Glo Networks Technical Blog (Glo Blog)

Take a look at a Macbook Pro, specifically the USB ports. Spot any differences? Anything to suggest one may be hiding a secret? No? Well although the USB ports on the Macbook Pro look identical it seems Apple has a little surprise attached to the rear port (closest to the screen).

The rear USB port actually connects to a hidden (internal) USB Hub, which is also shared by the keyboard, Bluetooth, track pad, iSight camera and the infra-red receiver. While it is still a functional USB port for the most part, certain devices can have problems, caused by the USB hub.

Our attention was brought to this issue when we tried to use a USB hub on one of our own in the rear port. It seemed to be working as expected at first, however we were confused to find that when we attempted to use a USB headset in the external hub we found Skype calls would have quality issues. We also noticed a form of lag when using a mouse in the hub.

We found that a simple swap of the USB hub from the rear to the front USB port on the Macbook cleared all the issues! A little investigating  and we uncovered the Macbook Pro’s secret hub. This explained the problems we’d experienced, considering having a USB hub plugged into a USB hub has never been a recommended setup!

Posted by James in Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware | 3 Comments »

If you have one of the new macBook Pros from Apple. The ones with the dual nvidia GT 330M cards in then you really should pop this great bit of software onto your mac. Without this software on there you don’t know which card is currently running your mac. The fancy nvidia one isn’t needed for most tasks as it warms the macbook up and sucks the battery. But interestingly it appears that Parallels and VLC both switch it on ! Parallels does even with 3D turned off on it’s VMs.

Not any more they don’t !

Posted by Chris in Desktops and Laptops, Laptop Hardware | 4 Comments »