Having the same issue here. This has been intermittently occurring for the last year and a half, and drives me absolutely nuts. When the play/fwd/rev buttons stop working, it defaults to the space bar to play/stop. It's silly how this is a massive bother to me, but what am I supposed to expect after spending thousands of dollars for a beautiful MBP??? I certainly would expect a software bug fix within a month or two, which is entirely reasonable!