AirPort 7.4.1 Bricking Boxes

Time for another update?

Get It Try It

CUPERTINO (Rixstep) -- Apple's 7.4.1 AirPort firmware update is bricking boxes. This was initially thought to be limited to PPC clients but recent reports indicate the issue is more serious.

Graphic Tribe's Dali Rău mentioned already four days ago there were severe issues. The GT crew tried hard resets, soft resets, all possible configurations via LAN cable, hard and soft resets again - and still their PowerBooks couldn't see the network.

'I was beginning to believe this was a Japan-only issue', reported Rău. 'There's no 802.11n in Japan due to some law about dual bands which require Japan-specific firmware and software not provided by Apple.'

'It wouldn't be the first time but Japanese discussion forums are almost nonexistent so I couldn't find anything related.'

'We're stuck with sticking ethernet cables into our laptops so we can connect to the Internet.'

The Fix

There's a fix - but it isn't a real fix. The firmware update is bad period. The fix is getting everything to revert to a previous update. Which can be quite the trick if 7.4.1 bricked all your boxes. Which fortunately for Graphic Tribe wasn't the case.

As it turns out the issue popped up at Apple Discussions on 5 March. So far there are 79 posts but no 'answer'.

'Wanna bet we'll have another firmware update in less than 2 weeks?' asks Dali Rău.

See Also
Apple Discussions: AirPort Extreme Not Working After Firmware Update