At the risk of getting a little ahead of myself in my discussion of wireless networking, I thought I would spend some time now talking about how good we Mac users have it when it comes to getting our Macs to “play well” with our other Macs. Mac OS X simplifies the networking experience using a technology called “Bonjour”. This technology used to be called “Rendezvous”, but that name was already taken by someone else, so Apple changed it.

Anyway, with Mac OS X, when one Mac sees another Mac on a network, be it a wired or wireless network, they’re connected. No muss, no fuss, no major configuring needed. However, you can always, if you want, restrict access if need be.

Let’s say you’ve got a desktop Mac, which is your main home computer, a wireless router (like an Airport Extreme Base Station or an Airport Express) and a PowerBook or iBook with an Airport card installed. Here’s some cool ways to put the network to good use.

With a few keystrokes you can access all the files on either Mac. Simply select the volume (hard drive or partition) you want to share, and the volume shows up in the Finder. Find the file you want, and drag it to the other Mac. This is great for moving smaller files you’ve worked on back and forth without having to connect the two computers with a FireWire or Ethernet cable. However, a wireless connection is considerably slower than a wired connection. So, if you’re transferring really large files, like video or batches of digital photos, you may want to use a cable anyway.

Speaking of photos, iPhoto has networking built right in. All Macs on the network with the iPhoto application open can see all the photos in the iPhoto Libraries of all the other Macs. Want to move a photo from one Mac to another? Just drag it from one Library to another, and it’s copied over. All within the iPhoto application itself.

iTunes can also see other iTunes Libraries on the network. Although you can’t move music files directly from one iTunes Library to another, you can listen to the music, which is streamed across the wireless connection.

Plus, using Apple’s Airport Express, you can stream music from your Mac to a stereo system (or just powered speakers) anywhere within the range of the network.

© 2005 Peter F. Zimowski