NOTE: I am running MacOS 10.13.4 beta 4 on my Mac and iOS 11.3 beta 4 on my iPhone and iPad so these features may not be available on your devices — yet.

After installing the beta 4 updates yesterday I started experimenting with new (or at least new to me) features and made a few interesting discoveries.

IOS:

• Health > Health Data a new item Health Records (beta) — the concept is to consolidate all of the user's health records, lab results, prescription information, etc. in a single database regardless of the provider. The beta has only a limited number of cooperating providers (hospitals, clinics, medical practices), but that is bound to grow. As my providers are all in different practice groups, different hospitals, etc. this seems to me an invaluable service.

HANDOFF: Okay this has been around for a while now but I am just now putting it to the test and learning how powerful it is. Think of it as Airdrop on steroids. If you have an iOS device and a MacOS device on the same Apple/iCloud account, each with WiFi turned on and "Handoff" is turned ON in Settings > General and System Preferences > General as appropraite…

• The clipboard and shared between the two devices, ie. you can copy (or cut) on one device and paste into an app on the other device. If you haven't tried it it works like a dream.
• When Safari or any other Apple app has the focus on one device, the app icon appears on the other devices' Dock overlaid with an image of an iPhone, click on that and the session transfers to the current device. It works the same way with the iOS Dock. The link is not dynamic, ie. changes mad on one device do not appear on the other until the screen is manually refreshed. Note this appears to work only with Apple apps at least for now. It isn't perfect — yet, but I have already found it very helpful in my workflow.

My complaint with Handoff is the requirement of wifi turned on on the desktop computer. Why not just the same network? In my case I have a direct Ethernet connection and wifi would be a downgrade.

Even if you have an ethernet connection, you can turn WiFi on and neither connect to or create a WiFi network, and there would be no downgrade in that. It would be available for the other devices on your Apple account to connect to and "Handoff". I have so many WiFi networks here that testing that would be difficult but it should be relatively simple for you to try out.

Am I understanding you correctly? With wifi on, connect to no network and Handoff will still work? I'll give it a try. and let you know.

It seems that turning "WIFi on" automatically connects to an existing home network. I can try and fake it by joining a network that is not one of mine, but when that fails it defaults back to one of my home networks. I could tell it to forget my networks, but I don't feel like doing that (you can't deny me my feelings! ).

So for now, unless someone else wants to test it, the question is unanswered. What's the question? If WiFi is on, but not connected to a network, will Handoff or AirDrop still work?

That is why I didn't want to test it.