Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Desktops, OS, Education, Bugs/Recalls, Apple, Leopard
NYC Dept. of Education suspends Mac orders pending wireless issue fix
Apple Insider is reporting that the New York City Department of Education has put all shipments of Macs to schools on complete hold while they're apparently waiting for Apple to fix a Wifi connectivity issue with OS X (which should be fixed with the 10.5.3 update). And Apple is apparently scrambling to get it worked out -- they've sent an apologetic email to faculty and have asked schools to try and separate any orders of computers that won't need wireless (that will use a regular ethernet hookup) to ship now.Unfortunately, there's no hint of exactly how many Macs we're talking about here, but if this is a substantial number of computers, and word gets out causing other organizations to delay shipments as well, Apple will feel more and more pressure to get the problem fixed ASAP. Bad news for the kids who want Macs in New York City (that's the DoE's seal on the right, in case you didn't recognize it), but good news for anyone else having this problem -- Apple's working hard on a fix.
Thanks, Rich!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
phi said 2:02PM on 4-18-2008
so the numerous outcries on apple's discussion boards don't make a dent, but withholding purchases will. Great.
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jollyllama said 2:06PM on 4-18-2008
Addendum: Withholding *really large* purchases will.
joey said 3:59PM on 4-18-2008
Goes to show unless you are a celebrity or a large organization with spending power you will get no respect.
blinkcowz182 said 2:19PM on 4-18-2008
Wifi + WPA + 802.1x = broken. I've tried every solution on the Apple forums I could find and the only one that worked was to grab Internet Connect.app from Tiger and use it for the 802.1x on Leopard. Works fine and proves Leopard is the problem. Come on Apple, lock it down with 10.5.3 and make me 100% happy with it!
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KR said 2:36PM on 4-18-2008
All I can say is that it's about time it got some attention. If this is what it takes to get the problem fixed then GREAT!
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Aaron Davies said 5:18PM on 4-18-2008
Um, that's the seal of NYC in general, not the NYC DoE.
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Gary said 5:18PM on 4-18-2008
Actually, that is the seal of the City of New York, {http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcas/html/features/greenbook_seal_flag.shtml}. Before the mayoral takeover of NYC Public Schools there was the NYC Board of Education and their seal is available at http://www.varsitytransit.com/images/BOElogo.gif.
Gary
New York, NY
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david said 5:41PM on 4-18-2008
Thats crazy! Im not sure if my server has been hit with these wifi issues but i did notice these odd notes in my server logs
In my logs, it shows that airport
Apr 17 09:31:21 DNSServiceResolve(Airport\032Extreme\032RM\032220._airport._tcp.local.) active for over two minutes. This places considerable burden on the network.
After i unplugged the two aiport extremes my server started working fine. Its super odd because i upgraded a month ago to leopard server while these airport extremes had been installed.
Hopefully the new firmware will fix that.
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smacklin said 10:21PM on 4-18-2008
Wireless problems have been driving me crazy. (G4 17" Powerbook - 10.5.2). I seem to have stopped the connectivity problem by locking the base station to b instead of b/g. (have an older iBook in the house that can't do g).
But that comes at a performance cost - and despite the fact that it seems to have been working for several consecutive hours without dropping the connection I am neither happy nor confident.
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A Teacher said 12:11PM on 4-19-2008
So let me get this straight...Apple can't send computers to the schools until they are ready, yet the Department of Education has no problem sending me students to the 9th grade who are at a 3rd grade reading level?!!? Interesting...
As a teacher in the system who GREATLY depends on technology in his classes, the DOE should use this time to fix some of the issues on their end as well.
For example, I wish somebody could explain to me why they still put Firefox 1.5 on the disk image used for al Mac installs.
Or why, EVERY SINGLE TIME somebody uses Firefox on the DOE wireless network, the address of the proxy server has to be re-entered.
Or perhaps they could address the issue of randomly choosing to shut down the wireless in classrooms and schools without providing any notice whatsoever to the school.
Or, better yet, why do I have to buy Macs for the school through Dell, and why do they cost 150% of their retail price?
Or, why do the engineers they send to the schools INSIST that it is impossible to have both wired AND wireless access in a room?
Ugh...
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