Comments on: Apple Airport WiFi

By: Grandriver

Grandriver — Sat, 05 Jan 2008 14:55:24 +0000

I have trouble understanding all the praise for Window’s connectivity. I’m in an RV park for the winter. Two years ago we had a 5 radio wireless system installed. Windows owners had a terrible time connecting and half of them had to buy external adapters. This past summer the radios were all destroyed by power surges and were replace by units that are 2.5 times as powerful. Result - even more Windows problems. Toshiba is a good example. Half our Toshiba owners can sign on and the other half cannot. In one case a husband/wife combo have two Toshibas - one connects and one doesn’t. Same with HP - many can’t even see the signal. We’ve had the manufacturer and others involved and the problem seems to be universal. Most with problems have had to get USB adapters. The adapters that worked with the original radios won’t work with the new ones - thus we’ve had many Belkin units ordered to try and solve the problem. One couple is 100 ft from one of the 630mW radios and they can’t get a signal without an adapter. We have a linksys router in the club house for those who want to bring their laptops over and work there. You’d be amazed how many Windows units cannot connect.

My PowerBook G4 connects fine but the antenna is weak. My MacBook gets a super signal and was one of the best units in the park and it operates farther from a radio than anyone else. Everything for me was fine until, during the course of the fine tuning of the system, a change was made that causes the MacBook to lock onto the radio and just churn and churn. A couple of Windows boxes have the same problem.

To say that Apple has a problem is ignoring the real world out there. Ask 100+_Win users in our park about trying to connect both here in the park and as they travel around the country. They have FAR MORE problems than I do. In fact, the only problem I’ve ever had with my two laptops (including trips to NZ and Australia) has been the current connection/churning problem (which won’t even let me shut down properly - a Windows owner with the same problem seems convinced his system has been destroyed as the computer will no longer work.

It is every clear to me that standardization - or lack of standardization rather - is causing severe problems for many users of all brands of computer. The radio manufacturer has confirmed to us that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of incompatibilities.

By: Dr. James Platler

Dr. James Platler — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 13:41:48 +0000

I have never seen such a mess. Here I am using my aging ThinkPad that was assembled in China. I connect anywhere-everywhere. But with my four thousand plus MAC Book Pro? I never connect unless I’m right in the room with the router.

My MAC shipped in September of ‘07. To date I have used in only for, yes, “Typing.” I do not expect any help from MAC. The antenna issue has driven me to seek out the best windows machine I can find. And all the time I wasted with this “new MAC Pro laptop. Makes me sick.

By: J Doe

J Doe — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 20:24:34 +0000

I’ve never seen this message on my Mac(s) in 6 years of using them. Didn’t even know there was such a thing. Oh well.

By: Tim

Tim — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 08:09:15 +0000

All systems have weaknesses and strengths, and while I can take issue with a few design points in MacOS’s GUI (below), it’s clear that MacOS’s GUI is generally better than Linux’s, particularly with the consistency of interface across so many products. But…

The topic is about WiFi. It’s very interesting that on the same hardware MacOS fails to connect reliably, whereas another OS (Linux, in this case, could have been Windows) has no problems, because this eliminates any hardware problems and places the blame squarely on Apple.

What drives me bonkers is that ‘There was an error’ is so vague: what error? How might I solve it? It’s the sort of issue that Linux’s development model is good at tackling (which will be why it works for Linux). From other reading, it seems this is an issue that Apple are aware of and just aren’t motivated to fix, so you just have to accept what they take your money for, warts and all.

In principle, because Darwin is open source, it should be possible to work out why the WiFi is so pathetic compared to the other systems, but who has time for that when Apple don’t give the sort of encouragement or congratulations that the Linux camp give?

(The GUI problem is something that Linux’s development model is not so good at tackling, because there’s no central style guide, there are so many people writing GUI programs for it with their own ideas, and because there are so many old programs that nobody’s going to update to the non-existent central style guide. Apple is all over that. My particular complaints against Apple’s GUI are as follows; they’re not killer points, but just incidate that there are flaws that other systems don’t suffer from, even in one of MacOSX’s best features:

1 - I can’t resize windows except with the bottom-right corner. I know there are third-party hacks I can buy to give me this, but I shouldn’t damn well have to.

2 - Having the menu-bar at the top of the screen: it should be a context-sensitive pop-up right where you’re working, not something waaaay up in a completely different position to distract you from what you’re doing. Oh, but you only have one button on the mouse…

3 - That stupid one-button mouse: I’m not a horse, I have five fingers. Yes I know there’s the power-mouse, or whatever it’s called with squeeze and the trackball-middle-button, but I’m on a laptop, and I only have one damn mouse button. Yes, I can two-finger scroll; yes, the dragging behaviour is nice; but that’s still just a untidy retrofit)

By: MEA CULPA

MEA CULPA — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 07:51:49 +0000

Linux is by far the crappiest OS yet. I have many reasond why, but my hands are tired so I’ll give you just a few:
1. Not Easy for Novice USers
2. Not as many games or programs
3. Ugly GUI looks terrible (Compare Aero to Ubuntu 6)
4. Basically ripped off M$ and Apple with their GUI
5. To many distributions
6. Because it’s free, they can’t do any advertising so only people in the Linux cult and server market will use it.
7. Like reason # 4, why get it when the concept is the same.

And The List goes On…

The only good thing that came out of it is Mozilla Firefox. Do people get it just out of spite that they think it’s unfair to pay? Linux was supposed to kick off a bunch of times, but it’s currently obvious why it didn’t. Okay now, post a reply and quote me or something.

By: Nabeel R.

Nabeel R. — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:26:19 +0000

actually building on my previous statement, the GUI in most linux distros is really useless, most users real revert back to the terminal, the GUI is only there so you can multi-task.

By: Nabeel R.

Nabeel R. — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:24:13 +0000

robbyt, its to bad the linux interface is so difficult that even thought you can get it for free, no one outside of the server world and linux fanatics use it.

By: robbyt

robbyt — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 05:10:28 +0000

you know what’s funny about this? I’m a huge linux advocate, who recently got duped into buying a mac book pro… I’m see this error on my brand new mac book pro all the time, but when i boot into my linux partition it goes away.

OS X sucks, and is slow, and has worthless error messages (like this)

The only thing OS X has going for it is adobe software, and final cut pro

By: Nabeel R.

Nabeel R. — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 20:02:47 +0000

do you have a MacBook Pro or PowerBook too?

By: Milton

Milton — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:34:36 +0000

AAARRRRRGGGHHHHH!!!

I have the issue of not being able to open a web page with my wifi connect even though the status states clearly that I am connected and that my signal is at full strength…and why wouldn’t it be when I am only about 15 feet from the router…….My Intel iMac can piggyback onto as many as four other wireless networks that show up in my list but not to the one located inside MY house!!!!!

This is really frustrating….and sure, I could just buy a 50′ cable and snake it through my home to the router and use some crappy looking molding/casing or tape to keep from tripping over it….BUT WHY SHOULD I HAVE TO WHEN MY COMPUTER HAS WIFI?????????

ok, I am done venting now. I hope they (Apple) fix this soon.