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4

I have this problem: I normally have Bluetooth enabled so I can make use of my speaker system and Magic Trackpad on my mid-2012 11" MacBook Air (2.0 GHz i7, 8GB).

However, when it's enabled, Wi-Fi association does not complete well, either on boot or wake from sleep. In my case, the Wi-Fi icon in the menu bar oscillates a bit and generally gives up. Clicking the icon again may or may not show my network; if it does, I can click it and it will usually associate, though occasionally it complains that association failed. This happens on all networks I regularly use—one, a Buffalo AP, the other, a Linksys.

If I turn Bluetooth off, I can associate just as quickly as I ever have with no issues. I generally don't even see it trying to associate; it's done before I'm logged in.

This appears to be a Mavericks problem, as the folks in the linked Apple discussion are speculating. I know I never had it under ML. Unfortunately, I don't know exactly when I started having the issue, but it seems like it became prevalent around the time I bought the Magic Trackpad. This seems odd, though, since the Trackpad is tens of miles away on one of the networks I'm having issues with.

Is there a workaround that would allow me to leave Bluetooth enabled so I can much more easily use my Trackpad?

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up vote 8 down vote accepted

After digging in the aforementioned Apple discussion, I discovered at one point that an Apple technician recommended to one of the participants that they should remove their com.apple.Bluetooth property list. I did so:

$ sudo rm /Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist

and rebooted. When the reboot was complete, Wi-Fi was working flawlessly with Bluetooth on. I lost pairings to all my Bluetooth devices except my Magic Trackpad. I added back my speakers and all remains well 24+ hours later.

UPDATE: Adding my portable speaker seems to have been the straw that broke the camel's back. Had to repeat these steps and then leave it unpaired to keep Wi-Fi working.

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Interesting, I've just fixed this on my rMBP after the mavericks update. But not reconnected my speaker yet, which speaker do you have? – Jammer May 26 '14 at 13:14
    
HMDX JAM (one of the original run, looks like.) – zigg May 27 '14 at 1:03
    
Nope, it didn't do much for me. My problem is with the PS4 controller. As soon as I turn it on the WiFi goes ballistic. bad latency (lost pings) and download speed down to a crawl. – Michele Dall'Agata May 1 at 11:40
up vote 0 down vote

I've struggled with this problem for 2,5 days (MBPr, magic mouse). My wifi signal dropped on occasion. When I put my MBPr close to the Airport Extreme (so when the wifi signal was very strong), this problem did not occur. Deleting the Bluetooth prefs file made no difference. I found out eventually that Bluetooth interfered with the wifi signal. The solution: use 5Ghz only for your Wifi. Bluetooth uses 2.4 Ghz so no interference anymore. [Airport Utility: wireless: wireless options: click and name your 5GHz network name]

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This may work for some people, but I still don't have 5GHz Wi-Fi at home—2.4GHz only—and I haven't had this problem in some time. – zigg Jul 22 '15 at 15:56

protected by Community♦ Nov 20 '14 at 3:06

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