How do I get the Apple Wireless Keyboard Working in 10.10?

Posted by Jamie on Ask Ubuntu See other posts from Ask Ubuntu or by Jamie
Published on 2010-11-10T14:27:49Z Indexed on 2011/01/13 21:59 UTC
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So I've gone and bought a Magic Mouse and Apple Wireless Non-Numeric Keyboard. The magic mouse worked out-of-the-box almost perfectly, except for the forward/back gesture which still isn't functioning, whereas the keyboard didn't.

It has constant trouble with the bluetooth connection. Only the 7, 8 and 9 buttons and volume media keys correspond correctly with the output. Pressing every single key on keyboard has this output: 789/=456*123-0.+

When I use Blueman the keyboard can be setup and shows up in "Devices" but I get a warning when I click "Setup"; "Device added successfully, but failed to connect" (although removing the keyboard and setting it up as a new device doesn't incur this error).

Using gnome-bluetooth I have encountered no error messages but it connects properly less often than Blueman and I can still only type the aforementioned output.

What am I not doing? Where is this going wrong?

EDIT: I have read this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224673 inside out several times to no avail. It seems these commands don't work for me with the apple peripherals sudo hidd --search hcitool scan

Fortunately I have the luxury of a 1TB hard drive, near limitless patience and no job.

I have installed a fresh Ubuntu 10.10 64bit (albeit smaller than mine) and after updating and restarting for the first time, I set up my devices in exactly the same way as I have learnt on my original install I succeeded once again with the mouse and, to my joy, with the keyboard also. Though I could not seem to find Alt+F2 and had to reconfigure that and several other keyboard shortcuts, the keyboard is working and in a spectacular fashion.

Still, this leaves me with the issue of my original install. I returned to it with some new found knowledge but failed again.

Perhaps I have a missing dependancy? I did uninstall bluetooth after the initial set up and reinstalled it recently for the pupose of these peripherals.

Maybe it's because I'm running 64bit?

This is still not solved, but easily avoided by not changing too much from the original install. Just hide stuff or turn it off, don't uninstall too much.

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