The Bluetooth part of the new 16 “MacBook Pro causes hassle to users after using USB / Bluetooth dongle with their machine.
Found by a reader of MacBidouille, this malfunction is discussed in more detail in Apple forums. These users have noticed that after activating a Bluetooth connection using a USB dongle, as soon as it is disconnected, the Bluetooth chip on the mobile phone never takes over again.
The internal Bluetooth remains deaf and mute. Some have gone so far as to reformat their machine and reinstall Catalina, without making any difference. On a few occasions, the Apple Store has recognized a hardware problem and changed the machine. However, this problem could be reproduced identically on the replacement Mac.
Why use a USB / Bluetooth dongle with this machine? Some explain that they need it for testing and development purposes. Their dongle was for example plugged into a CalDigit dock, connected in Thunderbolt to the Mac, and they worked in a virtual machine.
Through the exchanges in this forum, we see that two of these users were finally able to find the proper use of their machine. One has employee one Terminal command, the other has solved the problem in Apple Store. His machine passed the diagnostic tests successfully and after starting up in safe mode then deleting a system preferences file, it was able to reconnect devices with internal Bluetooth.
In the end, there seems to be a malfunction with the management of Bluetooth on this machine but in view of these returns, there may be a way out. We’ll see if the current Catalina beta makes any changes in this area.
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MacOS 10.14.4 beta3 – issue not resolved.