[chasg]

Hi All,

I have an old-ish Intel-based Mac Pro (dual 2.8GHz Quad-core Xeon), and I'd like to add a USB 3.0 card. PCIe, of course.

Can anyone recommend one to me that I can purchase in the UK?

Thanks in advance for any considered advice!

Chas

[shifuimam]

Fortunately, I don't believe that USB cards require anything in particular in order to work. I put a cheap Belkin PCI USB 2.0 card in my Power Mac G4, and it worked immediately.

If I were you, I'd pick up a card somewhere that has a painless return policy, and just try it. I think it's pretty likely that it'll work out of the box without any struggle.

[chasg]

Really? Well, that'd make my life a lot less expensive, as the cheapest card I can find that says that it's OSX compatible is around £70, while other cards go for as little as £15.

Worth a try, and something I hadn't considered, thanks for the tip!

Chas

[shifuimam]

Oh yeah - with a lot of stuff, "OS X compatible" is meaningless. Companies have to pay a hefty royalty to Apple to have the luxury of including that tagline on their products.

RAM, hard drives, internal optical drives, and expansion cards are universal. The only problem you'll run into with expansion cards is when the manufacturer doesn't provide OS X-compatible drivers - and sometimes, you can find third-party drivers that let you use the hardware with your Mac. USB cards are simple enough that they *shouldn't* need drivers, though.

[chasg]

That's very good news. I'll head down to the local PCWorld and pick up a cheap card tomorrow :-)

[shifuimam]

Post back if it works! I'm sure others could benefit from confirmation instead of just speculation.

[chasg]

Good idea. Fingers crossed for me and future USB card wanters!

[shifuimam]

Any luck? I'm dyin' to know!

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

Oh yeah - with a lot of stuff, "OS X compatible" is meaningless. Companies have to pay a hefty royalty to Apple to have the luxury of including that tagline on their products.

Are you sure about that? I imagine they'd have to pay for the logo, but they should be able to say it works on Mac OS X.X.X without infringing anything. I always assumed that companies just didn't bother to test on Macs and those who did realised they could jack the prices up.

[chasg]

shifuimam, no luck yet. The closest shop with the card I'd like to try is all the way across town and I haven't managed to get there yet <grump>.

[shifuimam]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

Are you sure about that? I imagine they'd have to pay for the logo, but they should be able to say it works on Mac OS X.X.X without infringing anything. I always assumed that companies just didn't bother to test on Macs and those who did realised they could jack the prices up.

I won't take the plunge and say I'm absolutely positive, but I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't allow hardware manufacturers to put "Made for Mac" on a product unless they pay royalties to Apple.

[Waragainstsleep]

Originally Posted by shifuimam 

I won't take the plunge and say I'm absolutely positive, but I'm pretty sure that Apple doesn't allow hardware manufacturers to put "Made for Mac" on a product unless they pay royalties to Apple.

I was wondering whether they could stop someone listing it in the small print under the system requirements.

[jmiddel]

I doubt it, that is simply a fact, free speech, whereas branding it as OS compatible is trademark use.

[Waragainstsleep]

Thats what I thought. Always amazed me the number of manufacturers who didn't even bother to test their kit in a Mac.

[shifuimam]

It wouldn't surprise me to find out that Apple goes after hardware brands that put "OS X" as a system requirement, without paying Apple to do so.

"OS X", "Apple", and "Macintosh" in computer hardware context are trademarks. I don't know what - if anything - Apple does to companies that use those trademarks without permission, but I wouldn't put it past the company to be d-bags about it.

Also: free speech has nothing to do with it.