Keyboard Infatuation

October 8th, 2007  |  Published in Apple  |  1 Comment

I recently picked up of the new Apple keyboards, the wired one, to use on both my laptop and with Windows at work. Spending a lot of time on the MacBook made me accustomed to typing on the chiclet keys, and I’m now used to the positions of the control and alt keys on a Mac. My traditional Windows keyboard, a Microsoft Natural Ergo 4000, was slowing me down.

The good news is that the keyboard works fine with Windows. A little bit of work with SharpKeys and I was ready to go. I remapped F13 to Insert (VMware Workstation uses Ctrl-Alt-Ins to send Ctrl-Alt-Del to virtual machines) and the right Command (Windows) to the Application key (context-click).

The only problem I have had so far is “bottoming out” my keystrokes. The travel on the new keyboard is extremely short. Sometimes my fingers forget about that and pretend they are hitting the keys on the old one. It’s a lot like when you think there’s another stair to go and end up slamming your foot down hard. I’m sure that will go away in time.

A couple things prospective buyers might want to know:

  • As far as I can tell, the “special” function keys don’t do anything under Windows; so, no media/volume control is available. The keys don’t register at all using SharpKeys’ “Type Key” functionality. The only way to fix this appears to be a driver.
  • Mac’s don’t use NumLock. The clear key functions as a NumLock key under Windows, but there is no indicator light for feedback.

Update: Forgot to mention that I love this keyboard. It’s the opposite of what I thought I’d want, but I wouldn’t want to go back now.

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  1. Jeff says:

    October 9th, 2007 at 6:30 am (#)

    My Kinesis has media keys (I think you have to hit keypad and then some of the function keys? Seems kind of useless) and there’s a little note in the manual about them not working on Apple machines. It goes something like: “If the media keys are not working on your Apple, you should write Apple and ask why its OS doesn’t respond to industry standard scancodes. The Kinesis conforms to the industry standard.” Somewhere there’s an angry, angry engineer.

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