Can't pair Apple Remote and MacBook Pro + Answer

I had an issue pairing my Apple Remote with my MacBook Pro.

The Apple manual says (on page 36):

To pair your Apple Remote with your MacBook Pro:
1 Position the Apple Remote 3 to 4 inches from the IR receiver on your MacBook Pro.
2 Press and hold the Menu and Next/Fast-forward buttons on the Apple Remote for 5 seconds.

After trying and failing several times to pair my remote using these instructions I gave up. While it could be a bit annoying not to have the remote paired it was not a significant enough issue to prompt me to send the notebook in for repair.

After a few days I decided that there must be a software conflict causing this problem since the remote works fine otherwise.

I scoured the net for a solution and found nothing. It seemed I was the only one with this problem.

Based on the premise that you should push all of the buttons and see what happens I tried several other button combinations on the remote. To my surprise holding the Menu + Play/Pause buttons together for five seconds paired the remote with my MacBook Pro.

I have unpaired and then re-paired the remote several times with this alternate button combination and it works every time.