Late 2013 Macbook Pro Retina 13'' Wifi Issues

Thats good news that they "acknowledged" the problem in some way. I tested 10.9.2 beta and the problem is not addressed yet. Hope they do it before the final release

[wifi n/g/ac, ping latency, wifi sleep]

To make the process of swapping drivers a little safer I wrote a couple of Applescripts and combined them with the older MBA kext package and a short howto in a single zip file:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/s6un9ou3cnxvq2q/ReplaceDriver.zip

To replace your driver: download the above zip file to your Desktop, extract and follow the steps in the Howto file.

Needless to say I'm still not responsible if something would go wrong! Use at your own risk! 🙂

This weekend I cancelled my order for the sony vaio pro 13 because of, you guessed it, severe Wi-Fi problems.

A long thread (though less long than the IR-problem for the MBPr) on the Sony forum convinced me enough to cancel.

I also read a lot of articles about hardware problems after the windows 8.1 upgrade, so I became interested in switching over to Apple products (sorry for being off topic).

I have some questions which I hope some of you can answer

1. Are all MBPr affected by these Wifi issues or just a percentage? Or do some users just not notice their lack of connection.

2. Does the MBPr Wifi issue affect the range of connection compared with other laptops? (With the Sony Vaio Pro with Intel 7260 N network chip the connection quickly drops with weaker signals than - 60dbm rendering the device useless when traveling etc.)

3. Are the Wifi issues severe enough so you would advice someone to wait (or cancel) with the purchase of a MBPr? Or are the problems overcomeable (sorry for my English), combined with the hope of a software-fix.

@ Jane Sneijders
I read you were trying out the windows 8.1 network connectivity. Have you tried tweaking with the settings for the network chip in Windows 8.1? I read somewhere on the 179 pages for the vaio pro on the sony forum that it helped to set the energy output (something like that) to the networkchip to maximum.

I don't know exactly what it said, but I can reread the pages for you to help out ;-)

I think DotK said somewhere that the powersaving feature of the Haswell chip can be of influence of the fluctuating connectivity issue.

@joeri:

1) I have the feeling (not testable) that some people have had hardware problems, but that most of the issues result from software/driver issues. Some people may be more picky than others, so some may not notice (me - I test everything and hate it when stuff doesn't function perfectly 😝). I think the degree to which people are affected varies depending on specific combinations of hardware (e.g., type and age of router, type of protocol) and interference (the neighbour's network). I presonnally haven't experienced dropping connections or trouble with logging on. I did have problems with latency/slow software (e.g., Safari, Airplay). Apple tried to solve the dropping connection issue on the MBA with a driver update that for many actually introduced the latency issue. So if you don't have dropping connections, but do have latency issues, it's worth trying the older driver.

2) I tested that with iStumbler and the reach of my new MBP is just fine - not worse than my older MBP from 2010.

3) Depends. I tend to keep tinkering until I'm happy (enough). At the moment I can't run 11n reliably with the router I have at home, but 11g is fine. Also, 11n is fine on some other routers, strengthening my belief that my issues at least are software-related. I can live with that for now, anticipating that Apple will fix this. I think you have a higher chance of running into trouble if you have and older router.

@ Topfjoer ..thnx for the convenient script.Very much appreciated.

I tried it. The process worked fine.

Sadly I can t connect to my router with the old driver.....

I give up on trying to solve the matter. For two weeks I felt like an unpaid Apple testing employee.

The fact that Apple is still not ackowledging the problem is so disappointing.

The reports on the 10.9.2 beta are also not very promising.

Will bring back this macbook pro as well.

Maybe somehow the returning of two mbpro s because of the same issue will channel feedback to the right persons in Cupertino.

After two weeks of experimenting I am done with it.

Good luck everyone.

@joeri1974 thnx for your tips but I have windows 7 on my machine.

I finally got the courage to try rolling back to the original 2013 Macbook Air driver

I have a 15in rMPB Pro 2013; swapped three machines, all same issue: latency; dropped packets(no sleep isssues or dropped connections); wireless AC router

with the old driver; latency is fixed; like having a new machine; still dropped packets(but only on some networks); much improved but not completely fixed yet

Hopefully Apple will address this soon

Thank you for the detailed instructions

We have been discussing a lot on whether the ping latency is a bug or a "feature". For me personally, I do not face any problem due to this latency. My connection to WLAN AC is stable and internet speed never drops. On Safari and Chrome I do not see any page load problems. I only problem I face is that the iMac does not connect to Wifi after sleep. It seems to be fixed now (I will test it further and let you guys know)

Does anyone else with ping latency also have the same behaviour?

[wifi n/g/ac, ping latency, wifi sleep]

As you can read in a few earlier posts it isn't just a "cosmetic" problem. The wifi is very slow, sometimes pages aren't loading or loading takes 10-15 seconds. Sorry, but I don't think that so many people just complaining about pings getting dropped, without any side effects.

My intention was to check how much the ping latency is related to the WLAN problems in this thread. I would then split this into two issues. The ping latency (not drop) is a general issue across all 2013 Macs. This could be a bug or a feature. The Wlan drops and slow speed seems to be a different problem not directly related to the ping latency. Proof is my iMac which has as I mentioned has ping latency (which goes off with an older driver) and sleep problem, but not the others.

[wifi n/g/ac, ping latency, wifi sleep]

Had the same pervasive problem (inexplicable dropped internet connection at random times requiring restart) with a brand new flagship stock model 15.4 inch late 2013 Retina Macbook Pro with Graphics card purchased in December 2013 from local Apple store (Intel chip = Crystalwell version). Ongoing problem started about 2 weeks after initial purchase, and would happen with both Wifi **and** (I discovered yesterday) Ethernet connections. We have the latest Apple Extreme and multiple Expresses running 802.11n at home with 75/25 Verizon Fios internet speed.

Apple Care phone tech support over past 10 days of little help. Scoured these message boards for a solution - none found.

So, I took to local Apple store 1/12/14. Thankfully, problem cropped up in-store. As such, "Genius" turned off Kaspersky virus protection. Problem remedied itself **instantaneously** and has not happened since. No restart was needed.

Theory: appears 3rd party software (in my case, Kaspersky) in some way is interfering with new Crystalwell/Haswell chips.

Regardless, so far, so good. Hours of continuous internet...and counting.

Will post an update if this happens again.

Good luck.

For me, ping latency and dropped packages during ping go hand in hand with slow wifi on Safari and other (Apple) apps, whereas I don't have issues with losing the connection or reconnecting after sleep. What I did notice is that sometimes the wifi remains greyed out after waking up, while the rMBP actually did get reconnected - but that doesn't bother me too much.

[wifi g/n; ping latency & dropped packages; slow wifi]

(Repost from another Apple message board)

Had the same pervasive problem (inexplicable dropped internet connection at random times requiring restart) with a brand new flagship stock model 15.4 inch late 2013 Retina Macbook Pro with Graphics card purchased in December 2013 from local Apple store (Intel chip = Crystalwell version). Ongoing problem started about 2 weeks after initial purchase, and would happen with both Wifi **and** (I discovered yesterday) Ethernet connections. We have the latest Apple Extreme and multiple Expresses running 802.11n at home with 75/25 Verizon Fios internet speed.

Apple Care phone tech support over past 10 days of little help. Scoured these message boards for a solution - none found.

So, I took to local Apple store 1/12/14. Thankfully, problem cropped up in-store. As such, "Genius" turned off Kaspersky virus protection. Problem remedied itself **instantaneously** and has not happened since. No restart was needed.

Theory: appears 3rd party software (in my case, Kaspersky) in some way is interfering with new Crystalwell/Haswell chips.

Regardless, so far, so good. Hours of continuous internet...and counting.

Will post an update if this happens again.

Good luck.

Interestingly, it's the Apple apps that seem to be more problematic on my network. I don't have any 3rd party software running (continously) in the backgroud - checked my Activity Monitor just to be sure.

[wifi g/n; ping latency & dropped packages; slow wifi]

Just to follow up: at present, I have not experienced any related problems with any Apple apps....yet. In retrospect, I installed Kaspersky about the same time the "dropped connections" issue started - but didn't realize the association until today.

I actually never really suffered any performance issues. It was always top notch. And even the smallest type of traffic would reduce the pings immediately. No drops. Sometimes after sleep it would wig out, but not frequently. In fact, i went many weeks without even noticing it.

I noticed the latency issue when trying to do my work. I'm a network engineer and was noticing high times to my network devices over VPN. Making a long story short, I eventually found that it was something to do with this Mac. Wasn't an issue, but I need consistent performance results. As such I did return the macBook until it's totally resolved.

I will certainly get another one when it's confirmed to be fixed. I rely way too much on my Mac to have a ping latency issue. Again, networking is my professional life so it's got to be great. Went back to my 2011 MBP until it's resolved. If I wouldn't be so heavily involed in network management I'd probably not have noticed this at all. It really does need to be addressed though. It's one of the most typical troubleshooting techniques to use. I can imagine a horror that a typical consumer would face when troubelshooting something with an ISP...("oh you have long pings to your own network...the problem is in your house...")

They'll fix it I'm sure of it. So I'll just wait.