Apple Disabling Mac Mini's Airport

We have a new Intel based Mac Mini (the one with the superdrive and a gig of RAM) and it includes an AirPort wifi adapter.

I want to disable the adapter and keep it disabled, without voiding a warranty and without the end users being able to re-enable it. (Some of the end users will be admins on the box, and I don't want them to be able to re-enable it either.)

Any tips?

I was hoping for some sort of BIOS setting with a password, but I'm too Apple newbie to know if these things even have a configurable BIOS.

 

modify the network ports so it's disabled
then enable the security option that requires an admin to unlock system preferences

 

That would then force the user to not be an admin on his machine, which unfortunately isn't an option with this guy.

Maybe I'll switch him over to a non-admin after he installs all the software he needs.

 

you can give users install rights...

 

Just delete the interface in the network prefpane? Dunno, it might re-install itself after a reboot, and I'd rather not find out the hard way that it doesn't on my laptop where I actually use it. Anyways, if it doesn't try to reinstall itself after a reboot, then that might be enough, especially if the guy it's for doesn't know it's there in the first place.

 

Hope you're ready to get your CLI on...

In the Network Preferences Pane go to "Show : Network Port Configurations" and disable Airport.

Open Terminal and...

Code:

cd /System/Library/Extensions

Create a backup folder...

Code:

sudo mkdir backup

Move the entire "IO80211Family.kext" folder and its contents into the new backup folder...

Code:

sudo mv IO80211Family.kext backup

Reboot.
You should no longer see the Airport pie slice in the top menu bar and if you can still see an airport option in network preferences it should be greyed out (ie, unusable).

When/if you want to undo, just move the 80211 folder back.

Couple of points in closing....
• I've made the assumption that the users with admin rights only have them for the sake of installing software at will and will have no idea how to undo this
• I've also assumed you're reasonably comfortable navigating OS X and ripping through basic command line stuff. If you're not then I'm all too happy to break it down further.

 

I want to say thank you to bradford010 because this fix helped me immensely with a defective airport card that was causing me Kernel Panics... so thanks!

 

No worries