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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

Reply
357 replies

Jan 4, 2010 3:54 PM in response to CrustMaker

We are using several Mac Pro Early 2009, as mentioned earlier we had the same problem with all of them. We initially used the DB Dongle and it was working fine for a while per our procedure for installation, but then more often than not - the devices would lose comm, then when rebooting they would have to be re-paired, etc. We were done with the dongle after a week. Our final fix - we bought an external BT Antenna off of Ebay, total cost $8 for two off some guy matashardware, it arrived in 4 days. Unhooked the old one, installed the new and poked it through one of the vent holes in the back of the case (had to enlarge one vent hole slightly) and ran the antenna under the case up near the front panel, held in place with some tape, you cannot tell its there. Total install time less than 5 minutes. BT works now as well as it does on the Imac. Crap design, Apple does not want to admit it, but we needed a consistent wireless OEM solution and now we got it. Only complaint we have had with the entire system - its a work of art otherwise. Fortunately, the fix is cheap...

Jan 5, 2010 9:56 AM in response to CrustMaker

There is nothing really to post image wise, you simply unplug the old antenna, plug in the new one and run it outside the case through one slightly enlarged vent hole near the back of the case. Once you pull the processor tray, this entire process becomes very obvious. The BT module is near the back of the main board, you cannot miss it, along with its antenna attached. We are going on 3 days now using the Apple BT full time and FINALLY its working like it should. This antenna fix is a sure thing. Not one single problem.

Jan 9, 2010 9:12 PM in response to Mosaica

Save yourself a lot of headache, spend $8 on a BT antenna on Ebay, install it and run it outside the case, either under the tower, or along the monitor cable as we did and enjoy perfect operation. The mod took a few minutes, it changed nothing and does not void the warranty. There are all kinds of people selling micro coax BT antennas, we got ours from a guy in Canada, it arrived in 4 days. Problem solved.

Poor Bluetooth reception and jerky mouse

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