Last night I discovered an incredibly dumb — and what I consider to be dangerous — setting enabled by default in my unibody MacBook Pro. In the Bluetooth preferences, it's the box checkmarked "Allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer." Sounds innocent enough, but it could've killed my computer.
Here's what happened: I was in a rush to leave the office to meet a colleague for coffee, so I closed my MacBook Pro and threw my Bluetooth mouse into my laptop bag. After my coffee meeting, I ended up at a bar and took my notebook out to quickly check my e-mail. It was scalding hot all over, and when I opened the lid I was greeted with the gray screen of death. And I realized my notebook, though closed, was still on for hours — the heat insulated by my bag.
After checking the Apple support forums I found a thread where a user reported the exact same problem, and it turned out it was because his Bluetooth mouse was left on in his bag, too; he remedied the issue by unchecking the default Bluetooth setting. I was relieved that the solution was so simple, but I was still pretty concerned that this was a default setting in the first place.
Imagine if I hadn't checked my notebook for a few more hours. That could've caused a serious burn injury, or at worst, a fire. True, it was my own negligence to not turn off my Bluetooth mouse before throwing it in my bag, but I think it's reasonable to assume many people have done the same thing. (Heck, I often don't turn off my Bluetooth mouse when it's on my desk at home, as it shuts down when it's inactive. Clearly it's not the same when your mouse is in your bag and you're keeping it on by walking around.)
Also, I say it's unintelligent that this feature is turned on by default because for notebooks, it's useless. Usually when we sleep our notebooks, we close the lid. On a MacBook, opening the lid wakes it back up automatically. There's no need to use the Bluetooth mouse to wake up the notebook. This setting should certainly not be turned on by default.
MacBook users? If you own a Bluetooth mouse, disable this setting now. Have you seen any other strange settings turned on by default that I should disable? Feel free to point them out in the comments below.
Photo: WzaHk/Flickr
