- Joined
- Aug 19, 2010
- Messages
- 527
- Motherboard
- Gigabyte Z390 Designare
- CPU
- i9-9900KF
- Graphics
- UHD 630 & Radeon VII
- Mac
- Mobile Phone
UPDATE:
This Adapter is now natively supported in 10.8 and later (ML) so the information below is provided for Lion users and earlier only. If you have 10.8 just plug it and go, no kexts or edits are required.
/END UPDATE
Hi Guys,
For those needing Bluetooth support and wanting the latest gen tech here is a cheap and pretty easy option...
Background:
so i bought a magic trackpad for my desktop since i have fallen in love with the gestures after using them for a few days on my new macbook air. I had a whole bunch of really cheap, kinda crappy little bluetooth USB dongles around, shipped from China, they always seemed to more or less do the trick (we rarely use bluetooth). They were plug and play and range was acceptable. In any case when i started using my magic trackpad with this dongle it was no good. Basically it worked for 1 and 2 finger touch commands, but 3 or 4 finger commands would simply freeze up the controller for several seconds. After some research it seems this is a limitation of the cheap chipset used in these cheap dongles. I think its a Cambridge controller or something. So i was on the hunt for a good replacement.
The Dongle:
I decided on the IOGear GBU521. It is one of the only BT 4.0 compliant dongles available and its pretty cheap.
http://www.iogear.com/product/GBU521/
http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Bluetooth-Micro-Adapter-GBU521/dp/B007GFX0PY
Though the package states OS X compatibility, as did the marketing materials initially (since then its been pulled) the controller is not plug and play. However it does work with OS X (and works very very well) with a minor edit to a kext plist.
Make It Work:
This edit should work with other brands if you find they have the same chipset. Basically this is using the broadcom BCM20702A0 chipset. The braodcom driver is located at:
/System/Library/Extensions/IOBluetoothFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/BroadcomUSBBluetoothHCIController.kext
You will need to show contents of this kext and edit the plist. At the end of the end of the IOKitPersonalities add another entry. As of this writing the last entry is one for a microsoft device. Simply copy that device and paste it below and then edit it with the proper device info. So the end of this section will now look like this:
That last entry, the "IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB Dongle" was added in. It is identical to the microsoft entry above it but with 3 items changed. The device name of course, which you can make whatever you want, i made it "IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB Dongle", then the way it matches hardware is by idProduct and idVendor. If you are not using the exact same device, you can get your values from IORegistryExplorer. They will be in Hex and will need to be converted to integer. In any case as long as you buy this exact adapter the above values will work.
Keep in mind you may have to make this edit each time the OS gets updated to a new version as typically the bluetooth drivers get updated each point update.
For your convenience i am including the pre-edited kext. However it would be better if you can do the edit yourself since this kext is for 10.7.4, and it would be better to run the native kext for whatever OS version you have and make the edit to that. Hope this helps some of you wanting a good and modern Bluetooth controller on your mac/hack. This works perfectly with multiple devices paired and has no issues with multitouch. Range is also better than on the cheaper controllers i was using (surprise surprise).
g\
This Adapter is now natively supported in 10.8 and later (ML) so the information below is provided for Lion users and earlier only. If you have 10.8 just plug it and go, no kexts or edits are required.
/END UPDATE
Hi Guys,
For those needing Bluetooth support and wanting the latest gen tech here is a cheap and pretty easy option...
Background:
so i bought a magic trackpad for my desktop since i have fallen in love with the gestures after using them for a few days on my new macbook air. I had a whole bunch of really cheap, kinda crappy little bluetooth USB dongles around, shipped from China, they always seemed to more or less do the trick (we rarely use bluetooth). They were plug and play and range was acceptable. In any case when i started using my magic trackpad with this dongle it was no good. Basically it worked for 1 and 2 finger touch commands, but 3 or 4 finger commands would simply freeze up the controller for several seconds. After some research it seems this is a limitation of the cheap chipset used in these cheap dongles. I think its a Cambridge controller or something. So i was on the hunt for a good replacement.
The Dongle:
I decided on the IOGear GBU521. It is one of the only BT 4.0 compliant dongles available and its pretty cheap.
http://www.iogear.com/product/GBU521/
http://www.amazon.com/IOGEAR-Bluetooth-Micro-Adapter-GBU521/dp/B007GFX0PY
Though the package states OS X compatibility, as did the marketing materials initially (since then its been pulled) the controller is not plug and play. However it does work with OS X (and works very very well) with a minor edit to a kext plist.
Make It Work:
This edit should work with other brands if you find they have the same chipset. Basically this is using the broadcom BCM20702A0 chipset. The braodcom driver is located at:
/System/Library/Extensions/IOBluetoothFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/BroadcomUSBBluetoothHCIController.kext
You will need to show contents of this kext and edit the plist. At the end of the end of the IOKitPersonalities add another entry. As of this writing the last entry is one for a microsoft device. Simply copy that device and paste it below and then edit it with the proper device info. So the end of this section will now look like this:
Code:
<key>Microsoft Bluetooth 2.0 USB Dongle</key>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apple.driver.BroadcomUSBBluetoothHCIController</string>
<key>IOClass</key>
<string>BroadcomUSBBluetoothHCIController</string>
<key>IOProviderClass</key>
<string>IOUSBDevice</string>
<key>idProduct</key>
<integer>156</integer>
<key>idVendor</key>
<integer>1118</integer>
</dict>
<key>IOGear Bluetooth 4.0 USB Dongle</key>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
<string>com.apple.driver.BroadcomUSBBluetoothHCIController</string>
<key>IOClass</key>
<string>BroadcomUSBBluetoothHCIController</string>
<key>IOProviderClass</key>
<string>IOUSBDevice</string>
<key>idProduct</key>
<integer>8680</integer>
<key>idVendor</key>
<integer>2652</integer>
</dict>
</dict>Keep in mind you may have to make this edit each time the OS gets updated to a new version as typically the bluetooth drivers get updated each point update.
For your convenience i am including the pre-edited kext. However it would be better if you can do the edit yourself since this kext is for 10.7.4, and it would be better to run the native kext for whatever OS version you have and make the edit to that. Hope this helps some of you wanting a good and modern Bluetooth controller on your mac/hack. This works perfectly with multiple devices paired and has no issues with multitouch. Range is also better than on the cheaper controllers i was using (surprise surprise).
g\
