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I switched to Lion soon after it came out on my MacBook Pro. Now when I pull down the airport menu, it indicates that it is searching for networks all the time. It does this even after I am connected to my preferred network. I never noticed this with Leopard nor Snow Leopard. Is this a bug? a feature? Should I care?

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It's the refrigerator light problem. It's searching because you pulled down the Airport menu.

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Winning question and answer! Brilliant :-) – bmike♦ Aug 11 '11 at 19:44
Seriously... ROFLMAO – dacracot Aug 11 '11 at 19:44
@Alrescha is right. Just for completion's sake, if your Mac was constantly searching for networks and you were not opening the AirPort menu, that would then be a sign of a weak signal and your AirPort card being unable to stay connected. – Christian Correa Aug 11 '11 at 19:59
This behavior is the same on Leopard / Snow Leopard and the scanning has no real effect on the performance of anything but the CPU/GPU to make the nice spinny effect. – bmike♦ Aug 11 '11 at 20:12

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