Yosemite Handoff-capable Bluetooth adapters?

[a3dstorm]

I

I use hand-off everyday, I didn't think I would to begin with, but it is just second nature now and it is a great feature to have.

Ok, is hand-off the phone feature we get, from having an iphone and you can answer it on desktop/ipad ? if that's it I get it, not really useful to me, but fun to text from ipad. Maybe it's because I don't use Pages, Numbers etc. But I use Mail. I tried and tried, never found a way to finish something on a device that I started on another. Never seen any notification or anything that could point to something I have started somewhere and could finish somewhere else. Believe me I tried.

 

[jginsbu]

I have the same mini ITX motherboard and I'm using the PCIe port for my video card. This machine was built to be compact and wasn't anticipating the need of other peripherals. Just ordered this http://www.ebay.com/itm/191029765954 and this http://www.ebay.com/itm/111514998192 . Hopefully it will work with my mini Pci port.

Please let us know how it goes. I have the same board and might want to go with a similar solution. TIA.

 

[demonknight9]

Ok, is hand-off the phone feature we get, from having an iphone and you can answer it on desktop/ipad ? if that's it I get it, not really useful to me, but fun to text from ipad. Maybe it's because I don't use Pages, Numbers etc. But I use Mail. I tried and tried, never found a way to finish something on a device that I started on another. Never seen any notification or anything that could point to something I have started somewhere and could finish somewhere else. Believe me I tried.

Yeah, that is what hand-off is. Receiving normal sms and calls on any iOS device and compatible Mac is part of continuity. It's called sms and call relay.

Hand-off is when... say you open an app like mail, messages, safari, any of the iwork suite, reminders and notes (don't know if I'm missing any more apps), a message like this will appear on the Mac, Hackintosh or another iOS device and you can continue it on another device just by clicking the tab.
Say you come in the front door writing an email on your iphone and you turn on your hack and get the popup and what you have done so far on your iphone, like an email you have started to write and you have attached photos and added some text. You're halfway through reading an article on a website or writing a document in pages. When you open it on another device you won't have to start it again, what you have done so far will be on all devices.

You will need bluetooth for that. Wifi can be off if you so wish. Wifi needs to be on for sms and call relay though. Also for AirDrop.

You will need a device compatible with Hand-Off for it to work. Apart from the hack, you can make it work either by upgrading your wifi/bt to an apple one. Or by using the option a few posts back which enables it with a usb bluetooth with a compatible chipset.

I have not tried the usb bluetooth option mentioned prior. It might work, and it might not.

In order to get hand-off to work you might need to log off from iCloud on all devices and log back in with the same account.

I hope this makes sense.

Look at the screenshots bellow. On OS X its on the left next to finder and on iOS its also on the opposite side of the camera on the bottom left.

 

[johnsch]

Just received mine from OSXWiFi.com. I spent the extra money because I wanted something that worked right out of the box. Unfortunately, bluetooth doesn't work. Wifi works fine. Switched PCI slots and USB headers but nothing. About this Mac lists "No information found' under Bluetooth. MB is Gigabyte Z87X-UD7 TH. Any ideas besides just a bad adapter? Thanks.

Update: Bluetooth and wifi working now- the cable on the adapter side was on wrong- just had to reverse it. FYI- OSXWiFi Sales responded to my email quickly.

 

[lend27]

Just received mine from OSXWiFi.com. I spent the extra money because I wanted something that worked right out of the box. Unfortunately, bluetooth doesn't work. Wifi works fine. Switched PCI slots and USB headers but nothing. About this Mac lists "No information found' under Bluetooth. MB is Gigabyte Z87X-UD7 TH. Any ideas besides just a bad adapter? Thanks.

Same thing happened to me, but just FYI, I have a Gigabyte GA-Z87N wifi mobo. When I installed the card and plugged the connector into the USB 2 header, wifi worked but not BT. I may have misinterpreted the instructions for plugging in the BT wired into header, but I changed the way it was plugged in and when I rebooted it worked. But the green led never went on. It still isn't on but all is working well.
Here is a screenshot of my BT specs in system info:



Here are the OSXWIFI instructions and the mobo page with the header info:



So, the way my board was wired, I plugged it into the header exactly matching the graphic, however the wires on the plug are actually reversed. The Black is at location "G" and the Gray is at location "B".
Go figure. But as you can see all is working.

Here is the wifi config from system info:



Hope this helps.

Len

 

[lend27]

Update: Bluetooth and wifi working now- the cable on the adapter side was on wrong- just had to reverse it. FYI- OSXWiFi Sales responded to my email quickly.

Did your Green LED light up?

Len

 

[inbox]

can i install this adapter in my GA Z97N Wifi and use the external antenas for BT?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191386210768?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
(Apple BCM94360CD Broadcom WiFi Bluetooth 4.0 Wireless Card (OB) 802.11AC)

any experience?

thanks in advanced.

 

[demonknight9]

can i install this adapter in my GA Z97N Wifi and use the external antenas for BT?

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191386210768?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT
(Apple BCM94360CD Broadcom WiFi Bluetooth 4.0 Wireless Card (OB) 802.11AC)

any experience?

thanks in advanced.

No, you can't

 

[inbox]

thanks demonknight9

then, any solution?

z97n wifi has BT built-in but i have problems with yosemite and i don´t know if it is a driver problem or yosemite 10.10.0...

(thanks in advanced)

 

[mgldan]

Just wanted to check in with a success story. I bought the Wi-Fi card and PCIe adapter from the two eBay sellers listed earlier in the thread.

PCIe adapter: http://www.ebay.com/itm/231370068228
Wi-Fi card: http://www.ebay.com/itm/191029765954

Things arrived in a little more than two weeks from China (I'm in New Jersey). The sellers put the tracking #'s up on eBay right away, which I followed using the USPS website.

The PCIe adapter came with four long antennas (at least 6" long), and some screws that I couldn't figure out how to use. There are three antennas for the Wi-Fi and one for Bluetooth. Everything was well packed and the shipping labels were laser printed to minimize the chances of it getting lost in the mail.

I plugged everything in, using a 4x PCIe slot on my mobo (Gigabyte Z68MA-D2H-B3). Yosemite recognizes it natively and now I have Handoff and 802.11ac.