A week or so ago, I shared my annoyance with the inexplicable “Accessory Not Supported” alerts that I’d begun seeing on my iPad Pro 10.5.
I think I’ve finally pinned down what it was.
Of the three things that have ever been connected to it, the only thing that was connected whenever the error appeared was the smart keyboard.
That the keyboard itself occasionally wasn’t transferring keypresses was a good suggestion that it was likely nearing the end of its useful life.
Two and a half years’ of use wasn’t bad for the keyboard. Bought it new July, 2017. No doubt the failing (failure?) point was the flexible hinge. Honestly, you have to bend it every time you want to use it, so it’s not at all surprising — science hasn’t yet devised a material that would be capable, inexpensive, and robust enough to tolerate constant flexing and bending.
So, good news: I haven’t seen the error appear in a few days that I’ve been running it naked. And, in all honesty, the keyboard does make it slightly more useful, but the first creation I’d ever done with it didn’t even use the keyboard at all with the exception of typing the name of the creation — which I could have just as easily typed with the software keyboard.
I shouldn’t use this keyboard failure as an excuse to replace the lot with an iPad Pro 11.
the rest of me 