boomrollkick:
Seems like the Arduino uno is cursed issues. Is there different model I should look into buying or maybe move to a different micro controller?
I have like ten arduinos working since 2-3 year ago, none shown any problem ever (besides a duemillanove I burned with too much voltage, but then fixed replacing the ftdi), my previous experience was only with PIC, and that one was a bad experience (haha so I will never trust microchip again, even when they sell that chipkit something compatible with arduino).
You say "dfu-programmer that says device not present.", so (I don't know how devices show up on mac) your arduino is not in dfu mode yet.