Lesson 26: Troubleshoot Peripherals

Question 1

What are the three primary peripheral bus technologies supported by Mac computers running macOS Big Sur?

Answer 1

macOS Big Sur supports these three primary peripheral bus technologies:

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

Question 2

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

Where can you configure this pairing?

Answer 2

To communicate with a Bluetooth peripheral you must pair the Bluetooth device to associate it with your Mac.

Bluetooth preferences in System Preferences are 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?

What are the four primary types of device drivers?

Answer 3

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

The four primary types of device drivers are as follows:

1. System Extensions
2. Legacy system extensions (also referred to as third-party kernel extensions)
3. Framework plug-ins
4. Standalone apps

Question 4

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

Answer 4

macOS Big Sur uses built-in generic drivers based on each device class.

For example, macOS Big Sur uses generic drivers for scanners and printers instead of 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.