“OS X Lion’s set to ship around mid-July, but Apple’s recently-released 10.6.8 software update will upset many users, as it’s messing around with some AirPort wireless networks,” Jonny Evans reports for Computerworld.
“My own wireless set-up’s has been impacted by the problem, which manifested itself shortly after an upgrade to the new OS. One moment my Macs were online, the next they weren’t,” Evans reports. “A trawl through Apple’s support forums shows others are also affected.”
Evans reports, “iOS devices seem unaffected (though I’ve not tested the Apple TV). This implies that there’s nothing wrong with the network and that the problem affects only the Macs, and only those running the latest OS.”
Full article with some suggestions that may help if you’re affected here.
No airport networking problem evident with my circa-2007 24″ Intel iMac or the various devices that connect to it (Roku, iPod touch, old 12″ PowerBook G4, Sony Blu-Ray player).
No issues here with the 2008 Mac Pro, 2010 Mac mini or the 2007 iMac 20 inch.
No problems here and I’ve used several upgraded Macs and wireless networks since the release.
No problem here either on my Airport Network via Airport Extreme 5 GHz band. However, perhaps unrelated, there were a considerable number of permission errors after the most recent Airport Utility update. Strange an Apple update would get the OS permissions wrong. One pass via Disk Utility fixed it.
No issues whatsoever with four Mac here (in home business), but it’s always the squeaky wheel that gets the grease with journalists.
I had a problem with the wireless on my mac mini; iphone and ipads were fine. What i found was when i opened the internet, firefox or safari i would drop to a crawl. I ran a steady ping to my outside dns and sure enough it would begin to drop. I ran a tracert also and the same thing internet window up and on the screen routing issues. I have fios but i dont use their wireless i use my airport plugged into there lan port. Both devices were on different networks because both routers were giving DHCP depending on which you were plugged into. I swapped my airport device to stop passing dhcp and give my fios router ip address and now the problems is corrected. I had no issues before the update and like i said my iphone and ipad had no issues at all. hope this helps anyone else.
With SJ’s Puritanism, AirPort will only show signs of connection problems if you’re using your Mac to trawl through pornographic websites.
In the interest of science only, I googled “porn”
and cruised many sites for a few hours on my
AirPort and can verify that there were no
problems. Will do so again tomorrow just to
make absolutely sure. 🙂 🙂 🙂
This article is a good argument against instant blogging. It sounds like Jonny Evans had a problem, theorized that it was caused by 10.6.8, and wrote a blog post about it before he found out the root of his problem. I have 10.6.8 and absolutely no problems with anything whatsoever. It didn’t clear up my acne, but that’s only because I don’t have acne.
That settles it, then. I mean, you and your friends didn’t have any issues, so it’s rather obvious that anyone claiming that something’s wrong must be a lying attention whore, right?
Finally, your mentioning of your acne issues was nothing short of a brilliant move…y’know, to drive home your point.
No problems with my MBP on my Airport network.
I bought a new MacBook Pro 15″ last week and I’m having some problems with my AirPort Extreme after installing 10.6.8: it loses connection to the router and the internet, and the only way to fix it is by disabling and re-enabling the Airport card. Wife’s old 2008 MacBook has no problems after upgrading to 10.6.8 though…
Just so everyone knows, and calms down… It wasn’t 10.6.8 that did this.
Myself and others have had this problem for at least 2 months now. We have been sending regular log files and such to apple (their request) to get to the bottom of the problem.
In other words, it has been happening prior to 10.6.8, this guy writing the article just now realized he has the problem.
If you go through the Apple Discussions you will find the problem dates back awhile. It’s not everyone, it’s intermittent.
I personally go days with no problems… then boom, my iMac is FUBAR. a restart cures it everytime, sometimes i do have to recycle the airport as well.
My PC/MBP/PowerMac/iphone/ipad work fine.
It’s my Airport/iMac that get screwed.
The guy says it’s AirPort.. but people with other routers have the same issue. It has to do with the Mac Drivers for the airport cards. Bootcamp drivers work fine.
Apple has been working on it, but has not released any fix yet.
although some of us on the discussions have found ways to minimize the problem. Don’t know why, but some of us have disabled the AirPort cards.. and gone wired for a few days. unplug and turn Airport back on… problem only randomly appears.
99% of the people are not having this problem… and it’s not 10.6.8
FTB I am with you on this one. I too am having problems. And I too am not using 10.6.8 (newer).
I too am having this problem. It is on my MBA. Some stuff still works fine. iChat, Twitter app and so on. Browser just won’t load any web pages. Go to network and remove the airport card add it again and instantly everything is back running. No pattern either. Sometimes, I think it is my office VPN that causes it. But, it happens some days never having used the VPN. Hope there will be a fix in Lion. This is the first and only Mac that I have had an issue with. All others have always been solid.
No problems with any of our three MacBook Pros either.
But, I of course ran Yasu and DiskWarrior BEFORE I updated them all…
No problem here, old iMac, two Mbps, 10.6.8
No issues on any of our wireless Macs with 10.6.8.
AirPort Extreme Dual Band w Improved Antenna @ my house serves a Mac Pro, iMac Core Duo, Mac Mini x2, Mac Mini Server, Apple TV, iPad 2, iPhone 4, a Kindle (current gen), a Wii, and an iPod Touch. No crazy problems here & as you can tell by the list, it gets used by quite a variety of devices.
No problems here with my late 2010 MacBook Air, iPhone, iPad, Apple TV or various other wireless devices.
I have had a heretofore unexplained issue losing connection from the 10.6.8 Macs only. I have been backing up two Macs to a 3 TB Time Capsule and have had periodic issues with that, too.
There are tens of millions of Mac users. At any given moment, there are probably thousands of Macs users have some sort of networking issue, and hundreds of them will be discussing it in Apple’s support forum. Many of those issues will be unrelated to a system update. Some of those problems may have been caused by installing a system update, but that can happen because of existing issues (such as data corruption on startup volume) causing problems with the update installing properly.
As Macs become ever more popular, there will be MORE absolute numbers of issues (or every type) being reported. But keep in mind that FOR EVERY one million users, if even just 1/10 of 1% (one in one thousand) of users have a particular type of problem, that’s 1000 users. That’s a large number, but very small compared to total number. And how many Mac users are there now…? (I actually have no idea, but I know it’s growing fast.)
(So keep the statistics in mind the next time you read about any particular issue some blogger reports, pointing to “hundreds” or “dozens” of posts in Apple’s support forum as evidence.)
I’ve had no issues with two Macs that run Snow Leopard. My AirPort Extreme Base Station is the oldest model with 802.11n, and one of those two Macs is the one of the oldest that can run Lion. If anyone should have a problem, it’s me… 😉
It is possible these recent reports really are simply normal problems which few, percentage-wise, are experiencing. But if people aren’t adding their experiences, and if these are not actually isolated problems, no fixes will ever be forthcoming should they actually be needed. Criticizing reporters of problems, just because every single one of the 17.3 million other MDN doesn’t have a problem, doesn’t mean the problem may not be real.
Okay, okay. Maybe it does mean that after all.
I didn’t say a problem should not be reported. If I had a particular problem, I’d be talking about it on Apple’s user discussion forum. But I would not be “speculating” (aka blogging) that there’s a widespread problem.
Just keep the “big picture” in mind when reading things on the Internet. 🙂
Of course, you are correct.
Silly article, I’m surprised MDN posted this, such false rumors shouldn’t be spread.
I have issues as well!
issues here on my 2011 iMac non on iOS devices. Internet crawls on my iMac but not iPhone, or iPad. WTF.
This has happened to me with my brand new 2011 iMac (quad core 27″). House full of iPads, iPhones, and older iMac and MacBook’s and I can tell you that it’s definitely NOT the Airport base station – it can ONLY be the new iMac since none of the others have been affected.
The workaround is simple enough though: Turn off airpot from the menu and then turn it back on. That’s all I’ve had to do.
If you read the discussions, it’s almost always limited to the 2011 3 antennae iMac’s and MBP’s.
And it’s been around prior to 10.6.8
This blogger is wrong. there is an issue, but the last patch didn’t create it.
I have it, as I stated above, recycling my airport card works for me like 60% of the time.. but a full reboot works 100%. So i don’t bother trying the Airport recycle anymore.
Takes what…. 30 seconds to reboot? 😉
Just installed the latest Mac OS X 10.6.8 update and the Java update, 5 a minute ago. Now I can’t open any programs on my MacBook Pro. When clicking the icon, the dot under it will flash a couple of times. Then it stops.
Has anyone ever had that problem? Can you help me?
Thanks.
Try starting up in Safe Mode (restart and press-hold the Shift key before you hear the startup sound). Do you have the same problem while in Safe Mode?
Thanks ken1w.
I restarted in Safe Mode, and I still can’t open any of the programs on my Mac.
If you can’t run any apps, my other “next” suggestions would not work (because you would not be able to do things like run Disk Utility or System Preferences).
So… to clarify, if you open a Finder window to the Applications folder, and double-click on an application’s file directly (instead of using the Dock), you can’t launch any programs that way either?
For some reason I managed to open Disk Utility. I did a Permission Repair, restarted, still the same, did another Permission Repair and there were as many things to repair as before. Many. Should I try to verify Disk? For some reason I could open Sophos Anti-Virus. I scanned and it found 4 threats, called OSX/FakeAV-DWN, and they could only be removed manually. I clicked the link to the explanation on how to remove it yourself, but of course Safari couldn’t open.
I am, of course, writing from my PC, and I managed to open the link to the removal explanation there, but unfortunately there was no explanation.
I have tried to open the applications directly from Finder, but it still doesn’t work
Last line in the Repair Disk Permissions says: Warning: SUID file “System/Library/Core Services/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/MacOS/ARDAgent” has been modified and will not be repaired.
Since this is a news forum and not intended to be a tech support forum, you may want to post in Apple’s discussion forum (discussions.apple.com). I’ve solved quite a few problems with help from fellow Mac users.
However, if you are able to run System Preferences from the Apple Menu, go to the Accounts pane. Create a new user account. Log in to the new account. See if the same problem occurs. If it does not in the new account, the problem is something in your current user account, and you’ll know where to focus.
Listen to ken1w.
Go to the apple discussions, some great minds there to help out.
Most of us will move on and forget the postings here after like an hour.. heh.
And possibly you could get an email from Apple tech, I did along with others on this problem.
I do have a problem. My download speed fluctuates between 4Mbps to 48Mbps.
When I turn Airport off and on again I regain the higher speed, but can loose it at anytime again.
My upload speed at 5Mbps is unaffected.
I’ll wait for Lion to see if the problem is solved.
I keep losing my connection too since I updated. The only fix that’s been working for me is to disconnect the power to my Airport Extreme for a few minutes and then reconnect it. I have to do it every day to day and a half and it SUCKS!!!
Now, that sounds like nonsense. The update was to the Mac’s OS, not the firmware of your AirPort Extreme Base Station.
sounds like his airport extreme has issues..
Or, maybe THERE BE TROLLS HERE… 🙂 And some are not very clever.
methinks the issues he has at the airport are about to get more extreme. Here’s to the Crazy ones…
What issues, what workarounds, what fixes? Nothing I’ve experienced- all is well here.