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I am currently having a very weird connectivity issue whenever I pair my Apple Magic Trackpad and Wireless Keyboard with my Macbook Pro (early 2011) on Mac OS X 10.8.5.

I believe that the connectivity issues that I am experiencing have been reported several times on this site. In my case, these products disconnect frequently, and when they are connected they lag a lot. I can resolve the issues by placing my keyboard and mouse closer to my laptop. On the other hand, the issues become far worse whenever I move my keyboard and mouse more than a few feet away from my laptop.

I did a lot of research online and it appears as though there are many reasons why this can happen. In my case, I believe that the issue has to do with interference from nearby WiFi networks / wireless products due to the following reasons:

  • I have found that the bluetooth connectivity issues do not occur during the day. In fact, the products work flawlessly during the day, and the lag only occurs at night (which makes me believe that one of my neighbors is using some kind of weird device which is causing interference, such as a baby monitor).

  • I checked the RSSI of my Bluetooth connections and they all seem to be within the healthy range (65-70 db). RSSI of Bluetooth Connection to Keyboard Nevertheless I still get connectivity issues.

    • I tried fixes that are known to resolve the connectivity issues when they are due to other reasons. In particular, I tried to reset the SMC controller (in case it was a hardware thing). I also tried to pair the bluetooth products after turning off all of my wireless networks. Both of these fixes did nothing to solve the bluetooth connectivity. I should mention that it COULD be a hardware issue as I installed my own HD as well as a secondary HD into my MBP (as of now the secondary HD works in a buggy way, which may indicate that it is a hardware issue, though that would not explain why the pairing works during the day).

I am wondering if 1) this is indeed an interference issue and 2) what I can do to alleviate these issues. I am thinking of just trying to beef up my bluetooth signal but am not sure if this will work / what kind of adapter to get. Any advice will help.

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  • Hi, did you ever figure this out? I'm having a lot of lag on my bluetooth mouse and keyboard when I'm at home (but not elsewhere) Jan 4, 2014 at 12:45
  • I find that turning bluetooth off and on again makes everything work smoothly but then it goes laggy again after a minute or two Jan 4, 2014 at 12:47
  • @Michael Forrest Yes! The issues went away after I removed the Secondary HD which I had installed where the DVD drive was. I'm not sure what the problem was... but I suspect it has something to do with a buggy / cheap 3rd party optical bay that I got off eBay.
    – Berk U.
    Feb 2, 2014 at 15:37
  • Interesting. I was plugged into an external hard drive too while experiencing this problem (a cheapish "WD Passport"). Feb 4, 2014 at 10:32

1 Answer 1

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This issue was resolved when I removed out the second hard drive that I had installed in the optical bay (based on the instructions here).

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