Lesson 26: Troubleshoot Peripherals

Question 1

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

Answer 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

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

Where can you configure this pairing?

Answer 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

What’s 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 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

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

Answer 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

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.