MacMost Now 444: Airport Location Utility

The Airport Location utility allows you to take snapshots of your Mac's preferences and then manually or automatically switch between these preferences. This could save time if you use your Mac in different environments or in different modes. For instance, you could create snapshots for work, home, library or travel and then easily change dozens of settings with just one action.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's take a look on Mac OS X utility called Airport Location. The Airport Location is the utility that is particularly useful for people who have a Mac Book or Mac Book Pro and move from location to location. What allows you to do is to take Snapshots of settings on your Mac and then you change it based on your location. So, for instance, you got a set of preferences for work and one for home and have your Mac automatically switch between them as you move your Mac Book. Check your Install Airport Location and you get this icon up here in your Menu Bar. Click on it and you can access all the functions of Airport Location. The way it works it there are snapshots and their locations. Snapshots are sets of preferences, so, for instance, my Default Snapshot here, you can see, is set to various different things: Airport , Bluetooth, you can see the preferences for the Dock, you can see preferences for Firewall, Key Chain, Spaces, Time Machine, everything. It is all set up here and you can look at it very quickly and easily. You can create as many Snapshots that you want, so, you can have one type work for home or for different types of work that you do. For instance, I may have one for programming and several one for video editing. Snapshots can even open and close applications, so, you can have a set of applications and set them as a Snapshot, switch to a Snapshot, which you can do manually. Here, I can switch to this Snapshot and it will change all my settings to match the Snapshot. So, Locations, as you can guess, are different places that your Mac Book would be located. And it uses the Mac Book's ability to guess the Location. That's built in Snow Leopard. And it uses thing like Wi-Fi networks around the Mac Book to figure out where it is. And you can create different locations, say, for home, or work, or a friend's house, or school or library etc. and set these locations and then determine what Snapshot matches the Location. Now, for Locations, you can have your Mac Book basically determine its Location and then set the Snapshot, so all your preferences are set automatically. You can also have it do things like look at hardware sets. In other words, if it's connected with certain devices, they'd go t different Snapshot. For instance, you have an external drive connected automatically go to a Snapshot that will do a Time Machine backup immediately, as you can see right there. You can even have it detect your Location based on Internet connection you've got at the moment. Here is a complete list of all the different elements that a Snapshot takes into account. You can see there are a lot of different things here. Things like screen savers, Printer, Desktop, Settings, Dock Settings, even Dashboard, Widgets, all sort of things. The developers have taken a lot into account. So, Airport Location is free to try out. The developer ask for donations if you like and use the product. I think it will be most useful for people that use MacBooks, bring their MacBook with them into different working situations. But it also might be good for people with desktop Macs that need to switch modes and open and close whole sets of applications and change lots of preferences all at once. Till next time this is Gary Rosenzweig with MacMost Now.

Comments: 4 Responses to “MacMost Now 444: Airport Location Utility”

Scott

14 years ago

Where can I find this program to download?
I've looked on google but can't find it....only your podcast came up and you didn't provide a link.

Gary Rosenzweig

The link is 15 seconds into the video. http://airportlocationformac.com

Scott Smith

Try here.
http://airportlocationformac.com/

Sorry guys, I don't know why I didn't think about rewinding the video! lol.

Comments Closed.

MacMost Now 444: Airport Location Utility

Comments: 4 Responses to “MacMost Now 444: Airport Location Utility”

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