By Graham K. Rogers

There has been much criticism of Apple software quality recently, some of it triggered by an article by Marco Arment, who rued his posting when the ideas in it went viral for the wrong reasons.

Arment is not alone in experiencing problems. I detailed a number of difficulties I had with the MacBook Pro I use that started not when Yosemite was first installed, but when other events - perhaps software, perhaps the new iPhone 6, perhaps something still to come to light - triggered a series of kernel panics (see links below).

No doubt there are some problems in the millions of lines of codes that make up any operating system, but Mac users have become used to a touch more reliability than some of us are seeing these days. That idea of "some" may be relevant as a particular combination of factors - the stars out of alignment - may trigger a problem.

Writing on Seeking Alpha, Mark Hibben comments as an investment advisor who clearly has a handle on the technology he uses. Although his own Mac, with Yosemite installed is not experiencing such problems, his examination, starting with an analysis of posts in Apple user forums, is valuable.

He concludes that the problems, with Wi-Fi on the Macs may stem from a particular use of the Broadcom Airport card: this combines Wifi and Bluetooth functions. For him, "The big mystery here is why most users don't have a problem, while a vocal minority do. It's tempting to assume a hardware failure, but the problem may not be that simple."

The reasons behind the difficulties that users are having certainly needs some urgent work by Apple, although this may well be going on behind the scenes already. We will not know until an improvement or update appears, Apple is so secretive.

While other manufacturers include Wi-Fi hardware as part of a vertical hardware integration, Apple has been sticking to the Broadcom solution, and Hibben suggest that this is an opportunity: Apple should buy the company. This would enable any necessary fix to be made within Apple and Cupertino would "acquire some much needed expertise."

See Also:

• 2 December 2014:Creating an Overdue Yosemite Boot Disk

• 5 December 2014: Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome Problems (now apparently cured)

• 8 December 2014: Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome Problems (not apparently cured)

• 9 December 2014: Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome Problems (preparing for the service center)

• 10 December 2014: Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome Problems (sailing into dry dock)

• 11 December 2014: Kernel Panics Galore: Unwelcome Problems (adapting to change and making changes to images) - Resize, Auto Resize and Simple Resize)

• 12 December 2014: Kernel Panics Restore: Macbook Pro Time Machine Backup onto a Spare iMac

• 13 December 2014: Back to the iMac with a Time Machine Backup - A Quart in a Pint Pot

• 15 December 2014: Return of the MacBook Pro - Planning to Restore

• 16 December 2014: Return of the MacBook Pro (2) - Restoring and First Hours

• 18 December 2014: Return of the MacBook Pro (3) - Back up to Speed: One Minor Problem

• 31 December 2014: Apple Updates and Information: The Good, the Bad and the Misinformed (Bangkok Post, Life)

• 1 January 2015: Cassandra: Pernicious Processes Possible Explanation for Persisten Kernel Panics

  
  

  Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand where he is also Assistant Dean. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.