OSX Leopard: Keyboard Problems
Sorry to say this, but it seems like Apple is doing a pretty good job at curbing the users’ joy about new and improved features by the severity of the bugs that have slipped through into the final release. (Don’t get me wrong, as I work in the software business I know and understand how hard it is to catch all bugs — but that doesn’t make the remaining ones any more fun 
)
Some people, including me, experience that their keyboards become unresponsive intermittently, mainly but not exclusively on the Macbook/Pro laptops. This has been described many times on the net, for example by the “Apple Gazette”.
For most people, the problem seems to boil down to these key points:
- It happens after waking up from safe sleep
- While the keyboard becomes unresponsive, the trackpad and its button are not influenced
- No apparent spikes in load or similar reduction of overall system performance are noticeable
- A reboot remedies the situation until the next time it is triggered (possibly by a safe sleep cycle, see above)
So far, I was unable to find a confirmed solution for the problem, but some readers suggest that the problem has not (yet) reappeared after they reset their NVRAM and PRAM as described in this Apple help document (if your Apple boot sound becomes so loud your neighbor across the street could hear it, you did it right).
Note that this issue was not fixed by the recently released OSX 10.5.1 update (though it fixed a pretty bad data loss issue, so you want to install it).
If you experience the issue too and want to share some thoughts, or if you have other household remedies at hand that may heal “spontaneous keyboard loss”, please feel free to leave a comment.
Update: The PRAM reset did not help; after waking up my laptop, I still frequently experience the loss of my keyboard. But as reported in the comments, Apple tech support frequently tells people they know about the problem and they’re working on fixing it. Let’s hope that’s true.
Update 2, 12/19/07: Apple released a software update that is supposed to fix the problem. Please read my followup post.
I feel your pain.
I’m also tortured by a MacBook problem, however mine requires a service repair.
http://www.macrumors.com/2007/11/26/apple-acknowledges-reports-of-macbook-hard-drive-failures/
Some MacBook hard drives apparently break down after a while, and the read head detaches and scratches the disk (or something to that effect; I’m no hardware guy). Apple finally admitted this (apparently common) error yesterday. Now I’m computerless for at least week… sigh!
Indeed, this sucks — I hope every day that it doesn’t happen to my drive also, because I do have the affected drive type and firmware number.
I have disabled safe sleep here, as I prefer an unclean filesystem instead of the security issues caused by safe sleep. If I really must take out the battery, I’ll have to shut down the machine. Big deal.
I’m suffering badly from issues with the X11 display server though. This is the most stinking piece of X server that has ever been shipped with a branded UNIX in history.
Have the same problem here, but it only occurred once since you told me about the problem a few weeks ago. I think I woke the MBP up from sleep mode, was able to enter the password for unlocking the computer but after that, only the trackpad (and button) were responding, the keyboard wasn’t.
In addition, my MBP’s battery (the third one Apple exchanged in 14 months since I bought the computer) which I owned for perhaps 5 months now slowly starts to die…
Oh yeah, and of course my MBP also had one of those nasty Seagate drives installed.
martin: Did you install the X11 server upgrades I blogged about a while ago? The X11 instance that was shipped with it is indeed no good.
Jean Pierre: So, are you going to return the battery again? They seem to constantly get you the worst ones they have…
Did you follow the discussion on Apple’s support forum?
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1232311&tstart=0
I went to the local Apple Service Provider in Munich yesterday (Gravis)… YES, I’m getting my third battery replaced since I bought the MBP 14 months ago. Crap… Anyways, a customer had the same keyboard issue and the sales representative only advised him to “wait for a software update”…
Ah, thanks. Then let’s hope the assessment of “about one week” won’t be too far off.
I am suffering from the unresponsive keyboard problem on my MBP 2.2ghz SR.
It really sucks, and rebooting doesn’t cure it. Just this morning my keyboard “went crazy” and started registering spacebars like crazy. When I tried to type it looked like this:
T he q u i ck b r o wn f o x
Please help, Apple!
Yep. Got it also. MBP 2.4 Ghz SR. I’ve noticed that it tends to occur most when I hop from one program to another. If I’m patient and wait 10-20 seconds, the keyboard will work again. Haven’t noticed it happening when I’m using my external keyboard (will try to pay closer attention). I constantly am putting mine to sleep (shutting it) when I come in and out of my office. Didn’t notice the problem appearing until the past week or so (have had this MBP since around early November, and have never run Tiger on it). Wonder if a particular update has caused it? I’m running 10.5 right now. Have updated most things except, iTunes, iPhone and to 10.5.1.
Actually, for my external keyboard it does not happen either. So it may be that while the internal one stalls randomly, I don’t even notice while having the external one plugged in. Sadly while I am on the road I don’t haul a keyboard around so that’s when it sucks the most.
Feeling the same keyboard pain, very annoying. Have to reboot to make it go way and it doesn’t happen predictably.
Has occured on 1 of 3 Macs I support.
Macbook Core 2 Duo.
yup as i have both my macs mac pro dual $ mac book,..they loose keyboard control randomly no safe sleep.., and now my num lock and caps lock are inverted,.. Apple really hurt me on this update… i am loosing a lot of productivity.. im pretty pissed.. hurry up apple pull your finger out..
My MacBook Pro is doing it. I thought I’d cured it by uninstalling Parallels, but the problem is back. The keyboard *will* come back if you hold the shift key down for 10 secs. Sometimes this takes a couple tries, but it always seems to come back.
This is a giant pain. My G4 PB *never* crashed and never had a problem, until it was stolen.
Sometimes when my computer wake up from sleep I’m experiencing the same problem on my MacBook Pro and it’s really very annoying. I strongly hope it’ll be fixed soon.
Same here – locks up after a sleep.
One thing that normally triggers it is to resume from sleep and then wait for the password dialog to time out. Then re-wake it from sleep and enter the password. The keyboard then stops working about 2-3 minutes later
matt
All the Mac vs PC advertising worked. I have been a PC user since the early 90s. Currently working on my Ph.D in physics, I decided to replace my notebook with a macbook. Its primary use would be programing, numerical and molecular dynamic simulations, music production and photo editing, but nothing graphics intensive. The claims about the stability and all the new features in Leopard reeled me in; however, upon bringing my new macbook home I have never been more upset by a technology product in my life. The keyboard intermittently cut out with an average frequency which prohibited any sustained usage beyond five minutes. X11 crashed so frequently that the usage of programs like Gimp and Open Office was futile. As a long time linux user I am comfortable with researching bugs and employing workarounds as needed; but, these issues are far beyond what any modern user should have to deal with out of the box. Needless to say, I promptly returned the macbook to the apple store where the manager proceeded to explain why I must pay a 10% restocking fee (she was willing to waive the fee if I would leave the computer with them for a week to look it over.) After I reminded her that the apple store didn’t have to wait a week for its money at the time of my initial purchase, not to mention that the macbook was defective from day 1, the manager reluctantly credited me for the entire purchase price. Her action was only aimed at avoiding the embarrassment of having an angry patron on the premises while several customers were in line to purchase units identical to that which I was returning.
I don’t know what to say other than… “well, I gave it a try!” But, I guess I just don’t get it. My ipod works just fine. I don’t have anything against their other products. I just won’t be buying one of their macbooks (which I guess is just a PC any ways) for quite some time. It is too bad, because I did like the way it looked.
The keyboard crash comes and goes on mine mbp 2.2ghz. When it happens (totally random) i hit some buttons about 30 times, and the keyboard wakes up.. sucks.
i have the same problem with my macbook but i do not agree with your complainings.lets remind ourselves that microsoft got out their last O.S. uith 4 years of delay and the only thing that we get is a O.S. that crash every 10 min, that ask you up to 4 times if you really want to delete a file and guess what? i dont know how, but it looks preety similar to mac osx.so let us be patient for some little time until the problem is fixed so we may use our macs as we freely please.and deconverted, dont forget that in EVERY profesional studio of whatever, there is a mac…at least; windows vista is just not usefull there nor a pc to run it.its my first mac and i tell you this: i have done more things in one hour that i could do with my pc within a day.(i had to buy a new computer because my pc was broken.for the sixth time).
Wow. Engadget finally got the news, too
Wow, they are only like a month late…
I’m experiencing the problem. Never had the problem with Tiger. I found that if your keyboard goes unresponsive, hold down any key for ~10 seconds, and it will come back.
I’ve noticed that if I don’t use the keyboard for a while, it will be unresponsive, but if I’m continuously typing….like I am now, it never just spontaneously stops working mid-type.
I was hoping 10.5.1 would have fixed this…but no luck. Until there’s a fix, there’s no way I’ll upgrade my wife’s MacBook…
Hey guys,
Found this thread on Google. Same problem here in Chicago, IL
10.5.1 here. Brand new Macbook Pro.
Interesting this, it didnt start happening to me until I woke up this morning (Laptop went to sleep of course) after upgrading to the new OS a few weeks ago. Must have been my update to 10.5.1?
Christian, thanks for the update, thats a nice temp fix.
Robert,
I didn’t say that I am a vista user. My PC runs dual boot Kubuntu and MS Dos. (Just joking on the later!) Plus, I expect more out of an operating system release like Leopard for this reason: the OS has an extremely small set of hardware compatibility parameters compared to any MS or linux operating system. My point is, I have been more impressed with any of the recent linux distros than Leopard. Actually I was mostly sold on the macbook by the looks. I had no standing issues with my PC operating systems up to date. Of the hundreds of XP and vista computers that I work with in any given week, I do not have any of the “crashes” that you refer to. The fact that this Leopard keyboard issue still exists after 10.5.1 is even more pathetic. Also, your statement that “in EVERY profesional studio of whatever, there is a mac…” strikes me as a little bit naive. For example, Cubase, Ableton, Native Instruments, and Sound Forge, and the like, all run much better on PC than Mac. For this reason the Mac dominance in Pro Audio realm has waned. Further, many studios have custom built linux hard disc audio recording systems which are based off of the Musix distribution. Another example which is relevant concerns the performance of GIMP on all three platforms. Face it, X11 on Leopard was a complete afterthought. GIMP suffered as a result. GIMP actually performs best on linux, but both linux and vista run this photoshop clone much better than Leopard.
Deconverted: Although it was not really an afterthought as such, Apple’s stance on X11 is a shame indeed. But at least http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/xquartz will give you an incarnation of X11 that works with the GIMP. This is a giant step ahead of what they initially gave us at Leopard’s release.
i think i have to say that you are righ on this. i just waited for a long time to buy me a mac, to do music produccion on it. i hoped it will do better than a pc. you certainlly know more about professional music produccion than i do. i guess i’ll have to investigate more on how to use a mac. it’s a little decepcioning to buy the latest apple laptop with the latest os and than find out that it has some really bothering bugs, such as fullscreen uncompatibility. if you will, i will find verry usefull some information on how to fix those bugs or how to make music on a mac/pc. thanks.
I am having this keyboard problem – Core Duo MacBook – so far I’ve found that going back into Sleep through the menu and bringing out again seems to fix it some of the time, but I will try holding Shift next time.
Holding Shift or any other key won’t really help the situation much, other than you noticing when it happens to work again. After a short period of time however, the keyboard will just stop working again.
I have recently seen some fanboys suggesting that mb/mbp users carry along a usb mouse and keyboard in order to solve this problem (thus epitomizing the very essence of portability
. This situation is getting more and more hilarious by the day! However, I truly feel bad for those who are putting up with this problem while awaiting a fix from the apple overlords. I am really glad that I took my macbook back last month (it’s ASUS F8 replacement has been flawless). I can’t imagine having put up with it for this long. Might I suggest dual booting Ubuntu until this entire mess is resolved? Good luck to you all!
Apple issued a patch for this problem yesterday (17 December, 2007). Updating system software should resolve the issue (fingers crossed!)
Thanks for the info, man! After my next class, I’ll install it and will make sure to get a followup-post on my blog. Thanks to all the other people who told me about the patch, too!
[…] Apple released a system update that is supposed to fix the severe “keyboard unresponsive” bug in OS X […]
M macbook pro keyboard just went dead this last week Am using a ps 2 ( p.c) keyboard to type at u. Apple care failed to correct the problem, and a local (Sonora , Ca ) area tech said that this is not uncommon for apple since the last run of tiger to lepoard 10.5.2. Update… Just got the keypoard update patch and installed this patch. I am glad that Im not the only one who has this problem. Allan Egleston. Sonora, Ca.
Allen, did the keyboard patch work? I have done everything, updating to 10.5.2, just put the new Keyboard update with recent firmware, and still have the intermittent keyboard non response.
I’m running Dual 2 GHz PPC G5, 2.5 GB DDR2 SDRAM, OS X 10.5.3 and I’m experiencing keyboard problems. I experienced the problem with 10.5.1, 10.5.2 and still with 10.5.3. Like most others the problem seems to happen when waking the computer from a nap. It seems that 1/3 of the time all is fine, another 1/3 of the time the mouse becomes unresponsive, and the remaining 1/3 of the time its just the keyboard that is unresponsive. I’ve encountered all three situations repeatably now. I use a Macally iKey keyboard as I don’t care for the apple keyboards and a mighty mouse plugged into one of the 2 usb ports on the macally iKey. I am able to resolve unresponsive keyboard and unresponsive mouse by disconnecting the keyboard from the computer and plugging it back in. Once, when the keyboard became unresponsive my computer had the bluetooth lost connection wizard open. Could these issues arrise from some sort of blue tooth misconfiguration or is this apple’s way of recognizing there is a problem and trying to auto solution it. Seems like a poor move if there never has been a blue tooth keyboard or mouse paired with the system. It seems that most people encountering this issue are running notebooks so maybe these details will help. On to look for an alternative solution.
Cheers,
-Mpare
After I installed the new leopard my keyboard went backwards. I have to have the numlock and cap lock on in order for my keyboard to work this is crazy. Has anyone else had this problem?