I’ve been adding to my collection of things over the last few months, I think I’ll take a minute to fill you in on some of them. Well, one of them for right now.

Ignore the iPods in that picture. What we are most concerned with is that Apple Keyboard. Our good buddy CJ asked some questions about it over on the Flickr, and I thought I would revist them here.

How’s the keyboard? I keep toying with the idea of buying it..possibly for a (gasp) windows (work) machine at home. I have the older wireless keyboard and the thing is rock solid..the new wireless one doesn’t have a number pad on the side so that’s out..but, the wired one looks (and feels) great- thoughts?!?

The keyboard itself is great. I’m a bit of a keyboard snob (the lad looks at me funny everytime I pull out a new one) and currently have 5 in the house. Of all the keyboards I have ever used, the best IMO were the old IBM Think Pad, just about any from Logitech and the MacBook. Very close running up would be the Dell laptop keyboards.

Now, in the top spot, would be the new Apple Keyboard. I got the wired version as you can see above. The Wireless is cool, but lacks a number pad and USB ports. Oh yea, and a wire. I’ve gone the wireless keyboard route before with a logitech and it was good on battery life since it was infrared. But I’m afraid of how often I’d be putting new batteries in the Blue Tooth device.

For operation, it kicks ass. It’s fast (keeps up with my 65WPM typing no sweat) and has just the right amount of click-iness. It’s has almost the exact same feel as a MacBook keyboard. It’s just a little tighter and a little louder.

One thing that will mess some of you up is the remapping of the F keys. I don’t have it here, but they have moved everything. Volume control and expose are not where you expect them, and pressing F8 for spaces triggers expose. Ugh. I still have to remap for Leopard, just haven’t gotten around to it.

It also has 2 USB ports. The are advertised as USB 2.0 but after trying to plug an iPod in and getting errors, then researching it a bit, I can tell you they aren’t USB 2.0. They are good, however, for plugging in a wireless mouse like any of the new Logitech mice that crap an antenna.

Now CJ is looking at maybe using it for a Windows keyboard. As I mentioned over on Flickr, unless it’s for VM or parallels, I would highly recommend against it. It’s a great keyboard, don’t get me wrong, but it is only great for a Mac. Here are a few reasons why it sucks for Windows.

• No Windows key
You could remap the command key to be sure, but it’s also in the wrong spot.
• Alt keys in the wrong spot
Especially the left Alt key. Instead of being next to the space bar, they are next to the command key. This makes tasks like ALT-Tab annoying difficult.
• The F keys
Now, under windows I’m sure these would work like they are supposed to. But, and this is something I’ve noticed on Macs, the F keys are weird. I don’t know what it is, but the layout of the F keys is off compared to a Windows keyboard.

If it weren’t for those minor things, I would rock this board on a Windows box. I am a big keyboard shortcut kind of guy when I’m playing in the land of M$, so the minor things turn major turn deal breaker real quick.

If you have a mac and are wondering if you would like this board, just get it. If you have Windows and wonder if you like this board AND don’t rely too heavily on keyboard shortcuts, get this board. Otherwise, something else would probably work out a little better for you.

Oh yea, I got some time with Vista this last weekend. Bet you can’t wait to hear what I thought about that.

One Response to “New stuff”

1. Chris Says:
   November 29th, 2007 at 1:31 pm

   Well, that sealed the deal for me! Great write-up. I may still try it on my work computer and if it misbehaves I’ll swap it to the mac.

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