[jonemo]

This might be true for connecting to a wired network, but like others stated in this thread, Macs can take a surprisingly long time to connect to a wireless network.

If you want to see a client connect to Wifi very fast, check out the electricImp [0] module. I've never seen mine take longer than two seconds to go from power-on to it being registered with the server (EC2 instance).

[0] http://electricimp.com/

[LeoPanthera]

The article specifically mentions that the Mac is connecting over wi-fi, several times, and gives a connection time of 1.3s.