Keyboard repeat key mystery - and Im not alone!

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Keyboard repeat key mystery - and Im not alone!

Hi all,
I am new to Macs, had PC for 25 years. Now I have an 8 core and Macbook pro, but have this one major problem, no matter how I set my Keyboard preferences, I get random repeating keys, even when I press one of the function keys (using Final Cut Pro). This is very annoying when writing a letter or entering a password which you cannot see, so it gets rejected a few times then you are locked out.

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=2434016

This person posted concerning this issue over three years ago, and there were another two people in the thread who also experienced the problem! Now I wouldnt mind just buying a better (non Apple) keyboard, but unfortunately the makers of the FCP colour coded keyboard use the bog standard A1048 which is the culprit. I can even replicate the key repeat problem when plugging the A1048 into my PC.

What could I do, it seems to be an issue with some people, but I have it on two keyboards, maybe its the vibes! I think at least Apple should give me one that I can use! Whats really irritating is I have spent hours and hours speaking to customer services etc and they all take me on their long winded tour through keyboard preferences, then nothing comes of it. They say they have not heard of the issue, but now I find I am not alone!

Cheers,
Mark.

8 core mac pro, Mac OS X (10.5.1), 8gb ram

Posted on Feb 4, 2008 2:36 PM

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Answer 1

mark palmos Author

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Feb 4, 2008 2:40 PM in response to mark palmos

this thread is about the same issue too...

http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=1885571#1885571

why on earth do apple support say they have never heard of this issue???

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Answer 2

Feb 4, 2008 8:21 PM in response to mark palmos

I had an A1048 keyboard on my Mac mini a few years ago, and was always annoyed by the occasional double character. Some A1048s seemed to do it worse than others - I had another one with my Quad G5, and I don't recall it doing it.

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Answer 3

barshnik

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Feb 4, 2008 9:31 PM in response to tele_player

Just in case - I had all kinds of weird keyboard issues before figuring out that the mouse - if plugged into any USB port on the MacPro other than the port in back of the keyboard - cause those problems. Now I can't blame typos on the computer.

John F

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Answer 4

Feb 4, 2008 9:55 PM in response to mark palmos

There's a ghost inside the shell!

Just kidding, anime joke.

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Answer 5

mark palmos Author

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Feb 4, 2008 11:43 PM in response to Supreme Virtue

Hi guys
I will try the mouse in the keyboard thing, i'm not sure a 5 button PC mouse will work there, but I will try when I get to work.
Thanks for the input... next step - I will return my keyboards till Apple have a parking lot full of faulty keyboards!
cheers,
Mark.

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Answer 6

mark palmos Author

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Feb 6, 2008 2:51 PM in response to mark palmos

Hi folks.
Yesterday I spoke for the 5th time to Applecare, this time armed with certainty the Apple A1048 keyboard was the problem... I got through to a supervisor eventually who agreed to replace BOTH my A1048 keyboards.

Today one of them arrived, and what do you know, the problem is completely GONE!!!! What a pleasure, I cant tell you how much my affinity for my 8 core has grown in one day. Bloody frustrating and annoying Apple Care has NO record of this issue.

BTW the keyboard they replaced it with was the PRO keyboard, similar to the A1048, but has the usb's on the upper sides of the keyboard instead of right at the back facing backwards. I asked for my second one to be replaced by an aluminium one. Desite this frustration, i am impressed by the way they sorted me out quickly and without much of a fuss, and at no cost to me.

If you have this problem, insist on getting a PRO keyboard. It works!

All the best
Mark.

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Answer 7

c.henry

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Apr 3, 2008 8:57 AM in response to mark palmos

Mmm, I'm getting the same problem. I have my mouse (the Apple one) plugged into the keybooard. I've turned down the repeat rate and that did improve the siituation a little. But it still happens quite a lot. I hate typing on my Mac Pro now as I spend a lot of time going back fixing errors. I can already see it's happened a few times already in this post (I'm not going to correct it, just to show how bad it is).

I've tried the alluminium (<- keyboard error, rather than my spelling) keyboard from the wife's iMac and I didn't seem to have the problem with thhat. So I'm going to try and get a replacement.

Glad (?) to see that others are also having problems.

Colin

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Answer 8

May 14, 2008 12:50 PM in response to c.henry

I have a similar problem to the one described in this topic. The only difference is that I'm using a Logitech DiNovo Notebook wireless keyboard. I didn't have any problems with this keyboard whatsoever, but after the 10.5.2-and-later updates, all sorts of strange things started to happen. Of course, I experienced about all the Graphics Update problems one can have, but now this keyboard problem as well:

As I type, previous keystrokes are repeated at random. I can't find any consistency in this behaviour, but it seems that the more CPU-heavy the application is, the more this problem is acting up. For some reason, in aMSN and FireFox 3 beta 5 the keys are repeated more than for instance Entourage or Word for Mac 2008. I find this very strange, and my confidence in Apple and it's products has sunk to an all-time low.

I'm not sure if this is an MacBook Pro or Logitech related problem, but I do want to find out what I have to do about this. Because while typing this reply, I had to correct my typing about 20 times :20(

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Answer 9

May 14, 2008 1:15 PM in response to c.henry

This is kinda strange. I put the USB receiver from my wireless keyboard in the 'base' USB port on my MacBook Pro, and after that the problem seems to be gone. My USB hub may be the cause of this problem, but now I can't connect my USB mouse, keyboard and external drive at the same time, because my macbook only has 2 USB ports :P Maybe a change of USB hub can fix this...

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