Heads Up: M4 Mini buyers

As with so many times before Apple is forcing yet another hardware evolution, in their typical, "We're not making a big noise about this - as in totally silent, but we've just migrated our hardware environment to the next stage in evolution." Remember the fiasco about bringing in FireWire, then taking it away? Or deleting optical drives from all the offerings? Then refusing to play nice with BluRay... the list goes on. This time it's with something seemingly innocuous - keyboards!!

Yep, if you purchase an M4 Mac Mini and find your "old school" wired Apple Extended Keyboard doesn't work properly, you're not alone. Apple purposely isn't talking to older hardware anymore. They want you to get-on-board with Bluetooth wireless devices.

Case in point: After getting my M4 Mini recently I noticed that very thing, my old-reliable Apple ext-kybd seemed to be misbehaving. The "up" arrow wouldn't work at all. The keyboard shortcut to engage Mission Control didn't work, so too was the shortcut to Shut Down - all inop. After many hours of tearing into the problem I finally got it sorted.

My MacAlly extended wired works flawlessly, well except with certain keyboard shortcuts.
I connected a Windows keyboard, nearly everything including shortcuts work just fine, with the exception to Windows-based keyboards lack Mac-specific keys and functions.

But, when I connected a new Bluetooth wireless Apple Extended kybd - lo and behold everything works perfectly.

Your results will vary; it turns out depending on the age the Apple wired keyboard things may work without a hitch or, like my older one some keys/functions will be dead.

With the dozens of complains abound on the 'net it's finally obvious Apple wants us all to abandon wired HID devices altogether. And I'm OK with that, it removes lots of clutter from the desk. But I sure would have preferred Apple made it obvious they made this change-up. Even the Apple Store people are clueless about this, but their techs at my local store found the exact same thing, the M4 Mini is fussy about keyboard compatibility.

Thanks Apple, appreciate the heads-up. Bastards.

sorry, what does this have to do with resolve?

I cannot believe how people still buy iPaidTooMuch products and vote for apple when the same company is straight mocking their costumer.

sorry, what does this have to do with resolve?

Hmmm... let's see...

Maybe so that people who are relying on their keyboard to actually do work don't freak out when they connect their now old device and basic things don't work?? Especially keyboard commands or custom shortcuts setup for Resolve? Maybe that?!

Put your attitude in your pocket and keep it there.

Yep, if you purchase an M4 Mac Mini and find your "old school" wired Apple Extended Keyboard doesn't work properly, you're not alone. Apple purposely isn't talking to older hardware anymore. They want you to get-on-board with Bluetooth wireless devices.

My MacAlly extended wired works flawlessly, well except with certain keyboard shortcuts.
I connected a Windows keyboard, nearly everything including shortcuts work just fine, with the exception to Windows-based keyboards lack Mac-specific keys and functions.

I only use wired keyboards and mice, and everything works fine. But I agree that Apple lets a lot of things slide in terms of compatibility with old tools. I've been using Macs since 1986, and they're often a "3 steps forward / 2 steps backwards" kind of company. Apple giveth and they taketh away.

Usually when something really simple breaks on the Mac, I grimace and quip, "this happened because they put $130 billion dollars in R&D into Apple Vision Pro and not everyday operations like this."

sorry, what does this have to do with resolve?

Well, this is the "off topic" subforum...

sorry, what does this have to do with resolve?

Well, this is the "off topic" subforum...

apologies, my bad. i thought it was posted in the resolve forum, or perhaps it since got moved here.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention, as I bought a M4 Mini just recently and had no idea old keyboard and mouse won't work. Saved me some time and got new keyboard and mouse too.

Just to be clear:

Any mouse will work just fine, even "PC" mice. The issue are the keyboard/s. Apple still won't admit they've specifically setup all the new "M" machines to be optimized for the newer wireless keyboards.

We all thought the HID devices would be universally accepted by the new CPU's, that's not the case, clearly.

Case in point, a brand new "old" style extended Apple Keyboard, the gorgeous one that came with the iMac Pro (dark grey, black keys) the "UP", "HOME" and "DELETE" keys aren't recognized by the M4. Yet any pre-M chip machine reads all keys perfectly.

But a brand-new MacAlly wired keyboard (through adapter) works without issue.

No rhyme or reason to the incompatibility issues.

I'm just hoping the BM color panels don't have this same compatibility issue; I'm about to get one.

Finally: Level 2 Apple tech support acknowledges the not-so-well-known fact they've optimized ALL newer machines, not just M4 chip, for wireless HID devices.

For me that was almost a deal-killer because prior to M2/M3/M4 machines if you had to do maintenance of any kind or a re-install of the OS it absolutely required a WIRED keyboard and mouse because the internal image of the OS had no drivers for any wireless communication to HID stuff.

Now that's changed (finally), wired or wireless no longer matters and, if you want FULL compatibility from Apple keyboards its' gotta be wireless.

I actually don't hate that - less clutter on the desk. Which was always Apple's goal: Make the environment "prettier". That's always been one of their major goals ever since the "iMachines" took over, and no longer allowed easy access to the internals.

Progress, eh?

Thanks for the heads up.

Thanks for the heads up.

More Mini-specific help coming on my new YouTube platform, "Fred 'N Me". Publishing this week.

Apple just today released OS 15.3.2 . Things are a tad snappier on my M4 Mini. Not sure what happened in the background but DR is opening faster and rendered a clip 10-seconds faster than yesterday.

SkyNet finally getting in the system?? Dunno.... hahaha