Question Here:
According to this thread, and my understanding, both BT 4.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11ac are required for both Handoff and and Hotspot to be supported.
And that appears to be the case with my Mac Pro, I have Wi-Fi 802.11n and a MVC BT 4.0 dongle.
However, I also have a 2012 (5,1) 11" MBA. I just installed Yosemite on that machine, and it also has Wi-Fi 802.11n and the internal BT is 4.0. System Information is telling me that both Handoff and Hotspot are supported. Why is that?
The MBA and the cMP with the dongle are both using the same Broadcom Chipset (20702A3) The Firmware appears to be newer on the dongle (V47 C5803 vs V47 C5800) than on the MBA.
Lou
The answer can be found in the Yosemite section of this very board.
Apple introduced BT 4.0 in MBA in 2011. MBP didn't get it until the following year. When Yosemite DP1 was released, all you needed was BT 4.0 to enable the various features.
There was a front page story here that 3rd party USB dongles didn't work. I figured out a way to make dongles using Apple parts. I spent hours sourcing parts and started soldering. Then the uproar began over the el cheapo products supporting this and the "pro" ones not. In a subsequent release (DP2 or DP3, IIRC) they removed the little panel showing that BT 4.0 enabled all of the features.
Then our friends in Cupertino did a VERY ugly thing. They made the loading of the Broadcom 94360 kext be a pre-requisite for the features to work. And here is where it gets tricky (and uglier). All this fuss was 100% balogney from the get-go. The iPhones shipping at the time (4s, 5c, 5s) didn't have wireless AC. But to use the features your Mac needed to be using a kext for Wireless AC. To do this, they created a "whitelist" and a "blacklist". So some machines without the real parts could have it work, meanwhile, other machines with BT 4.0 would hit a brick wall.
So, 100% based on selling stuff and politics, has NOTHING to do with what hardware you have.
On the whitelist is my 2012 rMBP, since I paid a small fortune for it they overlook the lack of AC WiFi via the whitelist.
On the blacklist are those pesky 2011 MBAs being used by the Proletariat rubbing elbows with the "real Pro" machines.
SO I have a pile of BT 4.0 adapters that can enable these features...BUT...you need to do a kext hack. And since Apple doesn't want you monkeying around under the hood anymore, you run into the same roadblock Cindori's Trim Enabler has. (If they sold a car, it would have the hood welded shut) You have to enable "dev mode" to mod kexts and have them load. Do a PRAM reset and your kexts stop loading.
So, the easy fix for Mac Pros is the "whole enchilada", get one of our packages with both covered. (Back in stock by Monday, fingers crossed)
Or you can take the BT 4.0 dongle and do the 94360 kext hack. I can't emphasize enough how ridiculous it is to hide 94331 support in a kext labeled "94360" so as to create 100% artificial forces to make the sheeple upgrade.
Uncle Schnitty has added another guide in Yosemite section. If you have Apple BT 4.0 that is all you need. If you are running Trim Enabler in Yosemite you are half way there. Basically you either need to add your machine id to the "blessed by Tim and the accountants" whitelist or remove your machine from the "damned to eternal suffering" blacklist.
every time I take a look its sold out... thanks!
