This posting is older than 6 months and can contain outdated information.
Since OSX Lion, Bluetooth has been a NIGHTMARE. Even my BT Keyboard and BT Mouse Pad (both apple products) are having problems.
You're not alone with this issue. If I remember correctly, that issue even made it to the headlines of many Apple-centric news sites.
I have wondered, do I need the Candelair driver installed?
Technically, it's only required when you use a Wii Remote.
Will remote buddy work without it? Is it interfering with OSX's bluetooth stack and messing things up?
Remote Buddy's Bluetooth support - for historic reasons - requires Candelair to be installed. It doesn't get used at all when used with a Sony BD Remote, though.
And no, it is not interfering with OS X Bluetooth stack and messing things up. It's also can't cause this issue.
During initial pairing, the BD Remote enters a special pairing mode and the Mac makes a connection to the BD Remote. In normal operation, it's the other way round: the BD Remote makes a connection to the Mac.
After pairing, the BD Remote is entirely operated by OS X itself and Remote Buddy's part is limited to listening to incoming events. Therefore, you can, after pairing, remove Candelair and Remote Buddy and then try to have the BD Remote establish a connection. As you'll notice, however, nothing will change about the issue, since neither Candelair nor Remote Buddy are involved in it at all. Please see my just sent, previous reply on this thread for details.
Is OSX bluetooth just rubbish? (it certainly doesn't just work like its supposed to).
Apple must have made big changes to the Bluetooth stack when they added support for Bluetooth 4.0. In such a large project, bugs - however unfortunate that is - do happen.
Is there anything I can do to debug what is going on?
Don't waste your time. The location of the problem is already known. It's a bug in the OS X Bluetooth stack - and, just like me, you can't do anything else than file a bugreport with Apple and hope for them to fix it in the near future.
What is the best remote solution using Remote Buddy and OSX Lion that will provide the same level of control that BD remote does?
If with "same level of control", you mean the number of buttons: the BD Remote is the only supported remote with that many buttons.
Other than that, my personal favorite is the Apple Remote and the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch (via the free AJAX Remote app).
Best regards,
Felix Schwarz
