8. System Management: Lesson Twenty-five

Question 1

What are the four primary peripheral bus technologies supported by Mac computers running OS X?

Answer 1

The four primary peripheral bus technologies supported by OS X are:

1. Universal Serial Bus (USB)
2. FireWire
3. Thunderbolt
4. Bluetooth wireless

Question 2

What must occur for a Mac to communicate with a Bluetooth peripheral?

Where can you configure this?

Answer 2

Bluetooth devices must be paired to each other for communication to occur.
Bluetooth preferences in the System Preference application is responsible for pairing a Mac with Bluetooth peripherals. You can quickly open Bluetooth preferences from the Bluetooth status menu.

Question 3

What’s a device driver?

Which three primary types of device drivers are there?

Answer 3

A device driver is software specially designed to facilitate the communication between OS X and a peripheral.
Device drivers can be:
1. Kernel extensions
2. Framework plug-ins, or
3. Standalone apps

Question 4

How does OS X support third-party devices without needing third-party device drivers?

Answer 4

OS X uses built-in generic drivers based on each device class.
For example, there are generic drivers for scanners and printers that can be used instead of official third-party drivers.

Question 5

What can you infer about a connected peripheral if it doesn’t appear in the System Information app?

Answer 5

If a connected peripheral doesn’t appear in System Information, the issue is probably hardware related. Troubleshoot accordingly.