Home Forums Hardware Mac Desktops & Notebooks keyboard and mouse compatibility

I am contemplating the purchase of a Mac Studio. I have an old-style wired plastic keyboard, which I like, and a wired Apple mouse, which I also like. In looking at Mice & Keyboards, it looks as if I would have to buy a keyboard specifically for Apple Silicon. Oddly, they Mac Studio does not ship with either a keyboard or a mouse, which must be purchased separately.

Does anyone have experience using Apple Silicon with the older keyboards and mice?

I was intrigued by your question and did an Internet search on the question. It seems the bottom line answer is you can use a wired (old) keyboard or mouse with the M1 chip Mini but…

Some people reported difficulty which may have been due to the age of the keyboard/mouse and certain power requirements. There were even some posts that said you must use a wired keyboard just to set up the M1 Mini. Others said they first connected a Bluetooth keyboard, then plugged in a wired one and it worked fine. Many people reported success with third party brand input devices, so you don't need to go with Apple's (usually more expensive).

My take away in all of this is that yes, wired work but may require some juggling and the age of the input devices could be an issue. Try it with what you have and you'll know the answer in your specific case.

Thanks, Ira. I had phoned Apple and asked this question of a two sales reps, neither of whom could give me a definitive answer. When I am serious about a purchase, I may take my wired keyboard to an Apple store and try it out.

I am a long time fan of Apple's magic line and I currently use the magic keyboard with numeric keypad and touch ID along with a second or third-generation magic trackpad on my M1 Mac mini. (I have a magic mouse too, but like my old wired Apple keyboard it never comes out of the emergencies only drawer along with my collection of antiquated, low-capacity, rotating rust hard drives removed during storage upgrades of previous Macs.

Due to my antipathy for desktop wiring (there is already enough "stuff" there without the additions of more wires), I have always had a predilection for wireless. So when my M1 arrived, it was initially set up using the magic keyboard and trackpad. However, with Catalina (macOS 10.15) and the early Big Sur (macOS 11) betas, I encountered frequent wireless device disconnect and failure to connect issues which I "fixed" by reverting to wired connections using he same devices. As time went on, and newer macOS versions were released I found I was using the wired connection less and less until now, running under Monterey (macOS 12.3 beta 4 or 5) the only time the wires appear is when one of the magic devices pops up a low battery warning.

From my observations, any issues with the various wireless devices have been software-related, rather than hardware-related. Based on my personal experience, I do not have any reason to be concerned about using the wireless keyboard, keyboard with numeric keypad, keyboard with numeric keypad and touch ID, mouse, or trackpad on a Studio Max or Ultra, running macOS 12 or later.