So, here’s the deal. Let’s say you want a job as an IT pundit. You first find out whether there’s any jobs. There’s one at ITWire, a site that reports to be “connecting technology professionals”. You use your charm and wit to get a job. Brilliant. They didn’t bother to even check your IT credentials!
So this brings me to Apple’s Xmas gift: wireless networking problems, by Sam Varghese. Like Sam I have a gleaming MacBook Pro. Like Sam I use wireless networking. I also use a variety of wireless routers from Apple’s own brand, premium brands like Cisco and of course, cheap as chips brands which come badged by my local IT shop in a white box.
And no, I’ve not seen any wireless problems with Leopard.
So, what do we have here.
Two people both using ostensibly the same hardware, using the same protocols, using likely the same embedded operating systems in the access points and yet one of them has a problem.
Sam rubs his grey RMS® beard and starts to write an article where he will moan that his wireless isn’t working and blame it on Apple. He makes allusions to a recent fix being very vague ad then not fixing the issue. Can’t really have been a software problem then, Sam. Then, he’s going to finish up with some fairy tale abut how one time at BandCamp he and some Linux d00ds cooked up a hack to help Ubuntu users connect to wireless network and therefore proprietary software is inferior to GPL software.
Okay, so let’s dig a bit deeper.
- He doesn’t mention which brand of router he’s using yet this is, in my experience, likely to be the source of issues. Maybe they’re a heavy advertiser with ITWire? Wouldn’t be good to publicly criticise them. Maybe they use an embedded Linux as their OS? Again, not politic to criticise when you’re all about the Free® software. No sir.
- He doesn’t mention his troubleshooting steps. Because then someone could point out he’s doing it wrong. He’s not created a new Location, or deleted the entry out of his Keychain because they are, after the router, the most likely source of issues with wireless. The Locations issue boils down to know-it-alls changing values they don’t really understand. And sometimes the password in Keychain can get confused especially if you change your Wireless network password.
- He claims Apple is ignoring the people who have this issue without actually linking to any of the places where people are complaining about the problem. We can’t then verify if they have correct setups, whether they have bothered trying to fix anything or whether, like Sam, they just want it broken so they can kvetch
- He’s not specific with his log files or error messages because, let’s be honest, he doesn’t want this fixed easily. Mainly because the error lies between keyboard and sofa. Sam – you can fix this. Really you can – and it won’t require writing one line of code.
We don’t really want to dwell on the fact that the networking stack is Leopard is Open Source under the APSL which, despite not beig GPL, is a Free license (according to the FSF at least, though Sam disagrees).
Apparently Apple must now “be well aware” of the issues Leopard has caused with “laptop users”. He’s seriously that generic as if half of the people who bought Leopard since it’s launch (probably half a million laptop users) are all having the same issues as him.
Uh…Sam….you don’t work in tech support do you?
[Interesting to note one of his earlier stories: Was it Automatix or bad RAM that killed Ubuntu?]