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RSSMac Quicktip: Very fast way to get a more detailed Airport view
Aug 14
Quicktips, Technology Airport, Apple, How-to, Leopard, Mac, OSX, Tips, Tutorials No Comments
I didn’t know about this tip, and as a Trainer I like to pass on the knowledge in the hope it will help someone, somewhere, have a better day.
So, the credit for this quicktip goes to Dave Hamilton from the excellent MacGeekGab in Epsiode 214:
I knew that on Mac OSX, if you click on the Airport icon in the menu bar, you would see the name of the wireless network you had connected to, and any others in range, plus a little padlock to the side to indicate if security was enabled on that base station. This is the standard view as illustrated on the right.
But what I did not know is that if you hold down the Alt (Option) key and click on the Airport icon you get more information, a bit like the screenshot to the right here.
This is useful in a number of ways, but in the MGG episode they were talking about connecting to multiple base stations with the same SSID (or Network Name if you like), and this extended info gives you the MAC address which will, of course, be different for every base station.
By the way, the ‘Alt key trick’ works in a lot of places on the Mac. Just try it and click on any menu, you might get a few nice surprises and quick access to things that are usually hidden away somewhere else.
Anyway, just wanted to pass that on to any other fellow Mac users who want to poke around and get more information on their system very quickly.
This kind of built-in additional functionality with just the press of a key is exactly why I love using the Mac OS more than any other.