Which remote control for MacBook Pro 13" mid-2012?

[medvit]

I'm the OP and after having used the remote control for a few months I thought I'd report of an irritating behaviour of the remote control.....

The good thing is that both the new aluminium remote and my "One for all" universal remote works great with my 13" Macbook Pro (mid-2012).
I can't remember if I pointed the Apple remote against the universal remote to read its various codes, or if I looked up the specific brand-name codes, but in any case the universal remote behaves exactly like the Apple aluminium remote now, so in case I lose/misplace one I can reach for the other one

Getting back to the irritating problem: I've noticed that sometimes the remotes all of a sudden stop working! When this happens neither of the two remotes work (indicating to me that the problem is unlikely with the remotes but rather the receiving end which is the computer).
I've noticed that it doesn't help to bring the remote(s) closer to the computer, but that rebooting makes everything work again (or was it a simple user-logout and login again?).
Last time it happened I was watching a video from a playlist within iTunes and it worked fine, but after a while (can't remember how long) I needed to rewind but I got no response, so I moved the controls the usual way (using the trackpad) on the computer instead.
So I continued watching the rest of the movie (and didn't need to pause/rewind any more, and actually fogot about the remote control issues), and when the movie was done the next movie in the playlist started playing, and when I pressed the remote's pause button it paused! So the remote control was working again.

So.... is there some sort of sleep function for the remote which could have been activated? And it gets reset when a new item in iTunes starts playing?
Does anyone else recognize the same type of behaviour on their Mac?

Hello.
I have the same problem, did you find a solution?

 

[BuzzyBumblebee]

Hello.
I have the same problem, did you find a solution?

Please check the previous two comments in this thread! I found that when this occurs, if I plug in a wireless dongle for a wireless mouse, the remote starts working again. It may fail again later, and then I have to unplug and replug the dongle. It's weird buggy behavior.

However, @arw provided an interesting suggestion which I missed. I will probably encounter the bug again in the next few days and will try arw's suggestion out and report back!

 

[BuzzyBumblebee]

If this is indeed the case (sounds plausible), it should be possible to automate it.
I am a total noob but the next time the remote stops responding, could you try executing the following two commands?

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIRController.kext
sudo kextload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIRController.kext

If this works, it could be automated to be executed every 30 minutes or so...

Unfortunately that didn't work. I got this error:

(kernel) Can't remove kext com.apple.driver.AppleIRController; services failed to terminate - 0xe00002c7.
Failed to unload com.apple.driver.AppleIRController - (iokit/common) unsupported function.

 

[BuzzyBumblebee]

My previous message was on Mojave. On Monterey I get a different error, but it still fails.

sudo kextunload /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIRController.kext


Executing: /usr/bin/kmutil unload -p /System/Library/Extensions/AppleIRController.kext
Error Domain=KMErrorDomain Code=71 "Kernel request failed: (libkern/kext) kext is in use or retained (cannot unload) (-603946984)" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Kernel request failed: (libkern/kext) kext is in use or retained (cannot unload) (-603946984)}

And on Monterey, the dongle trick does not work.