Poor Bluetooth reception and jerky mouse

I've been searching for a while now and may have stumbled upon a surprisingly low-tech solution to jerky mouse movement and disconnections: kitchen foil. Yes, you read it correctly: kitchen foil.

I knew the positioning of the bluetooth antenna and, hence, poor signal strength was the likely source of the problems so I tried some of the less involved workarounds such as repositioning my Mac Pro and moving metal objects out of the path between the antenna and mouse. Then I thought: if metal objects can block the signal then maybe it could be reflected back towards the mouse. Worth a try, I thought, so out came the kitchen foil and...voilà! Problem solved!

It was a Futurama moment, I know, but I was able to confirm the improvement very easily: in System Preferences/Bluetooth (has to be Lion, I'm afraid), selecting the Magic Mouse and holding down the option key displays the signal strength (http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2011091514050082). It took a while but by monitoring the signal strength I was able to find the optimal positioning for the foil which, for my setup, was draped over the back handle and down behind the back of the Mac Pro. If I'm right in thinking that the foil reflects the signal then it makes sense as the back of my Mac points near enough directly away from my mouse. If I'm wrong, then perhaps the foil is blocking some source of interference.

Whatever the explanation, I've gone from having a bluetooth signal strength between -60 and -77 (which I assume caused the stuttering movement and disconnections) to a very strong signal between -53 and -57.

Now all I need is for someone to tell me it's not just some bizarre coincidence.

ANOTHER UPDATE: the BTA-6310 did not fix anything... lasted for about two weeks and then just one day it just stopped working... it took me a month to discover because i have been away from my Mac off and on for about a month... sooo... the Lexy Pacific Corporation did not find the cure for "my" bluetooth issue... does anyone else have a Bluetooth dongle(any make or manufacturer) go dead on them with a Mac Pro 1,1 running Lion??? it can not be the manufacturer since Lexy Pacific BTA's use different manufacuters for the 6210 and the 6310 chipset... BTW Lexy Pacific has been wonderful trying to solve this issue... "Dave" is the man, he tries where others might just say "call Apple"...

My plan now is to try another inexpensive manufacturer and see if the "cheep" ones will solve the issue(class 2)... i hope to find out "why" my Mac is burning out 3X BTA's and also to solve my Trackpad issues... i have a Logitech cordless click to do my fine wurk in Photoshop and Final Cut... how silly, huh?

Fix It Now Apple... LMAO!

namaste

I removed the back plate of the mouse that covers the batteries and haven't had a problem since. Nothing more than that.

Yes, there's clearly a problem with reception, but aside from re-wiring or using a separate device for bluetooth, this works fine for me. Only concern might be dirt inside, but even that hasn't been an issue.

Try it.

I have the same problem with jerky performance with my Magic Trackpad. I first tried a USB BT adapter (IOGear GBU421), which worked great for about a month, then suddenly quit. IOGear blamed it on Mountain Lion being unsupported. So then I tried nobblynoel's solution, adding an external antenna. That does not work any better than the original. Perhaps I will try to find a larger external antenna, but Apple, you really need to address this. There are a lot of people complaining here.

Update to my aluminium foil workaround, above: it does indeed increase the strength of the signal reaching the mouse and does reduce disconnections and jerkiness considerably - but not enough. I've been keeping an eye of the signal strength in the Bluetooth System Preferences pane and found that the minute you put your fingers around the mouse the signal deteriorates very considerably. I'm still searching for an effective solution. Taking off the mouse's battery compartment cover is next, then a bluetooth USB adaptor but after reading other posts, I'm not hopefull.

Seriously 😁, why dont you just get a new mouse. I picked up a apple might mouse on a website called inmogul for like 30 bucks. Paying over 50 dollars for a mouse is ridiculous. Save your money and never shop directly with apple. I will post a link if anyone is interested. Apple Mighty Mouse

You can eliminate the problem by eliminating all 802.11n 2.4Ghz devices on your network. Switch your router over to 5Ghz. It will have to be a Dual Band Router. This will eliminate your problem. Here is an article about why this is the case.

http://www.eetimes.com/design/communications-design/4012915/How-to-mitigate-802- 11n-interference-with-PC-peripherals

Just an update.

I've had tis issue of slow and jerky- Apple replaced lots of stuff including the case.

No improvement.

I did find it works great if the computer is turned sideways (so a clean sow to the back) and it worked great.

A cople of years later and it still works great that way.

Maybe not ideal, but it gives me a bit more desk space also...

I don't it CDs or DVDs in it that ugh anymore anyway.

Mark

I don't think this is specific to the Magic Mouse. There have been a few discussion threads elsewhere, and I've started to have this very issue using a Dell Bluetooth 5 Button Travel Mouse.

The Dell BT Travel Mouse had been working flawlessly for a couple of months. And this computer is an old (MacBook Pro 1,1 [10.6.8]) but the cursor lag has become very noticable and it doesn't exhibit itself on the built in trackpad. But multiple other users, on several over discussion threads have mentioned this issue not just with the Magic Mouse.

Some have suggested that there might be some correlation to using an external display, which seems possible. Again, this old machine has a limited amount of memory, but regardless, it does seem to be an OS X issue with Bluetooth.

FWIW I recently installed a Sonos Zone Player nearby which could lend credence to the "interference" theory.

Reading this thread helped me a lot. What finally helped was checking RSSI value with battery cover on or off.

Cover On -92

Cover Off -80

This is a work around for me since I do not need to open my iMac.

(Placing the mouse on the steel reinforcement on my wooden table may also affect but I did not check further)

iMac (27-inch, Mid 2011), running 10.10.5

I tried every other trick in this thread except modifying the internal antenna.

I also tried the MM on a Windows laptop where it works well. The iMac BT implementation is strongly suspected.

Thank you all,

John