AppleInsider Staff
Just one day after Apple rolled out an AirPort Utility update to fix a MacBook Air Wi-Fi issue, a new problem has allegedly been discovered, with users now reporting uncontrollable volume fluctuations in their new laptops.
First spotted by MacWorld UK, a number of MacBook Air owners have taken to Apple's Support Community forums to express concern over unexpected, and unwanted, changes in volume when viewing video content.
According to numerous posts, the issue presents itself in both first-party and third-party applications, such as Quicktime and Google's Chrome. It is unclear whether the issue extends into other areas of OS X, though many of the replies to the thread started on June 21 pertain to watching videos.
A trigger or cause has yet to be discovered, though some users have found third-party volume control and enhancement apps like Boom can serve as a temporary fix while Apple works to resolve the problem.
At the time of this writing, the "volume fluctuation on macbook air" thread has tallied 5864 views and 125 responses.
Apple recently refreshed its MacBook Air lineup in June, concentrating on a significant boost to battery life instead of focusing on performance. With the new Airs, Apple also introduced the first Macs to boast 802.11ac "Gigabit Wi-Fi," a next-generation wireless protocol that promises speeds up to 1300Mbps with the also new AirPort Express.
Previous to Friday's news, both MacBook Air models were found to be running 802.11ac at speeds far less than advertised. It is thought that OS X is to blame for the artificial speed cap, but Apple has yet to acknowledge the issue and it remains unresolved.
In its review of the 11-inch Air, AppleInsider found the thin-and-light to be quite capable, and while we too experienced slow Wi-Fi speeds, the overall package is one of Apple's best to date.
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12 Comments
The good news is that new MacBook Air and new Time Capsule seem to download much faster. I got between 55 and 69 mbs download speed, a big increase. Anyone else notice this with new MacBook Air and new Time Capsule combination? Thanks, Alan
I don't have any of the mentioned problems identified
The article fails to mention the biggest problem that some users are experiencing. It's not that the wifi speeds aren't as fast as they should be - that would be a very minor unconvenience until sorted. It's that wifi disconnects completely after a time - varies from a couple of minutes to a longer time. It seems to be a compatibility issue with older routers - it works fine with the latest apple ones, many may not have noticed it depending if their router is ok. It's a big issue if you're the sort of user who relies a lot on wifi at work, in public places etc. Apple is aware of the issue and working on s fix - some have been asked to test it. I'm holding off upgrading my current MBA until it's fixed.
Audio volume fluctuations highly correlated with a WiFi update? Hmmm ... maybe they switched from frequency modulation (FM) to amplitude modulation (AM) for router-to-computer radio signaling. Ha, just kidding! Or, how about phase interference with the Broadcom DSP chip audio outputs? Oh, you mean it's all digital instead of analog now? Maybe there's a bug in the low-level D/A speaker volume normalization routine which, due to the bug, XOR's in a non-stationary-but-adiabatic RF-correlated factor. Gotta get my friend (engineer and psychic) Tesla in on this one ... Seriously, I wanna know what the exact fix for this will be (just send me the 'diffs' from the source code tree)!
This has been happening to me since I got my 13" Air. It is very annoying. Does not seem to matter what application it is in but it is only videos.