El Capitan Dropped WiFi Connection Bug Appears Squashed With 10.11.1 Update (UPDATED)

Following up my The ‘Book Mystique column this week — “Should You Upgrade Your Older Mac To El Capitan?” — I mentioned in the article that the El Capitan install on my late-2008 Core 2 Duo aluminum MacBook was afflicted with OSX 10.11’s known WiFi connection dropping bug. At press time the dropped connections had only happened for me while the computer is sleeping. However, as the week wore on it began happening during work sessions as well, which proved exceedingly annoying, obliging periodic turning Airport off and back in again to restore the connection.

So with the release of the El Capitan 10.11.1 update on Wednesday, I was eager to download and install the new build in hope that the bug had been squashed, but a bit apprehensive when it went unmentioned in the update release notes.

However, having resolved not to update my workhorse 13-inch MacBook Air from Yosemite to El Capitan until the first bugfix update was released and the WiFi bug in particular had been addressed, I embarked on another 12-hour download for the 10.11.1 updater Thursday evening, and installed it in the wee hours of Friday morning.

So far, so good. My WIFi connection has been solid through some post-update surfing and my work sessions so far today, as well as sleep intervals. If that holds, my MacBook Air should soon be running on El Capitan.

UPDATE: Monday 3:00 AM: After a weekend of fairly intensive surfing with El Capitan 10.11.1, the WiFi dropout bug has yet to make a post-upgrade appearance, so I’m cautiously declaring it probably squashed.