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Apple Updates Standalone Keyboards for OS X Lion

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Original poster
Apr 12, 2001
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As noted by Italian site iSpazio [Google translation], Apple has quietly tweaked its standalone Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad for OS X Lion.

lion_keyboard_f_keys.jpg



One minor change is a slight adjustment to the icon displayed on the F3 key to remove the frame around the collection of windows. The F3 key had been used to activate Exposé, but with that feature now being folded into the broader Mission Control feature in OS X Lion, the key now activates Mission Control.

In a larger change, the F4 key has now been repurposed since the previous Dashboard function has also been folded into Mission Control in Lion. Consequently, the F4 key is now used to invoke Launchpad, Lion's iOS-like application launching screen.

The new keyboard is billed as requiring Mac OS X 10.6.8 or later.

We don't know for certain that Apple has also updated its wireless keyboard with the same changes, as the company has not updated the images on its keyboard page or in its online store, but we do know that both the wired and wireless keyboards saw their model numbers transitioned to "/B" revisions alongside Wednesday's launch of OS X Lion. Consequently, it seems reasonable to conclude that both keyboards have been updated with the tweaked functionality.

Article Link: Apple Updates Standalone Keyboards for OS X Lion
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2011/07/22/apple-updates-standalone-keyboards-for-os-x-lion/
J

JS77

macrumors regular
Jun 18, 2008
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Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

I wish there was a way to revert to the old spaces and expose...
 
John.B

John.B

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Jan 15, 2008
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Holocene Epoch
I demoed an MBA at the local Apple Store yesterday and noticed the keyboard icons (hieroglyphs, really, LOL!) for Exposé and Dashboard on the Air had been updated to their Lion equivalents, but I didn't think to look at the wireless keyboard they had with one of the new minis to see if that got updated as well...
 
M

mbarriault

macrumors regular
Dec 3, 2008
109
0
Is there a way to change F4 to open Launchpad instead of Dashboard on older keyboards? (without setting them to use standard function keys obviously).
 
coder12

coder12

macrumors 6502a
Jun 28, 2010
512
3
mbarriault said:
Is there a way to change F4 to open Launchpad instead of Dashboard on older keyboards? (without setting them to use standard function keys obviously).
Click to expand...

Investigating the same thing here, even though a 4 finger pinch in works just fine.
 
baryon

baryon

macrumors 68040
Oct 3, 2009
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Replacing the Dashboard button with Launchpad is extremely stupid:
  • There is no gesture to activate Dashboard
  • There already is a gesture to activate Launchpad
  • Dashboard is more useful than Launchpad

This way, the only way to activate Dashboard is either swipe left a zillion times until you get to the leftmost space which is Dashboard, or if you're like me and find that Dashboard has no place among your desktops and windows in Mission Control, or that you want to copy numbers from Safari into Currency Converter, you'll have to set Dashboard to not be a space. You then either have to assign a hot corner to it, or keep the Dashboard icon in the Dock.

I just press the Dashboard button on my keyboard and I have Dashboard, simple as that.
 
coder12

coder12

macrumors 6502a
Jun 28, 2010
512
3
baryon said:
Replacing the Dashboard button with Launchpad is extremely stupid:
  • There is no gesture to activate Dashboard
  • There already is a gesture to activate Launchpad
  • Dashboard is more useful than Launchpad

This way, the only way to activate Dashboard is either swipe left a zillion times until you get to the leftmost space which is Dashboard, or if you're like me and find that Dashboard has no place among your desktops and windows in Mission Control, you either have to assign a hot corner to it, or keep the Dashboard icon in the Dock. I just press the Dashboard button on my keyboard and I have Dashboard, simple as that.
Click to expand...

FN + F12 still works :p
 
redsteven

redsteven

macrumors 6502a
Aug 22, 2006
561
7
I'm interested if these new keyboards will also include the horrible built-in "caps lock delay".

Current apple keyboards (both standalone and in notebooks) have a delay for caps lock when you hit the key. If you tap it for less than a 1/10 of a second or something, then it doesn't activate.

For fast typers, it's a nightmare. There are SO many times that I quickly hit caps lock and it doesn't get turned on. I wish it were just a preference option instead of making it built-in to the hardware.

Hopefully these new keyboards don't still have that (not that I can afford to buy a new Apple keyboard just for that, though)
 
J

jive turkey

macrumors 6502
Mar 15, 2008
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coder12

coder12

macrumors 6502a
Jun 28, 2010
512
3
redsteven said:
I'm interested if these new keyboards will also include the horrible built-in "caps lock delay".

Current apple keyboards (both standalone and in notebooks) have a delay for caps lock when you hit the key. If you tap it for less than a 1/10 of a second or something, then it doesn't activate.

For fast typers, it's a nightmare. There are SO many times that I quickly hit caps lock and it doesn't get turned on. I wish it were just a preference option instead of making it built-in to the hardware.

Hopefully these new keyboards don't still have that (not that I can afford to buy a new Apple keyboard just for that, though)
Click to expand...

Dang it! That's gonna drive me nuts now! I've never realized that until now.
 
D

dissemin8or

macrumors member
Sep 17, 2010
31
0
Quote:
Originally Posted by redsteven
I'm interested if these new keyboards will also include the horrible built-in "caps lock delay".

Current apple keyboards (both standalone and in notebooks) have a delay for caps lock when you hit the key. If you tap it for less than a 1/10 of a second or something, then it doesn't activate.

For fast typers, it's a nightmare. There are SO many times that I quickly hit caps lock and it doesn't get turned on. I wish it were just a preference option instead of making it built-in to the hardware.

Hopefully these new keyboards don't still have that (not that I can afford to buy a new Apple keyboard just for that, though)
Click to expand...

coder12 said:
Dang it! That's gonna drive me nuts now! I've never realized that until now.
Click to expand...

Wow. Ditto. They've apparently had that for awhile now, as my pre-unibody MBP has the same "feature".
 
Last edited:
Mr Skills

Mr Skills

macrumors 6502a
Nov 21, 2005
803
1
I'm waiting for them to change British keyboards so the option key actually has "option" written on it.

I've never understood why they don't write "control" and "option" on the British keyboards, when all of their website instructions etc use those terms. We finally got "cmd" a couple of years ago, but the option key still says "alt".
 
corywoolf

corywoolf

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Jun 28, 2004
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I don't like the new dashboard background, it gives me a headache.
 
I

interrobang

macrumors 6502
May 25, 2011
369
0
Hmm, people actually use the Caps Lock key?

I'm tryin' to think of the last time I wanted to type more than a few letters in a row in caps, and I'm not coming up with anything.

Always seemed kind of useless, like the NumLock key on Windows keyboards. (Here, turn your number pad into an arrow pad...right next to the actual arrow pad that you already have!)
 
John.B

John.B

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Jan 15, 2008
4,193
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Holocene Epoch
interrobang said:
Always seemed kind of useless, like the NumLock key on Windows keyboards. (Here, turn your number pad into an arrow pad...right next to the actual arrow pad that you already have!)
Click to expand...
Those of us who remember the old IBM AT 84-key keyboards had to be able to switch between the arrows/home/pg down/etc. and the number pad. :eek:

What's most frustrating about that is that Windows continues to want to remember the num lock state when switching between a docked laptop with a 10x-key keyboard and the undocked laptop keyboard with the numbers embedded in the j/k/l/u/i/o/7/8/9/0 keys. IIRC, Apple only got rid of that same "feature" in their laptops starting around 2008.

Edit: As it turns out, Apple removed the embedded number pad in the late 2007 revision of the MacBook, which I bought from the refurb store in 2008. :eek:
 
Last edited:
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