Apple Wired Keyboard with Numeric Keypad (MB110LL/B) not recognized by MacBookPro18,2 Monterey

[brian.tully]

I'm wondering if anyone knows why a relatively new Apple Wired Keyboard should not be recognized on a new M1 MacBookPro18,2 running Monterey 12.3.1. System Report knows it's an Apple Keyboard, and even Keyboard system preferences knows it's an Apple Keyboard, but none of the extended characters are typed when holding the option key (example option-r should be the registered “R” in a circle symbol). When viewing Keyboard preferences "Input Sources", I have U.S. selected. When I hold down the option key while viewing the keyboard displayed, I can see it switch to the extended characters. However in any document whenever I press option-[any key] nothing is typed at all, which I think just started happening? When I go to "Change Keyboard Type" in Keyboard preferences, the Kayboard Setup Assistant starts, and it asks me to "Press the key immediately to the right of the Shift key on the left side of the keyboard".

However when I press the key it says:

Your keyboard cannot be identified.
You have pressed a key on your APPLE KEYBOARD. Please press the keys on the keyboard that can't be identified.

What the what?

Is this an M1 or Monterey thing where wired keyboards are no longer supported?

Obviously I have to use a USB hub to connect the keyboard's USB-A cable. Before I buy a new USB hub I thought I'd ask this great community to see if anyone else has had similar issues and/or if it's a "known thing" that Apple Wired Keyboards are not compatible with M1 Macs/Monterey. Or is there some magic checkbox within Keyboard or Accessibility that I accidentally checked resulting in option-[key] not typing extended characters?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

 

[LuisN]

I'm wondering if anyone knows why a relatively new Apple Wired Keyboard should not be recognized on a new M1 MacBookPro18,2 running Monterey 12.3.1. System Report knows it's an Apple Keyboard, and even Keyboard system preferences knows it's an Apple Keyboard, but none of the extended characters are typed when holding the option key (example option-r should be the registered “R” in a circle symbol). When viewing Keyboard preferences "Input Sources", I have U.S. selected. When I hold down the option key while viewing the keyboard displayed, I can see it switch to the extended characters. However in any document whenever I press option-[any key] nothing is typed at all, which I think just started happening? When I go to "Change Keyboard Type" in Keyboard preferences, the Kayboard Setup Assistant starts, and it asks me to "Press the key immediately to the right of the Shift key on the left side of the keyboard".

However when I press the key it says:

Your keyboard cannot be identified.
You have pressed a key on your APPLE KEYBOARD. Please press the keys on the keyboard that can't be identified.

What the what?

Is this an M1 or Monterey thing where wired keyboards are no longer supported?

Obviously I have to use a USB hub to connect the keyboard's USB-A cable. Before I buy a new USB hub I thought I'd ask this great community to see if anyone else has had similar issues and/or if it's a "known thing" that Apple Wired Keyboards are not compatible with M1 Macs/Monterey. Or is there some magic checkbox within Keyboard or Accessibility that I accidentally checked resulting in option-[key] not typing extended characters?

Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

Try a USB A to USB C adapter instead of the hub. Unless there’s something wrong with your keyboard it should work fine.

 

[brian.tully]

Thanks for your response, @LuisN. I actually think I figured out what happened. Posting the resolution here in case someone else accidentally makes the same mistake, or in case I make the same mistake a year from now

I turns out that the M1 MacBook Pro has a new key at the bottom left of its built-in keyboard. This key has a globe icon and doubles as the fn ley.

In Monterey's Keyboard preference pane, there is a new preference for assigning an action for when that new "globe" key is pressed.

Note that by default, it is set to "Change Input Source".

What I suspect happened is that I must have accidentally pressed that key while cleaning the Macbook, changing the input source to "Unicode Hex Input". Therefore when pressing option-8 I was not getting a bullet character, instead nothing was happening. Pressing the globe key again and switching it back to "U.S." fixed the issue, where I was now able to type extended characters.

However, there are a couple of caveats with this resolution. First off, it seems that this globe icon input source switch overrides what input is selected in the Keyboard system preferences. Or that there is a bug where the selected input source (U.S.) does not reflect that the globe key press has switched it to "Unicode Hex Input". Also to prevent this from happening again, I have updated the "Press [globe key] to " setting from "Change Input Source" to "Do nothing".

Note that this "fix" does not resolve the Keyboard Setup Assistant issue of not being able to recognize the keyboard. However the Apple Wired Keyboard works as expected once the proper input source is selected.