New keyboard
My new Apple ultra thin aluminium keyboard arrived today (much earlier than I expected, woo!). I can't believe how small and how flat it is. The old gunk collector that I got with my iMac looks massive by comparison. Ever since my MacAlly icekey broke (I was slightly too enthusiastic cleaning it and snapped a couple of keys off permanently) I've been keeping my eye out for another nice flat scissor-key keyboard. From my first couple of minutes use my initial observations are that I can touch type just fine on it - it feels a little different to my MacBook's keyboard, perhaps a little harder.
In the box aside from the keyboard is the usual two page manual printed in every imaginable language, warranty card and proprietary USB extension cable which Apple insists on using with their keyboards (it has that little bump in it to make it very hard to insert a regular USB A male connector into). There is no driver CD however and the manual points you to check Software Update or Apple's download site to locate the driver to make the function keys work. I had to resort to Google in the end to find the driver, I guess they haven't gotten around to putting it in Software Update yet. C'mon lads get your asses in gear! The download is 30MB which seems kind of huge given how little it does and requires a reboot (sigh).
Once again this Apple keyboard seems very power hungry which seriously limits the usefulness of its built-in USB 2 hub. It won't work with my SD card reader and only works with one of my USB flash drives. It's a shame they can't do something clever like have it leech some power off of the FireWire bus to provide powered USB ports (it could use a passthrough connector so it didn't waste the FireWire port).
I'm not sure what I think about the rearranged function keys yet, it will probably annoy me for awhile then I'll get used to it and it will be a non-issue. I might try and find a way of mapping F13 through F19 to launch applications as they look like they'll never be used otherwise. The tiny triangles on the arrow keys annoy me a bit, they don't fit in with the style of the arrows on any of the other keys. Interestingly this English version of the keyboard has slightly different key labels and uses icons and abbreviations where the American one doesn't. The shift keys have up facing hollow arrows, Control, Option and Command are 'Ctrl' 'alt' and 'cmd', the home, end, backspace, page up and page down keys all use arrows instead of words. Perhaps this isn't a new change between the American and English keyboards but it's the first time I've noticed it. Also caps lock has a green LED in its top left corner unlike the pictures of the American keyboard on Apple's site which doesn't appear to have any caps lock indicator.
posted by Rory Prior @ 11:55 AM
9 comments
9 Comments:
I suspect the difference in the key labelling is a general ISO-layout thing to reduce the number of different key caps they have to print… and also avoid having to translate things like the distinction between “Command” and “Control” to several dozen languages. I was under the impression that UK keyboards used the abbreviated/iconic labels before; other ISO layouts certainly do.
Did you order this from the online Apple Store ? I did too - but my order isn't going to ship for a couple of weeks. I wonder if they must have run out of stock already ?!
As for your comments about the key labels and layout - my current Apple keyboards are all designed like you describe, so maybe you had an American one previously ?
Yes it's from the on-line store, I ordered it seconds after the store came back up after the special event. I previously had an English keyboard, but I thought with the redesign and new keycap style that it would look like the one on their website with the full words and so on.
You enter/return key is way different than the American one as well. Is that common?
Yes - it didn't used to be quite so bad on the old Apple keyboard (more square and wider) but it's been like that on their laptops for awhile, it takes some getting used to.
Rory, I'd love to hear a comparison to iceKey after you've used it for a couple of days. I'm currently on an iceKey that's a few years old and it's starting to show it's age. I snapped one key like you and a couple others are starting to die. So I could use a replacement and it would be nice to hear the good an bad between the two.
I've yet to need to do any extensive typing on it but I can tell you it feels quite a bit different to the IceKey. I think it's the different shape the keycaps as the travel and pressure needed to depress a key are about the same. I'd really recommend trying it out at an Apple Store if you can.
I have it for days now
I like it more than the older white keyboard. softer, easier on wrist. nice
the french keyboard has the same enter key than english
One nice little tweak with the new keyboards is that there's a tiny delay on the caps lock key turning on (at least on mine) - so you're less likely to accidently put it on during typing. This will be the first time I've not disabled/removed (in the case of the old apple keyboards) the capslock key from my keyboard.
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