On November 12th, 2009, dozens of Apple.com Discussion Board users began to notice that they were suddenly experiencing the sort of quick battery loss in their Bluetooth keyboards that usually exhibits itself in arcs of purple electrical plasma shooting off a Tesla coil. Keyboards that once lasted for several months without a recharge now required nearly weekly battery swaps, even when using high-capacity batteries or rechargeables.
So far, there’s been no official word from Apple about the cause of the keyboard power drains, but consensus seems to be that Apple’s new Magic Mouse is the culprit, somehow preventing the Bluetooth keyboard from going into sleep mode. According to one user, swapping a Magic Mouse for a Logitech mouse eliminated the problem entirely.
There’s no official word from Apple when this bug will be squashed, although according to one Discussion Board user, an Apple Tech Support worker said that it’s a known Bluetooth driver issue, and a fix is in the works.
Any of our own Magic Mouse aficionados out there capable of confirming this problem as ubiquitous?
[via TUAW]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
21 responses to “Magic Mouse bug might cause Apple Bluetooth Keyboards to bleed out power”
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WHAT do I do… my mouse suddenly had a huge eraser on it and was erasing to gray…. no left or right click or esc would do a thing… had to abort by shutting down manually…. uuuuggghhh! what in the world is this????
Does this work with the Magic Pad just curious im not really a fan of the Apple Products and this is the first time i have been here