Q: Why Is Personal Hotspot Still So Utterly Unreliable in iOS8?
Hi,
So, as you can probably guess by the question, I am a bit fed up with this. Ever since it was first (grudgingly) introduced a few years back, it seems the implementation has always been half-baked. I've been through it with various MacBook Airs and iPhones since launch, and it still *****.
Right now I am using an iPhone 6+ running iOS 8.4 and the new Retina MacBook 12" on Yosemite 10.10.4. My phone contract supports tethering and has unlimited data.
The problems come about when I shut my laptop lid, causing it to sleep. PH has improved lately and sometimes manages to reconnect the laptop to the phone without any intervention on my part, and when that happens, life is sweet. But that only happens as a rare treat about 5% of the time. Mostly, it looks around for a bit and then gives up throwing me a clunky popup message to let me know. It does seem to happen especially if the phone has connected (and then disconnected) from a WiFi network whilst the laptop is asleep.
Turning PH off/on on the phone sometimes help but usually doesn't. Turning WiFi and Bluetooth Off/On again on the laptop sometimes helps but usually doesn't. Rebooting the phone and the laptop usually does the trick, but what the ****? In some senses the latest version of PH is a step forward with it at least trying to reconnect, but where it fails is that my phones' PH WiFi used to appear in two place in the WiFi drop-down select - once in the PH sub-section and also in the regular WiFi section. Sometimes it still appears in the latter section, and if it does I've noticed I can connect by that more reliably than the option in the PH section.
Anyway, rant over. Does anyone have any tips or tricks to improve things?
Kindest regards!
Matt.
MacBook, OS X Yosemite (10.10.4)
Posted on Jul 17, 2015 7:00 AM
