one intervening wall made of signal- blocking material, like plaster over wire Chri9'» IPad Air 2 Giann FManman io» you thiio lAttamly wnn poooiio iwrby ABo<w m«toO*diacov*f*d liy Don't »*t you'^t JooWnif Base Station Intomot NotworH Qiaka | Notwock Mode Wiroleu N«tk Non« WFA/WFA2 Poraon^ Winalett Socurit) ^ WPA2 PoTKifial Wir^e«a PMswoDd V^A/WPA2 Entetpriaa WPA2 Eitlerpriao VWfy r Q Remofnbef this password in my keychain Enable Guest Network: or brick, can also block Bluetooth’s effectiveness even while Wi-Fi can still blast through it. I ROAM IF YOU WANT TO, ROAM AROUND m YOUR HOUSE I’m repeating here in brief some hard-won Wi-Fi advice I mentioned in passing. Apple’s base stations (and all current base stations I’m aware of from other makers) allow roaming by default. Choose a network name from any device, and all base stations with the same parameters and same network name will let you roam about. What I discovered – and what solved a problem that plagued me for almost two years – is that if you have different security methods that use the same network password, roaming works erratically, rather than failing. Long ago (about five-plus years ago), there were still plenty of bits of hardware and computers that couldn’t use the slightly newer WPA2 Personal encryption protocol. Plain old WPA had been designed to be backward- compatible with hardware that had shipped, including every computer released by Apple since 1999. But WPA2 required newer hardware, typically only working on base stations and clients from 2003 and later. Apple solved this problem in its base stations by offering mixed WPA/ WPA2 Personal encryption. Select this, and your newer devices would connect using WPA2, while older ones weren’t left out. (If you find that pre-2004 Macs won’t join a Wi-Fi network and don’t provide an error, that’s why: the network is WPA2-only and the Mac doesn’t understand why it’s being rejected.) In my case, I had one base station that used an ancient configuration file that I’d kept transitioning over the years as I moved from one model to another of AirPort, even as I added two more base stations in the house connected via ethernet that I configured as passthrough. Macs and iOS devices sometimes lost a connection in one room of the house or strained to reach a base station several rooms away rather than the nearest one! In helping to troubleshoot a wily Wi-Fi problem (go.macworld.com/ wifip) weeks ago, I went into the innards of my base station to check my own settings and, lo and behold, there was terribleness. If you launch AirPort Utility, select your base station and click Edit, and then select the Wireless tab – you can see what security option is set. As you can see in the accompanying figure, while WPA/WPA2 Personal is an option in the Wireless Security menu, choosing it was my downfall because I had just WPA2 Personal enabled on two other base stations. When I switched that main base station to WPA2 Personal, all my roaming difficulties went away. If you’re seeing similar strangeness, check that all your base stations use absolutely identical security settings. ^ HELP COMMON PROBLEMS WE CAN HELP WITH: • Will not power on • Liquid damaged • Run over by vechicle • Stuck in boot loop • Forgot PIN/Passcode • Deleted SMS/Text PAYAM-' Data Recovery iPhone and iPad Data Recovery Experts THE WORLDS BEST EQUIPPED MOBILE PHONE DATA RECOVERY LAB. We can fix the problems that nobody else can! We also provide secure data erasing/ shredding of iPhone and iPads. • Smashed Screen • Will not charge • Failed update Data Recovery Labs in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide and Auckland (NZ). 300 328 273 WWW.payam.COm.aU AUGUST 201 5 anthonycaruana.com/ GROUP TEST Thunderbolt Docks Anthony Caruana and Roman Loyola look at docks to connect your Mac to almost any device. Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock Portable Macs, when compared to other notebook computers on the market, tend to have fewer ports. And, if you shift between working in an office with a screen, mouse and keyboard and travelling, then having away to quickly connect all those peripherals can be a great convenience. Enter Elgato’s Thunderbolt 2 Dock. Like the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD on the next page, Elgato has created a device that can expand your Mac’s capability significantly with three USB 3.0 ports, an HDMI connection, a pair of Thunderbolt 2 ports and a Gigabit Ethernet jack as well as audio connectivity. One of the USB ports, the separate audio connectors for speakers and a microphone are on the front of the unit. Connectivity to your Mac is via a single Thunderbolt connection using a supplied cable. All that’s missing is a way to provide power to our MacBook Pro. It’s pretty hard to fault the Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock. If we’re really picky – we’d have liked a speaker jack at the back of the unit, so that we didn’t have speaker cables trailing from the front of the device. Running it on our desk with a MacBook Pro, 27in Cinema Display and a few other bits and pieces, such as an external hard drive and a scanner, we couldn’t fault it. We also tested it with a Mac mini and had absolutely no hassles. The Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock passes our ‘just works’ test. There are no setup hassles, and it’s easy to use and small enough to not add clutter to our already busy desk. Like the Belkin Thunderbolt 2 Express Dock HD, the question we have is around whether that convenience is worth the $339.95 price tag. – ANTHONY CARUANA
Originally published in Macworld Australia on 1 August 2015: https://archive.org/details/Macworld_August_2015_AU#page/n59