26. Troubleshoot Peripherals

Question 1

1. What are the four primary peripheral bus technologies supported by Mac computers that run macOS Sierra?

Answer 1

1. These are the four primary peripheral bus technologies supported by macOS High Sierra:
   a. Universal Serial Bus (USB)
   b. FireWire
   c. Bluetooth wireless
   d. Thunderbolt

Question 2

2. What must occur for a Mac to communicate with a Bluetooth peripheral? Where can you configure this pairing?

Answer 2

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

Question 3

3. What’s a device driver? What are the three primary types of device drivers?

Answer 3

3. A device driver is software specially designed to facilitate the communication between macOS High Sierra and a peripheral. These are the three primary types of device drivers:
   a. Kernel extensions
   b. Framework plug-ins
   c. Standalone apps

Question 4

4. How does macOS High Sierra support third-party devices without needing third-party device drivers?

Answer 4

4. macOS High Sierra uses built-in generic drivers based on each device class. For example, generic drivers for scanners and printers can be used instead of official third-party drivers.

Question 5

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

Answer 5

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