Mac Mini + Lion = Suck

So, I’ve been a Mac guy for a while now. Switching way back in 2007 to a Macbook Pro with Tiger on it. Every update since has gone smooth. I purchased a Mac Mini for my wife in 2009 and its been a great machine that we use at home. A few weeks ago I thought, I know, I’ll update this thing from Leopard to Lion and she’ll love it. Uhh, no. Turns out Lion has all sorts of WiFi issues (just Google it) and I was one of them. I tried every fix I saw including the official one which is a joke.

It would work for a short time and then I’d lose the connection. Well, it still showed full connection but no internet. I was getting to the point that I thought I would have to try a fresh reinstall of Lion on this machine, which I didn’t want to have to do. Nothing brings me back to those crappy Windows days like, hehe, gee, I guess I’ll just do a fresh install to fix this problem! Screw that!

Finally I came across a forum post about something to do with Atheros wifi cards. I did a quick grep and sure enough, I had that chipset. I then found this awesome script to fix the Atheros wifi issues on Lion. It works by downgrading the chipset to an earlier driver.

Finally, my wife can actually use her machine again and maybe I can use my laptop again.