Got a new M1 Macbook Pro now apparently a ton have hit the refurb store (Thanks Youtubers everywhere 😜!) First impressions were I immediately love the build quality, the screen is amazing (HDR + ProMotion = Lush)

However, I Instantly run into what is apparently quite a well known problem with absolutely terrible WiFi performance that would drop out at 5Mbps, corrupt downloads and generally be absolutely unbearable.

Initially I was worried I had got a lemon but did some googling online. Thanks to Reddit and Stackoverflow I discovered this initially appeared to be related to having Bluetooth and WiFi enabled at the same time and disabling Bluetooth would resolve the issue.

Pretty unacceptable as I like my wireless headphones 🙄

Some more digging lead me to discover this specifically appears to be related to Apples AWDL (Apple Wireless Direct Link) protocol.

This runs IP over Bluetooth and (Maybe….appears to….?) run over WiFi as well directly between devices. It runs over interface awdl0

I discovered the issue was instantly solved by shutting the interface down with

sudo ifconfig awdl0 down

but the interface appeared to turn itself on constantly, killing performance again. Some more fiddling, I discovered turning off Airdrop resolved this and now my WiFi has been stable for hours. 👍

Apple hardware is in a fabulous place with the M1 series of chips at the moment. The Macbook Pro returning to an evolution of the pre taskbar years is also very welcome, but dear god how is it possible sofrware problems like this still exist that have a history of being an on-again / off again problem over years and years and years. I could go on about other issues like this in MacOS.

I could come up with dozens of examples of how MacOS still frustrates. It’s 2022 and Podcasts still don’t reliably sync! A podcast app made by one man works absolutely fine…

Anyway, now I’ve wasted my first day of ownership resolving this I’m now off to download my apps and have fun! 👨‍💻