Question: Apple bluetooth keyboard and it's "sleep mode"

[killerbee79]

I have a question about Apple's bluetooth keyboard for anyone that has one and has been using it for a while. I've searched and haven't found anything on this, so my apologies if this has been asked before and I missed it.

Both the keyboard and magic mouse go into a "sleep" mode after a while of inactivity. My question is specific to the keyboard. When it goes to sleep does a message pop up saying "connection lost"? When you want to use it again is there any delay while it wakes up?

I ask because I often use my aluminum macbook in clamshell mode with my 20" Acer LCD. I have magic mouse and up till this point been using an old USB keyboard from my PC days (it's a few yrs old). Been working well but I want to make the keyboard wireless too. I want bluetooth because I don't want to mess with USB dongles.

I've been borrowing my friends Microsoft Mobile Bluetooth 6000 keyboard to test it out. So far I love it. It is small, works well and better yet has a separate bluetooth numeric keypad. I'm an accountant so that is something I love. One problem is after 10 minutes or so of inactivity the keyboard goes to sleep. When this happens a little box appears saying "connection lost". When you want to use it again you have to press a key, it reconnects after a second and off you go. This sleep mode can get a tad annoying. Does Apple's keyboard do the same thing? Even if it doesn't produce a message box when it goes to sleep, do you have to kit a key to wake it up causing a delay until you can use it?

Just curious as my choice of keyboard is down to the Microsoft one and Apple's.

Thanks for any insights you might be able to offer.

 

[WALL-E]

Sleep Mode of Apple Wireless Keyboard

I believe the answer to your question is a clear "yes". I use Apple's bluetooth keyboards with my iMac, iPad, and even iPhone for primary text input, including word processing (usually Pages/Mac or Pages/iOS).

For iMac, the "connection lost" message appears on the screen, and a key-touch will generally reconnect. If the keyboard battery is low, the reconnect success may get iffy, and eventually fails. Sometimes hitting the power key briefly on the right side, rear of the keyboard is necessary to reconnect, with status clues provided by the "hidden" green indicator light that shows through the top panel of the keyboard, back right.

With iPad, it seems the keyboard sleeps much more rapidly than with the iMac. Again, a key-touch reconnects. Because the physical keyboard is quicker to sleep with iPad than with my iMac, I'm guessing there is some coordinated algorithm between the iPad and the keyboard that is designed to save battery life in both pieces of hardware due to fewer bluetooth handshakes. I actually find the sleep interval to be too quick in this case -- irritating. In fact. I landed on your question while checking the forum to see if there is some way to lengthen the triggering interval of idle before the Apple bluetooth keyboard sleeps. So far, no good.