They keep changing the way this works. But on a new machine or iPad, it is pretty likely that the authentication is going to be really frustrating. At least on my iPad and Mac, here are the symptoms:

  1. You connect to Starbucks Google as usual and then try browsing around and nothing happens. What is going on is that if you have a new machine, it will not throw up a login screen. I tried rebooting the Mac and the iPad and it doesn’t help.
  2. What seems to work is that you have to force a redirection, so go to Safari and carefully type in a non-https site, that is something like http://hello.com and then Google can seize the address and throw up their special URL.
  3. This will ask for your name and Password and it looks like they record your Mac ID and you never need to login again. Of course from a privacy perspective, it means they will know that you are logged onto a Starbucks and where it is at all times, so even your VPN will not protect you from Starbucks Google, but that’s pretty much true for any public WiFi that you use (unless you go to the trouble on a PC of spoofing your MacID).
  4. From then on `Starbucks Google` should just work.

I’m Rich & Co.

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