Are there any third-party PCIe USB 3 cards that are supported by Mountain Lion without additional drivers?
Mac Pro (Mid 2010), Mac OS X (10.7.3)
It looks like the sonnet card on this page does not need drivers, but claims the Mac OS X drivers support only drives at these speeds -- no hubs and no other type devices.
THis one works right for $50:00
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10493
LaCie USB 3.0 PCI Express Card (1x)
$49.99
1-Year Limited Warranty Included
Select your product:
<http://www.lacie.com/more/index.htm?id=10112>
"The LaCie USB 3.0 Driver for Mac OS® is for LaCie storage devices only. It does not support other USB 3.0 devices such as hubs, printers, scanners, or webcams."
This LaCie card does not currently work with ML, I have been trying without success to get my card up running after upgrading to ML, will have to wait for a driver upgrade from LaCie.
CalDigit has been touted as a hopeful USB3 and their USB3 + eSATA on MacRumors forum but waiting for new chps and drivers too.
The Lacie card only supports Lacie products and the driver does not work with Mountain Lion. I purchased this card and had to return it.
I then thought of purchasing the Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0 PCIe card. On closer reading on their product page:
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/allegrousb3pcie.html
this card does not support USB 3.0 hubs! How dumb is that. So you are stuck with two ports. But wait ... there's more. They now have a warning that they have issues with Mountain Lion. Where have they been? Don't they keep up with new software releases?
Sigh.
Why doesn't Apple give us USB 3.0 drivers? Is it because they are pushing Thunderbolt?
Mr Cooke, please stop alienating your customers by pushing for new technologies (something I hope you will continued doing) while deserting owners of older hardware that can't afford to keep updating their machines. In case you haven't noticed, things are rather tought at the moment so we can't all go out and purchase the latest laptops in order to have access to USB 3.0.
Does anyone know of a card that will work in a Mac Pro AND work with USB 3.0 hubs AND Mountain Lion? I've looked and looked and can't find anything.
Looks LaCie finally updated their drivers to support Mountain Lion:
http://www.lacie.com/support/drivers/driver.htm?id=10239
However my 2009 Mac Pro connection shows the speed up to USB 2.0 only. Anyone else getting the same speed after updating the driver?
I also looked at the Sonnet Allegro USB 3.0 PCIe card. I wrote to them asking if it supported Mountain Lion and USB 3.0 hubs.
The reply was both good and bad. Good in that:
"The card will work in your Mac Pro and we released a driver last week that adds 10.8.x compatibility. So that part works. What won't work is your hub as we state in tech note#1 on the product page"
Bad in that, sppecifically, the tech note states:
The Mac OS X driver for this card does not support most USB 2.0 and USB 1.1 devices. iPod and iPhones are not supported. USB 3.0 hubs are not suported. Non-storage devices are not supported
So much for the word Universal in Universal Serial Bus.
And this is what infuriates me about Apple. The new Macbook Pro has two USB 3.0 ports so obviously Apple has drivers for USB 3.0. There is no fine print that the USB 3.0 ports won't work with this or that. So why doesn't Apple make a card for its legacy customers? Or release native drivers for its older machines?
The cynical answer is that Apple wants us to upgrade our machines. Yeah, right. I have a money tree that allows me to upgrade all my laptops (3 of them) and my Mac Pro every time Apple introduces new products. It is this type of arrogance that will see Apple's share price come down to where Microsoft's is.
Apple pushes the boundaries of design and technology but leaves its existing customer base behind. Mr Cook, this is NOT the way to go.
Since Lacie have released the Mountain Lion driver, I see that their USB3.0 Mac page (http://www.lacie.com/more/index.htm?id=10112) no longer has the comment that the driver:
"is for LaCie storage devices only."
Does this mean their new driver version will support 3rd party devices / drives? Has anyone using the PCIe card on a Mac Pro under ML tried using the new driver with 3rd party drives?
I remember reading before (can't find link right now) that USB3 is fickle to support. Apple waited to include it only when natively included in the processor, hence only the Ivy Bridge-based machine have it. All other implementations seem to be unreliable. LaCie and Sonnet are just two examples of it. On the Windows side, it's the same bad situation.
2010 Mac Pro USB 3?
