I've been asking Apple for a couple of months to let me talk to engineers or product managers about the problem I wrote about recently (see "Adding Tiger's AirPort Preferred Network List" in TidBITS-794 and "Tiger Still Resists Showing Preferred Networks" in TidBITS-795).
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/08223>
<http://db.tidbits.com/article/08233>
In brief, some users who upgraded from Panther to Tiger did not see the Preferred Networks list in the AirPort tab of the Network preference pane. Not every upgrader had this problem, and the fixes I documented in the TidBITS article worked only for some people.
The reason Apple resisted, I learned after they let me know what was up this week, is that their engineers apparently finally fixed the problem in the latest AirPort Update for Tiger, released 02-Nov-05 as AirPort Update 2005-001. This download is not listed on the AirPort Support page, but only on the overall support site's download page. (Apple also released a Panther update for Mac OS X versions 10.3.3 through 10.3.9 that fixes other AirPort problems on 08-Nov-05 as AirPort Extreme Driver Update 2005-001.)
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ airportupdate2005001.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/airport/>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ airportextremedriverupdate2005001.html>
I contacted three readers who wrote to me after the first TidBITS article appeared. Two of the three had installed the AirPort patch and confirmed that Tiger subsequently worked exactly as it should with AirPort networks. The third had seen a variety of problems after upgrading to Tiger, reinstalled Tiger, and no longer had AirPort problems.
I'm curious to know whether this problem was widespread. If you've had a problem as described in the two TidBITS articles and this update fixes it, please email me at <glenn@tidbits.com>.