Aral Balkan

I'd been enjoying over a week of keyboard-freeze-free Leopard use until a few moments ago. Coincidentally, I also hadn't switched batteries in about over a week as I'd been too lazy to charge my second battery. A few moments ago though, I hot-swapped to the other battery after the first one ran out (once my MacBook Pro had gone to sleep) and I've just experienced two separate keyboard freeze-ups.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest a link between changing batteries (possibly hot swapping) and the keyboard freezes in Leopard. It may not be the only trigger but it does appear to at least be one of the reasons.

Has anyone else noticed this?

Update: And it seems that a restart cures this. The reports on the web that clearning the PRAM fixes the issue may be an ad-hoc fallacy as clearing the PRAM involves a restart and it might be the latter that fixes things.

Update: Someone in this thread is also reporting that they see the keyboard freezing issue only after changing batteries. Also, someone else suggests that it might be a problem with the Finder capturing keystrokes (restarting the Finder reportedly resolves the issue for him).

Comments

• I also have been experiencing keyboard freezes. I only use one battery in my mac book pro. The keyboard seems to cut out more when I am on battery power. After about 10 seconds or so the keyboard always starts responding again. This problem is rather frustrating and I sincerely hope it gets resolved soon.

  by David G on 2007-12-18 04:02:29

• I get the freezes. I've never changed the battery.

  by sigfpe on 2007-12-09 05:43:57

• i haven't noticed the battery/keyboard issue yet, but i am having several other issues though: 1) when i unplug my cinema display from my laptop, the apps (eg., mail) do not realign their windows to the laptop monitor. they tend to be off screen 95% to the left. 2) after command tabbing back to my adobe cs3 apps, they don't not always (re)appear. i can command q out of them *if* i don't have to save any of the open docs... or sometimes i have to simply force quit. 3) if i have to force quit an adobe app... that doesn't always work. it'll appear as if it's still active in the Dock and in the Force Quit Applications panel until i reboot. and last but not least; 4) the swf in a swfPanel running in AI & PS CS3 do not redraw properly, even with the latest Flash Player build (9.0.115.0). i can understand why the last 3 items would be an issue... just curious if other people are noticing this as well.

  by Dr. Woohoo! on 2007-12-07 17:14:58

• Hi Aral, I've been to a few apple stores and non of them appears to have the issue... now call me crazy but are they just playing it cool or do they have this magical forcefield controlled by Steve Jobs himself round them? (never-mind the sarcasm) The solutions mentioned on varies sites didn't work (that long) and it all got me feeling less then enthusiastic about leopard... (still hoping the 10.5.2 or so update will fix all problems so far discovered and especially the keyboard freezes because I sure as hell miss quicklook for one thing...) It actually got me driven crazy enough to "downgrade" to tiger... guess what?!?! No more keyboard freezes. Now to stay accurate I did this monday (3 dec) so I guess its not yet 100% proof but I think if monday the 16th of december I stil haven't experienced any freezing up by the keyboard, I can pretty much say that its a software problem... :P (although I'm already pretty much convinced about it myself at this point :) ) Now I understand that downgrading isn't a thing anyone is waiting for especially with the time its consumes and the effort that has to be put into it... But for anyone with a clean machine (like mine it only had a few contacts I also had in my phone and some data in the user folder I easily backed up onto a usb harddrive) it might be a solution until the issue is fixed.

  by Mike van Kuik on 2007-12-08 01:43:25

• Hi Sigfpe, Do you ever put the computer into deep sleep?

  by Aral on 2007-12-09 13:22:37

• Folks, phoned apple tech support up here in Canada, and received confirmation that it is a known issue and that apple is "working on it". No guarantee for a release date as it was explained that not much information is being given to them regarding this issue. Quite disappointed that Apple would release prematurely the OS without a reasonable testing period as evident from the number of issues in 10.5.0 that were resolved in 10.5.1. Just to add to the confusion of potential sources, backing up with TimeMachine removed the issue for a day...then it returned. I have also plugged in a usb keyboard, and this apparently has solved the issue temporarily. Just left the usb keyboard off to the side and the MBP keyboard seems to be working again, but not holding my breath....spoke too soon, there it goes again. Perhaps more to generate discussion than solve the issue, it seems obvious that there is a problem with the Interrupts. The keyboard events aren't even being loaded into a buffer to be processed later (try holding down a key and see what happens when the keyboard wakes up again). I do realize that this is one bad mark against a company with a solid reputation for quality, but this experience leaves a bad taste in ones mouth that seems to have a lingering and lasting effect which grows worse with every day that passes. It is well known that new release are buggy and the only way to debugg is to solicit user feedback from early adopters. This may suffice for conflicts between 3rd party application, different combinations of hardware, or a strange sequence of user generated actions, which would infrequently be generated. However, when there is such a significant and fundamental issue as keyboard access, this indicates that Apple has not performed the due diligence nor met the standard of care expected from a software/hardware producer. What is most shocking is that apple controls both hardware and software - there are no unknowns. There is a standard, predictable set of hardware configurations under which their OS will be used, and which can be tested against. How much can apple users take before they become too disenfranchised to say proudly that we are Mac users "and we couldn't be happer" see: http://www.t3.com/computing/desktop-computers/apple-imac-review?cid=OTC-RSS&attr=T3-Reviews-RSS BE

  by BE on 2007-12-16 07:03:51

• Mine freezes too. A couple times I hit Numlock and it started working again. The next couple of times, Numlock didn't work. I hit the Function keys, and it started working again. It all worked fine before I installed Leopard. Hmm... I thought about uninstalling, but I think I will try working with it. But yes, it is rather annoying.

  by Kathleen M on 2008-01-16 06:39:09

• I'm sorta relieved to find others are having this experience. I've had a flawless OS X experience that never required rebooting until installing leopard. I've had keyboard freezes in mail and safari, both of which unexpectedly quit, along with finder crashes. There is no relationship at all between these freezes/crashes and any other action. I have one battery, no peripherals, and it doesn't matter whether the sites i surf to are flash or text, new or familiar. Hard restarts are sometimes necessary, and sometimes not effective at resolving unusual behavior, and fixing permissions might help, but not for long. I initially encountered this after trying to open an xls file that tried to open with the trial version of office04 that came with leopard, rather than the office04 i already had installed. not sure if that was actually related, since the keyboard freezes and crashes occur without excel open.

  by Mark O on 2008-02-03 08:18:54

• I have found that this is a Microsoft issue, under Leopard. I only have one battery for my MacBook Pro, so freezing not linked to a battery change.

  by Hylton Spencer on 2008-02-11 20:20:43

• Like Rupert, the problem seems to disappear if/when I remove the battery and restart the computer. Last week, I spoke to someone at the Genius Bar, who insisted that it was a software, not hardware, problem (conveniently enough, since a software problem is not covered in the warranty). He suggested that I delete and then re-install all the software to the laptop. I'm not ready to do this, and from what I can tell, others have tried this and the problem still re-occurred. I might add that when I told him that the problem seemed to disappear when I removed the battery he suggested it was a "coincidence" since the battery, he said, would affect the trackpad, not the keyboard. Until I find another solution though, I'm sticking with this one. I've also ordered an external keyboard. I hope some less annoying/cumbersome solution is coming down the pike – and from Apple.

  by Vincent on 2008-12-14 15:51:19

• Hi I've been having this problem and discovered that if I take the battery out and run of the mains it works perfectly - annoying as I'm in the middle of a trip half way round the world! As soon as I put the battery back in it freezes.

  by Rupert T on 2008-12-09 20:15:36

• I've had the exact same experience as Vincent. Whenever the battery is in my Mac Book Pro, the keyboard and trackpad freeze. The only way to run my computer is plugged in sans battery.

  by Armstrong on 2009-11-17 22:58:06

• I had a serious issue like that on my mac mini. 10.6.2. It persisted over multiple power cycles and seemed impossible to get rid even after trying different keyboards. Finally I found that the Bluetooth was on, even though all the keyboards I was trying are USB. There was also an entry for a BT board I used to use in the option so I deleted and turned it off - Back to normal!

  by mik on 2009-11-24 18:29:24