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Where would one find a refence explaining the details of things presented in the "System Information" app to somebody with technical background? The "help" explains how to open the app. That's it. I'm looking to understand, for example, the meaning of Network->Locations. How is "Wi Fi" related to a "Location"? What does it mean for location "Wi-Fi" to have "Join Mode Fallback" set to "do nothing"? Where can I learn this?

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PS Please, if your answer is along the lines of "just google it", do suggest the search query. I'm posting here because I couldn't find it by googling.

If your answer is along the lines of "it's obvious and doesn't need to be documented", I beg to differ. That's not common knowldge even for somebody with a degree in computer science and decades of working in the field.

This has to be documented somewhere. How do apple tech support geniouses learn about the technical details like this? It can't be by googling.

Earnest Frankly
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  • If your question is "where can I learn about all the options and configurations listed in ALL of System Information", then that's beyond the scope of this site. There isn't just one handy reference. – benwiggy Dec 20 '23 at 19:48
  • Where is there ANY explantion of contents of the app? How about that? – Earnest Frankly Dec 21 '23 at 05:13
  • Would you be expecting Apple to define "IPv4" or "IPv6" ? They will be correctly defined elsewhere. – Solar Mike Dec 21 '23 at 07:15
  • System Information. The clue is in the name. It provides status and configuration information about various parts of the system. It does not provide detailed information about what those things mean, e.g. NVMe, SEID, PCI, MAC, BSD, UUID, DNS, SMB, IP, etc, etc. If you're looking for some general reading on computer technology, we can probably recommend you some, though technically recommendations are off-topic. – benwiggy Dec 21 '23 at 08:50
  • @Sola Mike, I would expect Apple to explain what IPv4 means in context of Thunderbot in context of Locations. Locations of what? Location of Thunderbolt on the motherboard? Thunderbright IPv4 what? What does it mean when it's configuration method is DHCP? There isn't even a Thunderbolt port on the computer.

    With or without explanation of IPV4, where is there any explanation of contents of contents of System Info?

     – Earnest Frankly Dec 22 '23 at 00:52
  • @benwiggy, this is a variation of "google it" answer. So yes, if you reference the book that explains what does it mean when Locations->Thunderbolt->Proxies? Why does Thunderbolt have proxies setting but Wi-Fi doesn't? What does "exception list" under proxies mean? "FTP Passive mode Yes"? How would my system behave differently if it were "No". How do I change that to "No"? – Earnest Frankly Dec 22 '23 at 00:59
  • Please note that none of the qestions I'm asking in the topic request for definitions of technical terms. Quit trying to reduce the question to tthat please. – Earnest Frankly Dec 22 '23 at 01:00
  • There is no Apple-supplied ready reference that explains what each configuration option listed in System Information means. There are a variety of references that do explain things like what FTP Passive mode is; not necessarily supplied by Apple. Does that answer your question? What problem are you trying to solve, other than "I want an explanation of everything my computer can do". – benwiggy Dec 22 '23 at 13:27

2 Answers2

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MacOS has a feature called "Locations" on portable Macs, which is essentially a collection of Network settings. This allows easy switching between, say, Work network, Home network, and other ... locations, for which you might want a different network configuration.

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All the information listed there is just network configuration. "Wi-Fi" is not a Location: it is a sub-section of a Location's saved data.

The feature is most useful for portables, but it is present, if somewhat hidden, on desktop Macs.

IEEE 802.11 is the standard for Wifi networking.

"Join Mode Fallback" is what to do if it can't join a given network. Options are "Do Nothing" or "Keep Looking". There don't seem to be UI controls for this in System Settings, but Airport config files used to include this. See the answer here: Can a Mac's airport card run 802.11 N, G, B or A only?

Apple Engineers (as opposed to 'Geniuses') are likely to have documentation not generally available online.

benwiggy
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    Note that at the top of the System Information listing, there'll be the location name ("Automatic" by default). If you have multiple locations defined, each one will have a separate section in the listing, with e.g. "Home:" followed by all of the interface configurations set for that location. – Gordon Davisson Dec 20 '23 at 19:52
  • It's not just portable Macs, it's all Macs & has been in the Apple menu for a long time - but only if you have more than one Location defined in the Network Control Panel. If you only have Automatic, the menu item just isn't there at all. [My Mac Pro has the menu, my MBP doesn't, because of the aforementioned.] – Tetsujin Dec 22 '23 at 18:24
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I do suggest query "network locations apple support". First two words are System Setting hierarchy names and two last to attempt limit answers to Apple Support documentation. This will return as first result on my machine article Use network locations on Mac:

Use the network location feature in macOS to quickly switch between different sets of network settings.

Switching between sets of network settings (locations) can be useful in circumstances such as these:

  • You use the same network service (such as Wi-Fi or Ethernet) at work and at home, but the network settings you use at work don't allow your Mac to automatically connect to the same type of network at home.

  • Your Mac connects to more than one network service (such as both Wi-Fi and Ethernet) at work and at home, but at work you want your Mac to try connecting to the Ethernet network first, and at home you want your Mac to try connecting to the Wi-Fi network first. In other words, you want a different service order for each location.

  • Your Mac isn't connecting to your network and you want to quickly reset your network settings for testing purposes, without losing your current network settings.

Some additional network location related tidbits from book macOS Support Essentials 11 by Arek Dreyer (my copy is rather old and regarding Big Sur). Nevertheless according to the book in macOS there are:

  • Hardware network interfaces (Bluetooth, Ethernet, Thunderbolt Bridge, USB, WiFi)
  • Virtual Network Services (logical network within a hardware network interface. A virtual network service provides another network interface by carving out a section of an established network connection: PPPoE, VPN, VLAN, Link Aggregate, 6to4)
  • Network protocols (each network service interface provides connectivity for standard networking protocols like TCP/IP configured with DHCP, TCP/IP configured manually, DNS, WiFi protocol options, Authenticated Ethernet with 802.1X, WINS, IP proxies, Ethernet hardware options)

Whether it addresses the problem or makes any sense to OP I have no idea.

Aivar Paalberg
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