Chosen Solution
I have questions about the OS version and Wifi. I have a Macbook Air (mid 2013) running 10.12.6. Does the OS version affect the Wifi stability on a Macbook Air? Does the hardware and OS version together affect the Wifi stability? These are just general questions not for a specific reason but for information about the OS. Some people would say it doesn’t matter which OS version the Macbook is running while others may argue that point.
There’s a lot of mis-information out there! Yes, hardware and software need to work together. Each version of AirPort board (WiFi adapter) uses different software drivers and some drivers are updated to support a newer release of AirPort board as well. All of this makes it hard sometimes for people to understand the knitting of the two. So where does that leave us? Using any version of OS-X or MacOS that your system was design to support will have and use the needed driver automatically. There is no OS driver interplay issues with Sierra (10.12.x) or High Sierra (10.13.x). But! Comparing your systems throughput with other MacBook Pro’s may make you question that! You see, different systems over the years have been able to leverage newer technology in WiFi. Basically we are talking about the revision of 802.11 (a, b, g, n and now ac and it has two versions) as well as the number of antennas the system has. As an example here is your AirPort board and one from a MacBook Pro
Both systems have 802.11ac boards but yours only has one antenna so its data throughput is less. The MacBook Pro board offers MIMO services which is why its able to have better throughput. Even still the WiFi AP device and its downwind connections also effect throughput as well as the distance between them and the frequency used 2.4 Vs 5.0 GHz and others which are using WiFi connections as well either to the same AP or just the general radio noise.
It does matter indeed, not specifically just for a Macbook Air, but performance is surely influenced by the Os and the wifi hardware installed. At some point, can’t remember exactly which Mac OsX iteration, maybe 10.2 or one of immediate following ones, we had great troubles with Apple’s wifi on several machines. On newer Os releases, some Wifi cards of older Macs have been left behind, therefore even with tricks and patches provided by indipendent programmers, some older Wifi modules don’t fit in newer pictures by any means. However, apart from the listed exceptions and maybe others I can’t remember, Wifi on Macs seems to be fine for years now, without any generalized issues we experienced in the past.
