Week I told you that the new MacBook Airs have problems keeping Wi-Fi connections active, and now we know that the transfer speeds Wi-Fi 802.ac are limited because of the software thought by Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC),. Testing the transfer capabilities of the new chips Wi-Fi 802.ac, those from anandtech they discovered that although it should normally reach average transfer speeds of 533 Mbps (approximately 70 MB/s), MacBook Airthe ones from Apple Lossless Audio CODEC (ALAC), they are able to reach only a third of these speeds, i.e. approximately 21 MB/s, or 170 Mbps.
I disabled all other wireless in my office. Still, no difference. I switched ethernet cables, I tried different Macs, I tried copying from a PC, I even tried copying smaller files – none of these changes did anything. At most, I only saw 21.2MB/s over 802.11ac. I double checked my iPerf data. 533Mbps. Something weird was going on. I plugged in Apple's Thunderbolt Gigabit Ethernet adapter and saw 906Mbps, clearly the source and the MacBook Air were both capable of high speed transfers. What I tried next gave me some insight into what was going on. I set up web and FTP servers on the MacBook Air and transferred files that way. I didn't get 533Mbps, but I broke 300Mbps. For some reason, copying over AFP or SMB shares was limited to much lower performance. This was a protocol issue.
The tests carried out by the reviewers demonstrated the fact that the transfer of files via the AFP or SMB protocols results in low transfer speeds, something that is not found in Windows installed through BootCamp, a sign that the problem is a software one that can be solved. Practically, the artificial limitation of data transfer speed depends on the way Apple has configured OS X, and an update released to the operating system can very easily solve the problem, if the company's technicians can discover it.
Considering the existence of these problems, the Apple company he had trained himself now employees to service and exchange on the spot any new MacBook Airs that are presented with problems regarding Wi-Fi functionality. Apple employees in the US, and probably other countries, are replacing MacBook Airs with problems, as Apple tries to find out what exactly is at the source of them, and customers who receive a new unit also receive a USB-to-Ethernet adapter so that they can connect to the Internet even when Wi-Fi is not working.
In theory, exactly the same thing should happen in Romania, with the partners here working according to the same guidelines.
