My Jawbone headset arrived today. The Jawbone worked flawlessly with my Treo, but getting it to pair with my Mac and work with Skype was a bit more effort. This was somewhat frustrating since the primary reason for the purchase was to make Skype calls.
Before I get into what my solution was, I should mention that my Macintosh is slightly out of date. My Powerbook G4 runs OSX 10.3.9. It is possible that none of these problems exist on the latest version of OSX. Nevertheless, I know I’m not the only person out there still running 10.3, so I’ll post this with the hope that it saves at least one person a few minutes and some frustration.
The short answer was that two things needed to be done:
- Download and run the Bluetooth Firmware Updater 1.2 from Apple. I ended up restarting the computer before running the updater for it to work properly.
- Download and install the latest version of Skype (version 2.6.0.140 at the time).
Now for the slightly longer answer…
The first problem was pairing the headset with the computer. The computer recognized the headset but stated the hardware did not support headsets. This sounds worse than it really is since it is easily remedied with a firmware update. After downloading and installing the Bluetooth Firmware Updater 1.2, I ran it with no success. Not only did it fail to update anything, it also disabled bluetooth on the laptop. Fortunately, rebooting brought back bluetooth. Running the updater again after a fresh reboot seemed to do the trick. So, if you are having problems with this updater, I recommend you reboot and try again.
After the bluetooth update, pairing the headset with the computer was no problem at all. On the other hand, Skype wasn’t working quite right. Changing the audio preferences to work with the Jawbone did not work at all, there was no sound coming out of the headset. I mucked around with the audio preferences on the system and Skype for quite some time but nothing really seemed to work. What did end up working was updating to the latest Skype release (version 2.6.0.140 at the time).
Now, I’m happily Skyping with the Jawbone headset. Lesson learned: Use the latest version of software.
Hi JP, I just got my jawbone and I paired it with my nokia without any problem, but I haven’t been able to pair it with my PB 12″ OS10.4.11. I want to use it with Skype as well.
Again, my mac recognizes the jawbone but bluetooth keep “discovering” other devices! The little wheel just keeps spinning and if I click continue, it says I have interrupted the pairing process. I haven’t been able to go beyond this step… what should I do!?
I would very much appreciate if you can give me some hints : ) Thank you!!