I have a rather pernicious issue I was hoping to get some insight on, more out of curiosity than pain.
I've got a new 15" Retina Macbook Pro, 2.3 GHz i7, running Mountain Lion v10.8.2. While flying about a month ago, I noticed a few keys on the keyboard failed intermittently -- Left Ctrl, then Left Shift, Right Shift, Return, 'p', etc. The keys failed _progressively_ -- first Left Ctrl would stop working, then Left Shift, etc. Every few minutes another one would give. It might be happenstance, but the keys that failed to work are on either the far left or the far right sides of the keyboard.
Rebooting failed to fix the problem (and since Return failed, I was unable to log in). I tried logging in as the Guest user and encountered the same problem (all keys that had previously failed still failed to work, i.e. the problem did not start over or resolve at reboot or login). Booting into OS X Recovery also didn't work. Given that, it appears to be a hardware problem. I don't carry a USB or Bluetooth keyboard on flights, so can't unfortunately check that.
When I touched down, the keyboard worked fine and has since. Recently I went home to visit family and noticed it again when on the plane. On my way there and back, I flew on a variety of airlines (United, American, US Air) and the same problem happened again and again. Still only when flying. The problem remains when I have WiFi on, or off. I have another 13" Macbook Air that works fine on the same flight.
Am I crazy, or is the huge hunk of flying metal creating some Faraday cage and affecting my keyboard? This starts very soon after boot and doesn't appear to be caused by heat (at least, doesn't feel like it). No other parts on the MBP appear to be affected.
Does anyone have any insight into what this might be? I'm stumped but really just looking for a physics/EM explanation, or some insight into what other force might be causing the issue. Happy to answer more questions/troubleshoot more as needed.
I've got a new 15" Retina Macbook Pro, 2.3 GHz i7, running Mountain Lion v10.8.2. While flying about a month ago, I noticed a few keys on the keyboard failed intermittently -- Left Ctrl, then Left Shift, Right Shift, Return, 'p', etc. The keys failed _progressively_ -- first Left Ctrl would stop working, then Left Shift, etc. Every few minutes another one would give. It might be happenstance, but the keys that failed to work are on either the far left or the far right sides of the keyboard.
Rebooting failed to fix the problem (and since Return failed, I was unable to log in). I tried logging in as the Guest user and encountered the same problem (all keys that had previously failed still failed to work, i.e. the problem did not start over or resolve at reboot or login). Booting into OS X Recovery also didn't work. Given that, it appears to be a hardware problem. I don't carry a USB or Bluetooth keyboard on flights, so can't unfortunately check that.
When I touched down, the keyboard worked fine and has since. Recently I went home to visit family and noticed it again when on the plane. On my way there and back, I flew on a variety of airlines (United, American, US Air) and the same problem happened again and again. Still only when flying. The problem remains when I have WiFi on, or off. I have another 13" Macbook Air that works fine on the same flight.
Am I crazy, or is the huge hunk of flying metal creating some Faraday cage and affecting my keyboard? This starts very soon after boot and doesn't appear to be caused by heat (at least, doesn't feel like it). No other parts on the MBP appear to be affected.
Does anyone have any insight into what this might be? I'm stumped but really just looking for a physics/EM explanation, or some insight into what other force might be causing the issue. Happy to answer more questions/troubleshoot more as needed.
