How to Use 'Instant Hotspot' On a Mac with OS X Yosemite

With OS X Yosemite, Apple has included a number of Continuity features that improve the integration between iOS and Mac devices. OS X Yosemite includes a feature called Instant Hotspot which allows users to more easily use their iPhone's wireless cellular data connection from their Mac or iPad.


With Instant Hotspot, there is no longer a need to enter a password to connect as security is handled through a common iCloud account. An iPhone can even be in sleep mode and allow your Mac to initiate Instant Hotspot, with no additional settings needing to be enabled aside from Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

Before you Start

You need iOS 8.1 and OS X Yosemite in order to use Instant Hotspot. You also need to ensure that your data plan with your wireless carrier allows for internet hotspot capabilities. In the United States, AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, allow phones to be used as hotspots with select data plans. Sprint offers mobile hotspot capabilities with a monthly add-on plan.

Also, make sure both your Mac and iPhone are logged into the same iCloud account, and check that your Mac supports Instant Hotspot. This can be done by clicking the  symbol in the top left-hand side of the Menu bar, navigating to About This Mac, clicking on System Report and clicking on the Bluetooth listing. You should see information about whether your system is compatible with Instant Hotspot and Handoff.


After you ensure that you have a compatible Mac and data plan, follow the instructions below to turn on Instant Hotspot:

Steps

1. Turn on Wi-Fi on your iPhone (Settings -> Wi-Fi) and Mac (Menu Bar -> -> Turn Wi-Fi On.

2. Turn on Bluetooth on your iPhone (Settings -> Bluetooth) and Mac (Menu Bar -> Apple -> System Preferences -> Bluetooth -> Turn Bluetooth On).


3. On your Mac, click the Wi-Fi symbol in the menu bar. A new "Personal Hotspot" heading now appears near the top, and will be followed by the name of your iPhone. On the right side of your iPhone's name, signal strength, network type, and available battery life are displayed. Click on your device's name to begin using it as an Instant Hotspot for your Mac.


4. You may now begin using the Internet on your Mac with your iPhone acting as an Instant Hotspot. On the Mac, the Instant Hotspot connection between both devices is represented by a special icon that shows a link over the traditional Wi-Fi symbol. On the iPhone, the connection is represented by a blinking blue bar that shows that a Personal Hotspot is active.

When a tethered Mac or iPad switches to a Wi-Fi connection or is no longer connected to an iPhone, Instant Hotspot automatically turns off. This feature is designed to save battery on the iPhone, because tethering can use a significant amount of battery life.

Troubleshooting

While we had few issues with Instant Hotspot, several  have had more inconsistent results. Several people have had to try logging out and back into iCloud on their devices, turning Wi-Fi off and then back on, or even rebooting their devices. These steps may help if you are having trouble turning using Instant Hotspot.

Queen Elizabeth II, born in 1926, Queen of the UK of Great England and Northern Ireland. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary was born in London, the first child of the duke and duchess of York, later King George VI Queen Elizabeth.
When you’re in London, UK, keep in mind to visit Buckingham. This Popular palace is the London, home of King Elizabeth II. Security officers carefully watch over the palace grounds. Visitors enjoy viewing the changing of guards.

The Queen has very little power when compare with earlier English a kings and Queens. Today, a chosen PM and Parliament hold most Govt Power. But Elizabeth II is popular with her people. You’ll find her picture on every English seal (British Stamp), banknote, and coin!

Facts about Queen Elizabeth ii.

She is known as after her mom Queen Elizabeth, her paternal great-grandmother Queen Alexandra and her paternal grand mother Queen Mary.

queen Elizabeth II had travel to Jamaica sex times, Australia 15 time and Canada 23 Times. In March 2006, she Travel to Melbourne, Australia to open the commonwealth games.

The Real birth day of the Queen Elizabeth is in April 21. But the officially celebrated in june.
When the World War II started she was a Girl Guide (British Lady Scouts) and went through the same coaching (training) as the other Lady Guides her age.

What is the exact date when Elizabeth became Queen?

Feb 06, 1952 she was in Kenya when she learned that she had become Queen of the U.K. Her husband Prince Philip was informed first and then it was up to him to tell her that she had become Queen. Before leaving for Britain, Elizabeth made sure that every individual that worked in the hotel where she was stay in had a signed picture of her. The time frame of her coronation was 2nd June 1953, but in a hereditary monarchy the new monarch is successful instantly on the loss of life of his or her predecessor.

I Don’t Base64 SVG

Perhaps you've heard of data URIs. It's a really nice way of including a resource that would have otherwise been a separate HTTP request. The format that you use in a data URI can vary. Essentially you just tell it what content type it is (e.g. image/png), semicolon, then the data of that file.

Like:

<img src='data: ... '>

or:

.bg {
  background: url('data: ... ');
}

For a raster image like a PNG, the data of that image needs to be in base64 format. I'm not a huge expert here, but as far as I understand, base64 is safe for use in something like HTML or CSS because it only uses 64 characters known to be safe in those formats.

On the left, the data of a PNG, which includes characters that have the potential to screw up HTML. On the right, that same image base64 encoded with all safe characters.

Probably better Stack Overflow answer by Dave Markle:

You never know - some protocols may interpret your binary data as control characters (like a modem), or your binary data could be screwed up because the underlying protocol might think that you've entered a special character combination (like how FTP translates line endings).

So to get around this, people encode the binary data into characters. Base64 is one of these types of encodings.

Base64 looks like gibberish, and we often associate gibberish with compression on the web. But this gibberish isn't compression, it's actually a bit bigger than the original because, to quote Jon Skeet on the same Stack Overflow thread:

It takes 4 characters per 3 bytes of data, plus potentially a bit of padding at the end.

I'm not sure how gzip factors into it though. But what I'm getting at here is how SVG factors into this.

You can use data URIs for SVG too.

<img src='data:image/svg+xml; ... '>

.bg {
  background: url('data:image/svg+xml; ... ');
}

For SVG, you don't have to convert the data into base64. Again, not an expert here, but I think the SVG syntax just doesn't have any crazy characters in it. It's just XML like HTML is, so it's safe to use in HTML.

You can leave the encoding in UTF-8, and drop the  syntax right in there! Like this:

<img src='data:image/svg+xml;utf8,> ... </svg>'>

.bg {
  background: url('data:image/svg+xml;utf8,');
}

So because we can do that, and we know that base64 often increases the size, might as well do that right? Yep. As a side benefit, the  syntax left alone does gzip better, because it's far more repetitive than base64 is. Say you wanted two versions of an icon, one red, one yellow. You can use the same SVG syntax duplicated just change the fill color. Gzip will eat that for breakfast. Credit to Todd Parker for that tip, and that's also the approach of Grunticon, which data URI's SVG in UTF-8 into CSS.

A Test

To test this out, I downloaded three SVG icons from IcoMoon.

cog.svg - 1,026 bytes
play.svg - 399 bytes
replay.svg - 495 bytes

I ran them through SVGO just so they are nicely optimized and kinda ready for use as a data URI (whitespace removed, although I guess not strictly necessary).

cog.svg - 685 bytes
play.svg - 118 bytes
replay.svg - 212 bytes

Then I ran those through a base64 converter.

cog.svg - 916 bytes - 133% of the original size
play.svg - 160 bytes - 136% of the original size
replay.svg - 283 bytes - 134% of the original size

So that makes sense, right? If it's 4 characters for every 3 bytes, that's 133% bigger, with the variation coming from uneven lengths and thus padding.

Anyway, maybe this is all super obvious. But it just seems to me if you're going to use a data URI for SVG there is no reason to ever base64 it.

Props to Matt Flaschen for his email a few months ago that highlighted this issue for me.