APPLE PEEL

Is everything alright with the PowerBook G4’s AirPort range?

I already had the opportunity of sharing my less-than-stellar experience with the purchase of a PowerBook G4 in a previous column (see “Power Blues”). As I said in that column, I made the “mistake” of buying a PowerBook G4 (400MHz model) as soon as they came out. I made a conscious decision to be an “early adopter,” thus running the risks associated with being part of the first group of people putting this new machine to the test in real life usage.

My main problem with the PowerBook I purchased was with the AirPort range. One of the reasons I bought a PowerBook was that I wanted to be able to use it all around the house without having to worry about cables or losing my (slow) Internet connection. I had some previous experience with AirPort when a friend of mine who had purchased a PowerBook G3 (2000 model) and a Base Station came to my house to set it up with my help. It looked as if the technology worked fine, and I was looking forward to enjoying the flexibility it provides.

PowerBook #1

The first machine I received suffered from two rather obvious flaws: one was the “loose battery” problem (with the computer abruptly shutting off when moved in a certain way); the other one was AirPort range. I had read some comments on some on-line forums about signs of possible problems with the AirPort range, but nothing significant that had caught my attention as a possibly major issue.

My experience with the AirPort range of this machine was very disappointing. With my Base Station located in the office at one end of our 2,000 sq. ft. L-shaped house (where it needs to be physically connected to both my Ethernet LAN and the phone line), my PowerBook would start losing the connection as soon as I reached the main living room at the center of the house — a mere 40 ft. away from the Base Station.

Given Apple’s claims of a 100 to 150 ft. range, I felt that this was clearly not acceptable and set out to solve the matter with Apple Canada.

Apple Rep #1

The first support person I contacted at Apple didn’t question my report for one second and, after consulting with someone for a few minutes, clearly stated that it had nothing to do with the Base Station and everything to do with the PowerBook, which I was going to have to send back for repair. Fair enough.

I’ve already shared the details of the “sending back” adventure in my last column on the subject. Suffice to say that, more than a month after I had this conversation with Apple Rep #1, and after taking my complaints up to the next level, with Apple Rep #2 (Sean) at Apple Canada’s Customer Service, Apple Canada finally decided to send me a replacement machine, instead of waiting an undetermined amount of time for a “back-ordered” logic board. I also got a second battery free-of-charge for my “troubles”… I figured that, if the replacement machine solved my problems, my experience would remain a positive one, and the long waiting would soon be forgotten,

PowerBook #2

My replacement machine arrived soon after they placed the order. Of course, my main concern, aside from the two outstanding issues of the loose battery and the AirPort range, was that, after the impeccable quality of the first 15” display, I might not get as lucky this time and get one or two “dead pixels.”

I didn’t have time to worry about dead pixels. As soon as I opened the box, I knew something was wrong: no French-Canada set of CDs in the box. Opening the machine itself confirmed my worries: the machine had a English-only keyboard — when it was supposed to replace a French-Canadian PowerBook!

Apple Rep #2

Needless to say, I was soon back on the phone with Sean (Apple Rep #2), who had been kind enough to give me his name and extension number. He, of course, apologized again, and organized a… replacement order right away. I didn’t want to dwell too much on the issue of who made the mistake this time or when it was made. There was nothing much that could be done about it now. And I wasn’t going to get a second extra battery out of the ordeal this time. (I asked, half-jokingly.)

Sean did offer to let me use the English PowerBook until I would get my French-Canadian PowerBook. This, however, wasn’t of any solace to me, as using my laptop first involved a lengthy process of reinstalling all the necessary software… and I was not going to waste my time going through this process twice in a row. So I just left the English PowerBook in its box, and waited again.

PowerBook #3

In all fairness, the third machine arrived very promptly. It was sent by FedEx, and for once FedEx actually delivered. (By that time, the receptionist at the university where all my mail is delivered was undoubtedly starting to get suspicious about this on-going traffic of sometimes empty, sometimes full “Apple” stamped boxes. To her credit, she never, at any point, asked any questions, and was very cooperative when it came to organizing returns.)

I opened the box, opened the PowerBook (correct keyboard this time), peeled the plastic protection off the screen, noticed with delight that there were no dead pixels on this unit either — and set out to put the AirPort range to the test right away. (By that time, I believe I was becoming an expert at installing my AirPort card by removing the back cover of the PowerBook. At any case, I didn’t find it a particularly difficult thing to do — although it’s obviously trickier than just having to flip open the keyboard, as with the iBook or the PowerBook G3.)

Unfortunately, the AirPort range appeared to be identical to that of the first machine. It was time to reach for the phone again, and take this matter to the next level.

Apple Rep #3

Sean (Customer Service staff, remember) was obviously at a loss to explain the situation. As I told him, it was extremely unlikely that I would get two defective machines from two different batches in a row, displaying the exact same defect. It was also rather unlikely that my dwelling, an isolated wooden house in the middle of the country side, would be a source of possible interference (there was no “noise” according to the Optimize Range dialog in the AirPort Admin Utility anyway). He suggested that I talk to a senior engineer, who might be able to provide me with more “insight” into the situation.

Bernard (Apple Rep #3) was very friendly and cooperative, and offered a few suggestions regarding optimizing the positioning of the AirPort Base Station, etc. I also offered to do a bit more testing of my own, by borrowing my friend’s PowerBook G3 to see how it would compare to my PowerBook G4 in terms of AirPort range, both in my house and in his own house, with his own Base Station — and to get back to him by email with the results of those tests.

I did all those tests (my friend’s PB G3 at my house with my Base Station, my PB G4’s at his house with his Base Station, my PB G4 with his AirPort card at my house with my Base Station, etc.). The end result was the same: while the PowerBook G3 didn’t achieve the optimum 150 ft. range, it performed significantly better than my PowerBook G4 in all situations. In fact, it performed as well as I had initially expected the PowerBook G4 would perform — i.e. I was able to be anywhere in the house and still have access to the Internet through AirPort. I was able to be on the terrace outside and still have access. That’s all I was asking for, really.

I got back to Bernard with the results. At this point, I had to be honest with him and tell him: 1) that I was becoming seriously suspicious that this was, not just an “aberration” as he put it, but an intrinsic design flaw of the PowerBook G4 itself (whose case is made of metal — titanium — and whose screen is so large than there is no room for the AirPort antenna in the frame around the screen, like in previous models, so that the positioning of the antenna, in the body of the laptop, is not as optimal); and 2) that I was writing for a Macintosh web site, and would honestly, as such, have to share my experience with the readers of that site.

Apple Rep #4

Bernard put me in touch with Debra (Apple Rep #4), who was someone obviously higher-placed in the hierarchy of Apple Canada’s Customer Service and would be able to “make things happen” for me. Just like Sean and Bernard, she was quite friendly and listened carefully to what I had to say. She did take refuge under the fact that she was no “engineer,” and that specifically technical issues would have to be discussed with Bernard. But she did try to make things happen.

More specifically, she and Bernard arranged to order yet another PowerBook G4 (with a French-Canadian keyboard) for me, but to have it sent to Bernard first so that he could test it himself before forwarding it to me. Which he did.

PowerBook #4

Before the fourth PowerBook even reached me, I had already received a report from Bernard stating that he had tested the machine and it worked perfectly fine in his environment, achieving a range of about 100 ft. without any difficulty.

The machine arrived a few days later, and I tested it right away. I’m sure that most readers already know by now what the results were: there was absolutely no difference. Same AirPort range of 40 ft. or so (at best!), same signal abruptly cutting off as soon as I reached the kitchen, and no signal at all in a good third of the house, including rooms where we actually wanted to use the laptop and its wireless connection.

If two different machines exhibiting the same “aberration” were already, well, an aberration, then surely three different machines exhibiting this same problem qualified as the Aberration of the Century. In spite of this, Bernard insisted that he didn’t have a logical explanation for what was happening. He agreed that I had done all the testing I could do, and that this testing eliminated other potential issues, such as a failure of the Base Station or my AirPort card.

Later on, Bernard also told me that he tested the same PowerBook again (with the same AirPort card, which was his and I had left it in the unit) after it was returned to him and it worked perfectly again.

Last Ditch Effort

At this point, I, quite selfishly, tried to get at least a working solution for me out of the whole thing. I had suggested, during an earlier conversation, the use of a second AirPort Base Station as some sort of “relay” which would expand the range of my AirPort coverage.

Debra had taken note of this comment — and offered to send another AirPort “as a test” to determine if that would “solve” the problem. I didn’t, at that time, question the technical feasibility of this, as I figured two Apple Representatives would probably have set me straight if this was just not an option. So AirPort Base Station #2 was sent off to southwestern Nova Scotia for this ultimate test in my very special “real world” lab of experiments.

Apple’s AirPort documentation is not exactly the most straightforward. Granted, networking technology — especially wireless networking technology — has always been a bit obtuse, and to Apple’s credit, most of the time, they’ve managed to hide this complexity from the end user. They have not quite achieved this with AirPort yet. If you start digging a bit deeper, beyond the most basic uses of AirPort, you’ll need to concentrate hard while reading the online documentation (the printed manual doesn’t really include as much information).

I had figured out what “bridging” meant (connecting non-AirPort devices to an Ethernet network connected to the AirPort Base Station in order to make them part of the AirPort network just the same) — but I was a bit dismayed when I saw that searching for “relay” or other forms of the word in Apple’s online AirPort help didn’t return any results. I figured that maybe the kind of setup I had in mind (using one AirPort Base Station as a relay to another Base Station) was known under another technical name.

However, I came back from all my searches empty-handed. There was simply no reference to such an arrangement, even though it seemed to me that there was no physical reason why it shouldn’t be feasible.

I contacted Bernard about this, and his answer was short and to the point: the software in the AirPort Base Station doesn’t support relaying signals. The only way you can use several Base Stations in a given set up is to have them all physically connected to your Ethernet network and use them for “roaming”, i.e. accessing this same Ethernet network (and its uplink to a wider network) from several Base Stations all physically connected to that network, without having to change AirPort networks or AirPort settings.

This is not quite the same, and obviously having to drag a 50 ft. Ethernet cable from the office to the second Base Station would totally defeat the purpose of using AirPort in the first place, i.e. not having to draw any cables around the house.

In other words, from my own experience, not only is the PowerBook G4’s AirPort range not satisfactory, but in addition there is no easy way to remedy the situation.

Conclusion

Of course, I will be the first to admit that my own experience doesn’t have a 100%-reliable scientific value. Only extensive placing of dozens of units in various different settings would make it possible to reach a definitive, “scientific” conclusion about the PowerBook G4’s AirPort range compared to the range of other Macintosh laptops.

In addition, Bernard has repeatedly assured me that “the reports of AirPort reception problems with the G4 PowerBook have been few to none,” and he has clearly stated (in a response to an earlier draft of this article) that he wasn’t trying to hide anything from me. Even though I obviously don’t have any way to ascertain the validity of his assertions, I have no reason to doubt his word. He has taken pains to respond to my inquiries thoroughly and extensively.

However, my own (admittedly limited) experience is still, in my opinion, a strong indication that there might be something wrong going on here. In addition, I did find other reports online that seem to indicate that my situation might not be an isolated case. There is this intriguingly short item by MacWorld columnist Christopher Breen on the MacWorld web site, for example.

In all fairness, the range of the PowerBook G3 that I tested was not orders of magnitude higher than the range of my PowerBook G4. But it was significantly better and, in this case, the improvement was enough to make the difference between a machine that pretty much performs as advertised, and one that does not — and therefore may not meet the needs of those interested in purchasing a PowerBook G4 in part for its AirPort wireless capabilities.

I also am not questioning the professionalism of the various Apple Representatives that I had the opportunity to talk to. They did cooperate and never questioned my own abilities as a Macintosh user and technical support person. They didn’t hesitate to send me several different machines to try to solve the problem.

Part of me cannot help but wonder, however, if it was not simply impossible for them to publicly acknowledge that there is a problem with the Titanium PowerBook G4’s AirPort range — because it is an intrinsic design flaw, because so many units have already been sold, because Apple simply cannot afford to fully acknowledge this issue and address it. I know that this may sound a bit too much like “conspiracy theory” paranoia, but I have to weigh my own (disappointing) experience against the feedback I am getting from Apple. And I certainly am not dreaming when I see the signal level of my AirPort Base Station drop so sharply on my PowerBook G4 as I sit down in my wooden armchair in the living room, 35 ft. in a straight line from the AirPort Base Station that I can even see blinking away in the office from where I am sitting. Then again, maybe Apple simply hasn’t done enough testing with the PowerBook G4 to reproduce a wide enough range of real-life situations such as mine (however ordinary it may seem to be).

Due to the way things operate these days, we might never know the full answer — much in the same way that Apple never officially acknowledged (to the best of my knowledge) the “loose battery” problem, even though they appear to have fixed it by using an extra piece of plastic soldered on the existing connector. (I must say, however, that the fourth PowerBook I received did display the problem again, even though it was no longer a matter of “early adoption,” so I am not sure to which extent the problem has actually been fixed, and in this case Apple’s official silence on this issue might actually play against them.)

The recent recall of hundreds of thousands of PowerBook G3 AC adapters might appear to be a sign that Apple is willing to acknowledge such problems and provide people with a solution, even if it’s going to cost them. On the other hand, the problem with the adapters involved a very real health risk, while problems such as the “loose battery” and the AirPort range are still in the realm of “virtual” problems that will never cause bodily harm to anyone (if you don’t count people’s sore fists after repeatedly hitting the wall next to their Base Station in frustration) and are therefore much less likely to lead to things such as “class action” lawsuits.

At the rate at which computer models are constantly being replaced with newer, redesigned models, it’s quite likely that Apple will soon come up with a “Revision B” version of its PowerBook G4, and it’s possible that this revision will eliminate the AirPort range problem. Even if it’s the case, there are still hundreds of thousands of the current version of the PowerBook G4 out there that might have a problem that Apple appears unlikely to acknowledge.

Pierre Igot