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Users Report Faulty WPA In 2nd-Gen IPod Touch

Posted by kdawson on from the soft-touch dept.

jesuscash writes "It seems early adopters of the new iPod Touch are out of luck when they bring it home and attempt to connect it to their WPA/WPA2 secured network. Reading this Apple forum thread shows that many tests with different configurations show a no-go on WPA. Some of the last entries give the best clue, revealing a 'received deauthentication' error in their router logs. Apple has yet to respond."

21 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. QC? by BrokenHalo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I would have thought this is the kind of undocumented feature that should have been picked up in the most cursory testing. If Apple was that hasty in bringing this product to market, they are not going to do their reputation any favours.

    1. Re:QC? by antifoidulus · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Their reputation for stuff just working has been in the shitter for the past year at least. Almost everything they release has been plagued with bug after bug after bug. iPhone 2.0, Mobile Me, Leopard the list goes on. Hell, I haven't even been able to get the Genius thing to work, all I get is an extremely unhelpful 4010 error....

      Maybe Steve's policy of not significantly increasing engineering staff is finally biting Apple in the ass. I know that when I use my Mac nowadays its hard to remember that I'm NOT using a Microsoft product, Apple's stuff is just as buggy.

      --
      Monstar L
    2. Re:QC? by springbox · · Score: 3, Insightful

      And some people don't have any problems with Vista

  2. Step 28 ... by Random+BedHead+Ed · · Score: 3, Funny

    Step 28 of the Apple Product Cycle. Step 28 for the iPhone was the chipset, so maybe that's the problem with these scratches ... er, blue screens ... er, faulty plastic backs ... er, WPA network errors as well.

  3. Re:Single apple ipod touch bug slashdot worthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because WEP is horribly, horribly broken, and the only two options an iPod touch has of connecting to an access point are to use WEP, which is almost as bad as plaintext at this point, or use plaintext.

    To use the ever-present car analogy, it would be like one of a car's most advertised features only working if you removed all the locks, and then complaining that somebody covered it by saying "A single bug is worthy of coverage? Can I get a WTF?!".

    ... That WAS a car analogy, right?

  4. Re:Single apple ipod touch bug slashdot worthy? by jamesh · · Score: 5, Funny

    Can I get a WTF?!

    If you can't get WPA or WPA2, then I think your chances of getting a WTF are close to zero.

  5. Re:The Sony Syndrome by KasperMeerts · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Some quality issues? OK.

    But WPA encryption is something huge!
    Since WEP doesn't work this means that you can only connect to unsecured network. And I'm not going to remove encryption because Timmy with his iPod Touch wants to check his mails.

    --
    As long as there are slaughterhouses, there will be battlefields.
  6. Re:Single apple ipod touch bug slashdot worthy? by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When a company grabs enough market share this sort of thing is bound to happen when they screw up. It becomes news. People like to hate the 'big guys' (MS Sony, etc) and frequently for very good reason. Imagine how sloppy they'd get if people weren't all over them for their mistakes.

  7. No problems here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mine works at two different locations that I set up.

    1. Re:No problems here... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And mine doesn't. Which is fun, because after it fails, you get to re-enter the entire 64 digit WPA key on the little keyboard, which would be much less annoying if the fuckers at Apple didn't place the numbers and letters on different keypads that you have to toggle between.

      When I tried using WEP, the damned thing didn't work with a standard password, so I got to enter that in hex too. (That did work.)

      So you'd think someone, somewhere, would realize a little "hex" keyboard would be a godsend when entering wireless keys if they're not going to allow copy-and-paste.

      Or they could be REALLY smart and allow you to set the key from iTunes.

      But in any case, it in fact does not actually work. So now we have several anecdotes, and therefore data, right?

  8. Problem seems to be with D-Link routers... by stickystyle · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Actually reading the linked thread (I know, I know..) the problem seems more linked to D-Link routers + iPod Touch, not iPod Touch can't do WPA. "Apple has yet to respond"? I don't see that anyone on that thread filled a bug report, how the hell do you expect them to respond unless you tell them???

    Why the hell did this get promoted to the front page?

    --
    Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate
    1. Re:Problem seems to be with D-Link routers... by phoxix · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Why the hell did this get promoted to the front page?

      We have personally confirmed the failing on three DLink models, and one Linksys model so far. Thread shows other Linksys models and Belkin models as well it appears.

      http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=8066893#8066893

      Thats why it made the front page.

  9. Stop the presses! by kiwioddBall · · Score: 4, Funny

    Someone released some software with a bug in it!!! Thats never happened before!!!

  10. Re:Single apple ipod touch bug slashdot worthy? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wipe the apple fanboi drivel from your chin, the ipod touch is getting slammed recently because apple have introduced a number of bugs for it with their awful 2.1 update. I suggest you check their forums to see just how many problems have occurred since this rubbish `upgrade'. You'll note apple has not acknowledged a single one. Playing the microsoft game of pretending there are no issues. They also prevent you from rolling back to a previous version. So it is tough-shit if you upgraded.

  11. Re:Single apple ipod touch bug slashdot worthy? by jmpeax · · Score: 4, Insightful

    this just stinks of the same quality as the occasional "MS did something not noteworthy, but we can spin it to be negative"

    Broken WPA is pretty bad. I mean this is a product that has supposedly finished testing and gone to market, and a basic network security/authentication feature isn't working. This is definitely news.

    As for your comparison with Microsoft, consider what you would be saying if this had happened with the Zune.

    --
    Amnesty International
  12. WPA on the iphone/ipod was a joke anyway. by Average · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A real geek has a long random key for WPA, and passes it around on a pen drive.

    Except the time I brought a Touch home from work for a while.

    Copy and paste? What do you mean, no copy and paste? One of the key "insanely great" f'ing innovations of the 1984 Macintosh, and it can't be done?

    Shook my head at that one.

    1. Re:WPA on the iphone/ipod was a joke anyway. by miknix · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A real geek uses eap-tls

      A real geek has a long random key for WPA, and passes it around on a pen drive.

      A real hacker leaves the network open and uses openvpn to connect to his gateway.

  13. Re:The Sony Syndrome by aix+tom · · Score: 4, Insightful

    And I'm not going to remove encryption because Timmy with his iPod Touch wants to check his mails.

    Unless "Timmy" is your clueless CEO and goes "Me got present from wife. Me want to check email"

  14. Get a linksys router then by dredwerker · · Score: 5, Informative

    My touch 2g with firmware 2.1.1 works fine with wpa2.

    --
    On a long enough timeline. The survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
  15. Re:Single apple ipod touch bug slashdot worthy? by Heembo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    wpa 1/2 has been supported by other consumer facing products for several years. Apple is supposed to be about high quality devices that we are happy to pay a premium for. Security is a big deal these days. For Apple to release a product with such a key feature horribly broken is - horrible; this is not a made-up complaint.

    --
    Horns are really just a broken halo.
  16. Re:Single apple ipod touch bug slashdot worthy? by Babbster · · Score: 5, Funny

    As for your comparison with Microsoft, consider what you would be saying if this had happened with the Zune.

    Is this one of those "if a tree falls in the forest would it make a sound" questions?