Oh Apple, what a double edged sword you are. On the one hand, you provide a stellar product that is unmatched by anything else on the market. On the other hand, your tech support, customer service and compatibility leave much to be desired.
Months ago, I moved into a new apartment. After a few days we finally got around to getting AT&T to our new place to get our Uverse back online. The tech was very quick and efficient, and after getting all of our Ethernet ports back online, he tested all the computers to make sure they connected to the Internet. Everything checked out fine and he went on his way. I immediately jumped on the Mac to get some work done, except that the website wouldn't load.
As it turns out, my homepage had been cached, so it loaded with no connection. However, when I typed in a new URL, there was no connection so I got the disheartening error. Here's where the trouble really started. On a Windows machine, there are about 100 different ways to solve various connection problems. Macs are a little more tricky. First I figured my ethernet port was fried, but I wasn't sure how to disable it on a Mac, so I decided to go wireless. Finding a wireless adapter that that was Mac compatible proved difficult. The first one I bought said it was compatible with apple OSX, but the package proved otherwise. Luckily the second one I bought was actually a universal that worked on both PC and Apple. The software was installed, but the thing still wouldn't connect.
I turned to the aid of the Internet. As it turns out, Apple's support forum was useless. All they ever said was how to fix Airport. I wasn't using Airport so that wasn't helpful at all. I tird everything. I tried creating a new location, renewing the DHCP lease, using a static IP, I even tried converting to an IPv6 connection. Nothing worked at all. WhenI had almost given up, I found a random blog article that fixed my entire problem.
Apparently, when AT&T renewed our connection, they renewed our router information. Nothing actually changed, but the Mac saw it as a new connection. The answer was so simple, I almost couldn't believe it. It turns out that Apple computers tend to be a little less adaptive than a PC. When they changed the router information, the Mac's information was outdated. For some reason when the new connection showed up, the Mac retained its old information. All I had to do was to boot into safe mode and delete the Internet connection file. Once the computer ebooted it created a new one with the current connection information.
So now I have my Mac back online just in time for school to start. Hopefully I won't have anymore problems. If you're having problems connecting your Mac to the Internet, feel free to comment and I'll try to help out. Lord knows there isn't enough information out there to help the average user.
