Discoveryd is Out mDNSresponder is Back Rare Apple Backpedal

Mac OS X Yosemite has had consistent trouble with wireless and network connectivity in general.¬¨‚Ć These issues originated back when Apple rolled out a new process called discoveryd which replaced the long time used DNS process mDNSresponder.¬¨‚Ƭ¨‚Ƭ¨‚Ć The story gets a bit interesting because Apple really downplayed these issues at first and when on a bit of a “marketing” or PR blitz stating that these problems were imaginary, caused by upgrading, caused by 3rd party software etc.¬¨‚Ć After popular forums started listing similar wireless and connectivity issues and the number of comments started reaching in the tens of thousands it seemed like a fix would be a top priority for Apple.

El Capitan – Uses mDNSResponder – Discoveryd is gone

It does appear this was a top priority for Apple as Update 10.10.2, 10.10.3, and 10.10.4 all list WI-FI fixes as a primary area of focus on the developement release notes.  This makes sense with all the reported issues but strangely it does not appear they could ever get to the bottom of the issue.  With each update things got a bit better but issues with wireless connectivity persisted throughout 10.10.2, 10.10.3 and the first few betas of 10.10.4.  Now with the 4th preview of 10.10.4 beta we see a rare backpedal move but a welcome one in which they have now reverted to mDNSresponder.  This is the same mDNSresponder used in 10.6 snow leopard, 10.8 Mountain Lion and 10.9 Mavericks in which wireless and network connectivity was never an issue.

Additionally we find that El Capitan the successor of Yosemite also does not contain discoveryd but instead will use mDNSresponder right out of the gate.  Great news for those who experienced a flaky up and down network experience with Yosemite.  Great news to see Apple focus on stability and performance,  9 months was a quite a wait to see a fix but better now then never.

Some say that discoveryd will be back but all I disagree.¬¨‚Ć Apple’s support pages and manual pages have removed all references and documentation for this process.¬¨‚Ć MDNSresponder however is still listed.¬¨‚Ƭ¨‚Ć Would be fascinating to see behind closed doors on why discoveryd was needed?¬¨‚Ć Why they spent so much time trying to fix?¬¨‚Ć Why they went in company PR “overdrive” mode to minimize and hide the issues related to it.

This is a smart move by apple before releasing the new 10.12 El Capitan Operating System to the public.  Despite the PR hype of how successful Yosemite has been and how many downloads it received, even the App Store run by Apple does not lie.  2.5 stars out of 5.

Kudos for Apple for the fix.