Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, Panther Edition

Bluetooth

This panel shows up only if your Mac is equipped with a Bluetooth transmitter, either built-in or in the form of an external USB gadget. The thrill of using Bluetooth to send files is described in detail in Section 6.2.5, but here’s a quick overview of this panel’s three tabs:

• Settings. Here’s where you make your Mac discoverable (that is, “visible” to other Bluetooth gadgets), specify whether or not a password is required, and indicate whether or not you’d like your wireless data to be encrypted (presumably so that the Russian spies who’ve been tailing you won’t be able to intercept your transmitted files using sophisticated interception equipment). You also get a Turn Bluetooth Off button, so that, when your laptop has nothing to communicate with, it can save the trickle of power it would otherwise use to power the transmitter.

• File Exchange. Here, you can indicate what you want to happen when someone shoots a document your way: accept it, refuse it, or ask what to do. You can similarly indicate what you want your Mac to do when someone sends you a “business card” from their copies of the Mac OS X address book (by choosing Card→Send This Card).

  Finally, if you turn on “Allow other devices to browse files on this computer,” you’re saying that it’s OK for other Mac fans to burrow through whatever you’ve put into your Shared folder (Section 11.5.3) when they create a tiny, impromptu network using Bluetooth.

• Devices. The whole point of Bluetooth is hooking up—with phones, ...