Apple's Xmas gift: wireless networking problems

Sam Varghese
Saturday, 08 December 2007 04:13

Opinion and Analysis

In October, the Apple faithful received the latest, greatest update to their much-vaunted operating system, Mac OS X. As with every other upgrade, it has a wonderful name: Leopard.
It conjures up vivid images in the mind, images of a sleek, great cat bounding along, its limbs a picture of symmetry,

The reality could not be more different.

This great cat has one great problem - it seems to have some kind of paralysis in its limbs. It can't handle wireless networking. And 41 days after release, the problem still hasn't gone away.

I'm among those affected simply because I did not apply the rule of thumb that I do before buying any software or hardware - and read, read and then read some more to find out if there are serious bugs in the item I'm planning to buy.

So right now I have a gleaming new MacBook Pro on my desk - bought in the hope that I can take my daughter's IBM laptop in exchange and run Debian on it - and this new toy can't connect wirelessly to my network. In short, it's a great paperweight. A nice-looking one, too. A bit expensive, though.

What's Apple doing? One would imagine that the company should by now have taken notice of the thousands of messages mentioning this problem and moved to ensure that the slick toys they manufacture are of some use.

The answer is: Apple has done nothing. It hasn't even acknowledged that such a problem exists. Methinks we have a mild case of denial here.

A slew of fixes has been issued since Leopard was released - with a vague reference to fixing some log-in issues including "connecting to some 802.11b/g wireless networks." But the wireless connectivity problems remain.