Location services in Mavericks with no WiFi?

I think that you need to be on wifi for location services to work. I have a mac pro too and went to system prefences, clicked on Security & Privacy and at the top of the window there is Enable Location Services. I unlocked the lock and enabled this. I have my computer wired for both ethernet and wifi. The map direction feature does not when not connected to ethernet. It only works when connected to wifi. I guess you will have to google mapquest or another such site.

Hope this helps.

Set your exact location in

System preferences > Date & Time > Time Zone...

... I entered the name of my little town and it somehow looked it up and entered the exact Latitude and Longitude of my downtown.

Resurrecting this thread as it's a question I'd quite like answered.

My Mac Pro has its time zone/location set in Date & Time System Prefs, but when using Maps, it cannot find its current location unless WiFi is on. So no consistency there then.

But is does raise the question of why WiFi is required. I don't actually know how Location Services work, but cannot see how WiFi is required. The WiFi network here (at home) simply connects to the wired ethernet backbone and hence to the Internet. Every WiFi device can alternatively be connected to via the wired network. What can WiFi possibly provide that the wired connection cannot?

I think it's just Apple being lazy and only implementing it (whatever IT is) over WiFi since it has most use in a mobile application. No real reason it cannot use the wired network, but they can't be bothered to include it since they saw no reason to on a fixed Mac. But they completely missed the fact that other stuff like their own Maps app requires this service in order to plan routes. So they really need to either update Location Services to be able to use the wired network or ensure that Maps (and similar) can use the machine's location as specified and Date & Time prefs. It is monumentally stupid that this situation exists.

This

About Location Services in OS X Lion and Safari 5.1 - Apple Support

includes

About Location Services in OS X Lion and Safari 5.1

Location Services allows applications and websites to gather and use information based on the current location of your computer. You have to give your permission before the application or website can use your location data.

Your approximate location is determined using information from local Wi-Fi networks, and is collected by Location Services in a manner that doesn’t personally identify you.

Thanks for that, but no help at all really. It simply re-iterates that WiFi is used for Location Services which was never at issue. The question was, how?

It has since been mentioned to me that a database is maintained of the location of all WiFi networks, hence a Mac needs to know about a nearby WiFi network in order to determine its location. This would certainly be possible. iPhones and such like could report their (GPS) location and the name/ID of their connected WiFi network and over time, the database will include the location of every WiFI network - even private ones like mine.

I don't know for sure this is how it is done, but it sure would be possible and I don't have a problem with that as such. But this method then relies on any device actually having active WiFi in order to determine its location which is rather limiting. With all the collaboration services now possible between OS X and iOS, it would be entirely possible for a static Mac with no active WiFi to query a nearby iPhone (or similar) and say "where are we", hence eliminating the requirement for active WiFi. But maybe that's a bit too advanced.

Be interesting to hear from anyone with certain knowledge of HOW Location Services uses WiFi.

Yes as you say Apple has a database of the location of various wifi networks. wifi networks are identified by the unique MAC address of each wifi device.

Untill about four years ago or so Apple used to use the Commercial SkyHook sericre to get that data and maintain the database. Now Apple uses the data obtained for devices with GPS like iPhones and iPads with cellular. No one has found a way to to add a wifi router/locatin to Apple database