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Level 1

16 points

Airport menubar item is sluggish??

Hey Everybody,

I've been hanging around this forum for a while now and I haven't seen anybody post about this. My problem is that when I'm in an area that doesn't have any of my preferred wireless networks, and I want to connect to a network that I know is available ot me, the airport menubar icon is very sluggish when I try to click on it. A lot of times I will click on it to select a network, but it will take 2 to 3 seconds to actually activate and drop down a menu. Once I'm connected to a network, it appears to work normally. Has anybody else experienced this. When I had my iBook, it worked perfectly and I guess I wish it could be like it was then. I know that the MBP has completely different WiFi hardware than the PowerPC based Macs. I guess that maybe Apple has some more work to do on their drivers. Thanks in advance for any help or insight.

MacBook Pro 2.16 GHz, Week 23, 1 GB DDR2, 100GB 7200 RPM, Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Posted on Jun 30, 2006 5:10 AM

21 replies

Orcinus

Level 2

210 points

Jul 30, 2006 6:00 PM in response to brianjfiala

That's "legendary ease of use" to ya 😉

Jul 31, 2006 12:37 AM in response to charrison

Experiencing the same problem while it occurs less on my G4 Powerbook. My MBP takes around 20-60 seconds, the G4 takes 5.

Jul 31, 2006 8:46 AM in response to Grant Blakeman

I'm using my new replacement MBP (week 29). Its Airport behavior is significantly improved - showing networks instantly on waking up and starting up. It also connects instantly to networks I was previously connected to just like it should. It's nice to have more "normal" Airport behavior back. I'm still unsure of its ability to connect to some public wi-fi networks that were giving me trouble before. I'll have to test it out.

Aug 17, 2006 11:18 AM in response to Grant Blakeman

Yes, agreed. My old Powerbook used to be very fast, and when you clicked the icon, the networks were there. On my MBP, when you click the icon, there's about a 1-in-3 chance that the networks will be listed.

No idea why... but it's a bit of a nuisance.

Sep 1, 2006 3:29 PM in response to charrison

I'll also pitch in here. I have also been having this problem since day 1. VERY IRRITATING! It's a game of roulette just seeing if it will show you any networks, once the menu finally shows up 4 seconds later!

Just out of curiosity, I checked out my System/Library/Extensions/ folder and saw there were two Airport extensions: "AppleAirPort.kext" (v3.4.5) and "AppleAirPort2.kext" (v.4.0.4).

Both are PowerPC for whatever reason, even though I'm running Intel! Maybe that has something to do with the sluggishness, it has to run those extensions through Rosetta???

Anyways, I removed the v3.4.5 one and renamed the v4.0.4 one to "AppleAirPort.kext" and rebooted just for the heck of it. So far the Airport menu seems to be a lot more responsive! YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary.)

Sep 26, 2006 1:26 AM in response to Quentin Stafford-Fraser

Things seem to have improved greatly with the recent Airport Update 2006-001, which I got through Software Update a few days ago.

Airport menubar item is sluggish??