Lesson 24: Troubleshoot Peripherals

Question 1

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

Answer 1

The four primary peripheral bus technologies supported by macOS are:

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

Question 2

Which action must take place for a Mac to communicate with a Bluetooth peripheral?

Where can this be configured?

Answer 2

Bluetooth devices must be paired to each other for communication to occur.

Bluetooth preferences in the System Preferences application is responsible for pairing your Mac with Bluetooth peripherals.

You can quickly open Bluetooth preferences from the Bluetooth status menu.

Question 3

What is a device driver?

What are the three primary types of device drivers?

Answer 3

A device driver is software specially designed to facilitate the communication between macOS and a peripheral.

Device drivers can be:

1. Kernel extensions
2. Framework plug- ins
3. Standalone applications

Question 4

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

Answer 4

macOS uses built-in generic drivers for each device class.

For example, generic drivers are available for scanners and printers that can be used in lieu of specific third-party drivers.

Question 5

What can you infer about a connected peripheral if it does not appear in the System Information application?

Answer 5

If a connected peripheral does not appear in System Information, the issue is likely to be hardware related. Troubleshoot accordingly.