Once upon a time , Bluetooth was a quaint low - speed , low - bandwidth networking engineering that appeared to be destined for the obsolescence sight . Several competing criterion with broadcast industry support rise to gainsay it with lower - power requirements , higher throughput , or both .
Bluetooth took regard of the motto of theRound Table(no , not that rotund tabular array ): “ adopt , adapt , improve , ” and pull ahead out by stretch what it does and co - prefer what others attempted to leave ( and failed to do ) .
But this may be confusing when you ’re not using a Bluetooth peripheral , like a headset , headphones , or black eye , and wonder why iOS , your Mac , or your Apple Watch is complain about its absence or not functioning as expected .
Answers to that and other networking doubt in this week ’s Mac 911 .
Is that you, Harald?
Reader and colleague Scholle wrote in marvel what had take place with AirDrop between Mavericks and Yosemite : why was Bluetooth short want ? Other readers ( and your correspondent ) on a regular basis see problems with AirDrop , too .
The reason that the iOS and OS decade versions of AirDrop lacked compatibility until Yosemite is that Apple used a special Wi - Fi musical mode in OS X , but choose for a different approach that combined Bluetooth and Wi - Fi in iOS . Yosemite interchange to that version , though a backward - compatible pick remains .
Bluetooth is used for signaling , or sending selective information concern to forming a connection , go command data ( like performing an action ) , and the the like between the same form of twist and dissimilar ace . The Apple Watch use Bluetooth 4.0 , which has an passing efficient gloomy - energy style , to communicate with an iPhone .
That bound the kitchen range the ticker and an iPhone can be apart , but it also basically pee-pee the watch ’s battery life feasible at its current free weight . Continuity in OS X and iOS also trust on Bluetooth to send midget bits of detail . All of these devices exchange to Wi - Fi for high - speed bulk data transport using a Personal Area Networking ( PAN ) mode that allows an Io or OS X machine to remain attached to the Internetandtransfer data with other Apple computer hardware .
AirDrop on a modern Mac has a line at the lower right that seems obscure . rap that link , and Yosemite switch to Wi - Fi – only scanning to beak up Lion and later Macs that do n’t use Bluetooth signalling .
If you ’re having trouble with getting AirDrop , Continuity feature article like Handoff , or your Apple Watch to work out , you may assay toggling Bluetooth and Wi - Fi on and off , and plane mode on a Watch or iOS machine . In a household , one intervening rampart made of signal - freeze material , like cataplasm over telegram or brick , can also obstruct Bluetooth ’s effectiveness even while Wi - Fi can still blare through it .
Roam if you want to, roam around your house
I ’m repeating here in brief some hard - win adviceI mentioned in passinga few weeks ago relating to Wi - Fi . Apple ’s base stations ( and all current pedestal station I ’m aware of from other shaper ) allow stray by default . prefer a connection name from any gimmick , and all bag stations with the same parameters and same connection name will let you roam about .
What I discovered — and what figure out a problem that plagued me for almost two old age — is that if you have different security methods that use the same web countersign , ramble knead erratically rather than fail .
Far ago ( about five - plus years ago ) , there were still plenty of bits of computer hardware and computer that could n’t use the slimly newer WPA2 Personal encoding communications protocol . Plain old WPA had been designed to be rearwards compatible with hardware that had shipped , including every computer released by Apple , since 1999 . But WPA2 required new computer hardware , typically only figure out on al-Qaeda stations and clients from 2003 and later .
Apple solve this trouble in its base stations by extend mixed WPA / WPA2 Personal encoding . Select this , and your newer devices would unite using WPA2 , while elder one were n’t left out . ( If you regain that pre-2004 Macs wo n’t connect a Wi - Fi connection and do n’t provide an error , that ’s why : the connection is WPA2 - only and the Mac does n’t understand why it ’s being rejected . )
In my case , I had one base station that used an ancient constellation filing cabinet that I ’d stay fresh transitioning over the twelvemonth as I moved from one exemplar to another of AirPort , even as I sum two more stand post in the theatre connected via ethernet that I configured as passthrough . Macs and iOS gimmick sometimes lost a connection in one way of the house orstrainedto hand a base station several way aside rather than the approximate one !
In helping to troubleshoota wily Wi - Fi trouble weeks ago , I went into the innards of my nucleotide station to check my own configurations , and , lo , there was terribleness .
discipline your Wireless Security option : it should be identical ( along with the password ) on all Qaeda stations that you ’ve named the same for roam purposes .
If you set in motion AirPort Utility , select your base post , and dawn Edit , and then choose the Wireless chit , you could see what security option is set . As you’re able to see in the play along image , while WPA / WPA2 Personal is an option in the Wireless Security bill of fare , take it was my fall because I had just WPA2 Personal enabled on two other floor stations .
When I switch that chief foot station to WPA2 Personal , all my roaming difficulty travel aside . If you ’re see similar strangeness , check that all your base stations use utterly very security department options .
Ask Mac 911
We ’re always looking for problems to puzzle out ! netmail us atmac911@macworld.comor tweet them at me ( if brief)@glennf . Mac 911 ca n’t provide direct electronic mail responses or answers for every question . For that , plow to AppleCare , an Apple Store Genius prevention , or theApple Support Communities .
