A Geek Goes Flying

Two things came up using my Thunderbolt 2 dock with my MacBook Air M2 running macOS 14 Sonoma. The first, I noticed it was using my spotty ‡ WiFi connection instead of the faster, reliable wired interface in the dock. Today I learned you can Set Service Order and configure the order in which macOS tries network interfaces (VPN connections are always at the top of the list and tried first, apparently): Network Systems Settings page with Set Service Order... selected Huzzah. Next, every time I connected the Thunderbolt hub, I was getting a pop-up I had to clear, which was annoying: Pop-up Under Privacy & Security, scroll down to Security and find the "Allow accessories to connect" setting, and tweak to taste: Accessory connection security setting Running smoothly now.

I’m finally embracing Thunderbolt. Most of the machines • I’m using these days has at least this port: Side view of Apple laptop highlighting Thunderbolt 1/2 port MacBook Air 13" 2012 (Core i5 1.8 GHz, 8GB RAM): Thunderbolt 1 (10 Gbps), Mini Displayport connector MacBook Air 11" 201 5 (Core i7 2.2 GHz, 8GB RAM, Crucial 1TB SSD ): Thunderbolt 2 (20 Gbps), Mini Displayport connector, backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 1 MacBook Pro 15.4" Mid-2015 (Core i7 2.2 GHz Quad Core, 16GB RAM, 256 GB SSD): Thunderbolt 2 MacBook Air 13.3" 2020 (Core i7 1.2 GHz Quad Core, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD): Thunderbolt 3 (40 Gbps)/USB 4 (USB-C connector) MacBook Air 13.6" (M2 3.49 GHz, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD): Thunderbolt 3 MacBook Pro 14" (M1 Pro 3.2 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 512 SSD): Thunderbolt 4 (40 Gbps)/USB 4 (USB-C connector) The idea was to be able to swap in a laptop into my corner workstation (eventually, when I get the Mac Pro running again, with a KVM (with Extended Di...