In so, so many cases my iPhone and iPad can connect to public Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi at cafes, restaurants, metros, and other free Wi-Fi in the city) but my MacBook can't.
This keeps happening after I purchased a new Mac, so it would not be a problem on individual machine but on the entire Mac.
Household Wi-Fi never experiences this discrepancy; when my Mac can't connect, neither does my iPhone. And in most cases, both can connect without any problems.
My Mac can recognize the signal, and I tap on the specific network from the list of networks available on the menu bar. However, it hangs out for a while and shows "cannot connect to the network" error or just switches to the successful connection icon but nonetheless you can't (this is the most likely case).
What makes this discrepancy occur? What can I do to have my Mac connect to the public Wi-Fi after I find my iPhone connects to it successfully? (I execute sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder but it usually doesn't resolve the problem…)
Best Answer
This could be related to the frequency/band the Wi-Fi is using, maybee this posts can help you:
How can I tell which band (2.4GHz or 5GHz) my iPhone's WiFi connection is on?
Can Macbook Pro handle 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies on the same wifi network without getting dropouts?