ac - and drops the connection every few minutes. If he turns off wifi for 30 seconds and turns it on again it will work once more, for a while.

Naturally, I'm hoping Apple will put out the wifi fix for the rest of us very soon!

Chris

All - Is this still an issue? I see no discussion on it for a while. I want to buy one but waiting for a fix. Software or hardware issue?

Yes this is still an issue, even after the update my MBA 11' gets disconnected at least 4 times every hour. Has anyone heard any official word from Apple?

It has been a while... I returned my air and now waiting on the fix before I get another one. Apple do something about it, I need a computer...

For the lady using a wireless DSL modem with the Airport Timecapsule extending, perhaps you can disable the wifi features of the DSL router and use the Airports to create the network to solve your problem?

I think Apple is trying to fix this but may be reluctant to admit anything before it fully understands the problem.

After several days, I am running successfully using the Airport Time Capsule to provide a multi band network where the Air connects on 802.11AC and my other devices connect on the band of their choice. The Apple TV 2 is connecting and functioning REALLY well. I'm guessing it's 802.11n now, kind of hard to tell. Everything is doing fine. The default network seems to be WPA2 on the Airport. My connected devices (right now) include the 2013 MBA, the old 2010 MBA, an old Roku box (802.11g I think), an Apple TV 2, 2 PS3s, an iPhone 4s, and a iPad 3. Everything is connecting reliably. Better signal strength too.

My AT&T dongle also had to be switched out, but I think that was just that the old one was failing after 2-3 years in service. I switched it out yesterday and so far so good and now I have LTE capabiity. The new one is so new that Sierra Wireless has no data on its website yet (which was problematic for the purposes of installation) and the "automatic" download of the comm manager did NOT go as planned. We had to go to the website (at the AT&T store) and manually download and install. It's working now. It's larger than the old one, my old one was a shockwave and the new one is called the beam. It has a tiny little digital screen on the dongle but it's slower to connect than than the old one. It actually shows how much data you have left on the tiny screen.

I guess what I'm getting at is that it's nice when everything goes well in the upgrade, but it never does. There are always issues unless you're an expert and sometimes even then.

I'm having a similar problem but as a temporary fix I have set up my iPhone as a personal hotspot and that seems to work, even though it's the same router it goes through!

I returned mine as well. I think a lot of people may be beta testing a software fix so maybe they aren't talking. Hopefully once it is fixed people will come back to this thread to comment so all of us lost souls will know if it's safe to buy again

I returned mine. Waiting for a fix and then I will buy it again. Need and want one for school.

You can always buy a 2010 version. I know my 2010 didn't have any problems, it will be much cheaper, and you can not tell the difference from the outside. You only have a core 2 duo, 256GB SSD maximum, and 4GB disk space maximum. Still a great machine.

I honestly just kept on returning the MBA until I found a good unit that had minimal problems. Easiest fix for those who live close to an Apple store.

Patrick, how many tries did it take?  I have hit two MacBook Airs today with wi-fi problems at the Clarendon, VA store, and I'm wondering if I should try a third one tomorrow, or just give up for now, get my money back, and try again after they have flushed these dodgy units out of inventory?

I wonder if a person purchases a custom one from Apple and it ships from China will it be alright ?