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castelletta Author

Level 1

11 points

Poor Bluetooth reception and jerky mouse

I want to share my findings upon the poor reception of the internal Bluetooth module on my 2009 Mac Pro. The mouse in particular seems to suffer the most from the low BT signal.

It has to be said that if you succeed to place your Mac Pro in a particular position you can obtain optimal mouse reception. It seems that the field covered by BT signal is very irregular (due to the aluminum case?) and I think also altered by other metal objects that can exist on your desk (or inside/under you desk and his structure).

This can explain why some users tell of fantastic BT reception with their Mac Pro and others (majority) complain about awful Magic Mouse tracking.

In my situation I've been forced to plug-in a D-LINK DBT-120 dongle. It performs very well and maintain always connection with mouse and keyboard upon restart......unfortunately the same peripherals can't awake my Mac Pro during the sleep mode. A little uncomfortable (because you have to press the power button) and I thing very strange since this dongle is considered the only BT dongle fully supported from Apple.

I tried other dongles but all seem to lose connection. Some after restart, others after sleep mode.

For sure it's a shame that the most powerful and most expensive machine that Apple is selling right now is so badly performing in the BT compartment and it's more unforgivable since Apple seems to push very much their wireless peripherals.

Ok Apple, it's not easy to grant a powerful BT antenna in the metal case of the Mac Pro? Well please provide or support an external module that fully support all Mac OS functions (key selection on startup, wake on sleep ... etc) and consistently. I don't think it's a science fiction task.

I'm waiting your experimentation in placing your Mac Pro differently.

Please share your experiences....thank you

MacPro 2009 - 8 core, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Nov 12, 2009 8:05 AM

357 replies

gumsie

Level 4

2,179 points

Dec 13, 2009 2:21 AM in response to Anonymoustache

Possible interference issue then?

Dec 13, 2009 3:00 AM in response to gumsie

Yeah, could be. Maybe limited power, even after fiddling with the wires? Also, I moved the mice at the same time and separately and they did the same thing.

gumsie

Level 4

2,179 points

Dec 13, 2009 4:43 AM in response to Mosaica

What's a mobo ?

Mosaica

Level 1

5 points

Dec 13, 2009 6:25 AM in response to gumsie

Motherboard, system board. I see that in my Mac Pro the BT wire is connected and heads out to the back of the case under the lower rear fan. Cannot see where it goes from there..

gumsie

Level 4

2,179 points

Dec 13, 2009 9:54 AM in response to Mosaica

Yours is obviously not a MacPro 1,1.

castelletta Author

Level 1

11 points

Dec 14, 2009 9:22 AM in response to Nowvin

I hate solutions like this 😉 Never tried that Nowvin but I'm unconfindent that it would be a solution.

gumsie

Level 4

2,179 points

Dec 14, 2009 9:32 AM in response to castelletta

Was just a suggestion.

Dec 14, 2009 3:06 PM in response to gumsie

We spent one of the most frustrating days we have ever had with a computer - not something I would expect from something that costs more than $3000. Apple if you are reading this you better pull your head out of your *** and stop denying there is a problem with the BT design - THERE IS. The Bluetooth interface on mac pro ***** - simple as that. It is weak and the signal is poor at best - either the antenna design needs to be fixed or the BT card redesigned, or both. Clearly the mouse suffers the most, probably because it requires more bandwidth. After finding the same problem with 2 brand new Mac Pros (wireless keyboard and magic mouse) we came here and read up. After an hour on the phone with Apple, they wanted us to bring both systems in to check them out - friggin joke, don' they read their own forums?

So after reading everything on the forum here we purchased a DBT-120, immediately the range problems went away - of course, we now have other problems - wake on sleep is gone, and every time the computer boots now the CDRom Drive opens, also the attached devices are not recognized after power up / power down. We tried everything to get this work - shutting off the internal BT service, having it on, blah blah blah. We purchased this equipment for its simplicity and good looks, and now we are hamstrung by either using WIRED keyboard and mice or using BLACK Logitech crap that we don't like just so we can use wireless.

This is absolutely disheartening that a system that costs this much would not do something as basic as $900 macbook can. I just don't get it.

We should have just bought IMacs, this is turning out to be one of the biggest wastes of money yet.

We currently pushed aside all the wireless crap and are using the wired keyboard and mouse. JOKE

Dec 14, 2009 3:56 PM in response to Community User

Apparently some people are having luck using the DBT-120 on the Mac Pro and still being able to use the Wireless Keyboard and Magic Mouse - can you detail how you are making this work ? We did nothing more than install the DBT-120 and it competes with the existing driver, and while it worked initially, after booting the existing driver takes over and the mouse goes back to being jerky, ignoring the dongle.

The next step - we then deactivated the internal BT module (shutting power to it off on preferences) then we installed the dongle. We manually told it to add devices and installed keyboard and mouse, everything worked perfectly. We were happy. We put the Mac Pro to sleep - then using the front panel button it woke up no worries everything still worked fine. Excellent.

The final test - we shut the system down completely and rebooted - NEITHER keyboard or mouse was recognized so we had no access of any kind. DEAD. Oh yeah - the CD Drive door now opens on its own every time we boot. So we un-installed the dongle, tossed the wireless crap back in the box and put back the wired stuff. Hate it.

This is really aggravating. Nice job Apple.

Dec 14, 2009 5:37 PM in response to Community User

My boss and I pushed the emotion aside and finally got the setup to work. Here are the exact steps. We tried this on the 3 other Mac Pros and it worked on those too. We are connecting a magic mouse and Apple wireless keyboard.

Prep: Make Apple wireless mouse and keyboard are OFF before proceeding.
Steps:

1> Plug in a wired mouse
2> Disconnect ALL other keyboards, mice, etc (i.e logitech)
3> DELETE any bluetooth devices in the preferences menu hit minus sign to remove)
4> Shut off Bluetooth Services (deselect the check box in prefs)
5> DELETE Library/Preferences/com.apple.Bluetooth.plist from the hard disk
6> INSTALL the BT-120 Dongle
7> Click on the BT icon, top right hand side of display
8> Click on "Set up Bluetooth Device"
9> Power on the Magic or Mighty Mouse - go through setup wait until its recognized.
10> Click on add another device
11> Power on Keyboard, same process as above for mouse.
12> When done, close dialog. Now enjoy a very smooth mouse and keyboard!

Now the system can be rebooted with no issues, mouse and keyboard will work upon boot. Sleep works fine, you just cannot wake from keyboard. Also - boot key sequences don't work, but keep the wired keyboard around just in case and don't worry about it.

We are finally happy. We had some help from Apple engineering, as good as we are - no way we would have found this on our own. The Mac Pro + Wireless setup is THE way to go. Maybe one day they will fix the BT weak output, but really - who cares now that this works. If you need more USB ports, you can install a $40 card for that!