Switching to the Mac: The Missing Manual, El Capitan Edition

Cellular Modems

Wi-Fi hotspots are fast and usually cheap—but they’re spots. Beyond 150 feet away, you’re offline.

No wonder laptop luggers across America are getting into cellular Internet services. All the big cellphone companies offer USB sticks or wireless MiFi pucks that let your laptop get online at high speed anywhere in major cities. No hunting for a coffee shop; with a cellular Internet service, you can check your email while zooming down the road in a taxi. (Outside metropolitan areas, you can still get online wirelessly, though slowly.)

POWER USERS’ CLINIC: The Super-Secret Hotspot Management Box

If you open System Preferences→Network, click Wi-Fi in the left-side list, and then click Advanced, you see the dialog box shown here. It lets you manage the list of Wi-Fi hotspots that OS X has memorized on your travels.

For example, you can delete the old ones. Or you can drag the hotspots’ names up and down the list to establish a priority for making connections when more than one is available.

Ordinarily, OS X memorizes the names of the various hotspots you join on your travels. It’s kind of nice, actually, because it means you’re interrupted less often by the “Do you want to join?” box.

But if you’re alarmed at the massive list of hotspots OS X has memorized—for privacy reasons, say—here’s where you turn off “Remember networks this computer has joined.”

Finally, for added security ...