Canadian Macbook Air - Bilingual Keyboard?

[volvik]

Every laptop keyboard I've seen or owned since about '08 has the bilingual keyboard (French/English). I have nothing against the French language however if given the choice I'd rather have just the English keyboard.

I read a review (June 2012) that mentioned that the 2012 13" Air didn't have the bilingual keyboard.

Can someone in Canada confirm that when ordering an Air and you select English that ends up with an English only keyboard??

Thanks in advance.. (at this point I'm looking at the 11")

[Ghoumard]

Originally Posted by volvik

Can someone in Canada confirm that when ordering an Air and you select English that ends up with an English only keyboard??

I have the 13" Macbook Air since august 2012, I bought it on the canadian Apple Store with the english keyboard and I can confirm that it's a EN only keyboard with no accents, or others special characters.

Exactly like this one: http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/...2/DSC_7677.jpg

Hope it helps

[volvik]

Great....thanks a lot!

[pgiguere1]

You always have the choice. If you choose the english keyboard, I confirm it's going to be exactly like the one pictured in the link above. Otherwise you'd have a different Return key with Ç / È / À / É keys around it.

You can also tell by the SKU. If it ends with "LL/A" it's an English keyboard, french ends with "CA/A" or starts with "Z0".

EDIT: Using the french canadian bilingual keyboard myself, I had never noticed how the english keyboard had almost no icon and simply has words like "shift", "caps lock", "tab", "delete" and "return" written on keys. Here's a bilingual keyboard for comparison:



Maybe it's because I'm used to it but I think it looks better with icons instead of words.

[kylera]

Originally Posted by pgiguere1

You always have the choice. If you choose the english keyboard, I confirm it's going to be exactly like the one pictured in the link above. Otherwise you'd have a different Return key with Ç / È / À / É keys around it.

You can also tell by the SKU. If it ends with "LL/A" it's an English keyboard, french ends with "CA/A" or starts with "Z0".

EDIT: Using the french canadian bilingual keyboard myself, I had never noticed how the english keyboard had almost no icon and simply has words like "shift", "caps lock", "tab", "delete" and "return" written on keys. Here's a bilingual keyboard for comparison:

Image

Maybe it's because I'm used to it but I think it looks better with icons instead of words.

That's interesting. It seems like there are separate, dedicated keys for some accented vowels.

[pgiguere1]

Originally Posted by kylera

That's interesting. It seems like there are separate, dedicated keys for some accented vowels.

Yes, it's way faster than having to hit two keys to write a single character. You still have to use the key on the left of Ç (the one with ¨/^/`) to achieve some less common accented characters though (ê,â,î,ë,ï).

The thing I like less about a french keyboard is that some characters used a lot in programming are harder to type. For example you have to hit Option+some key to get [],{} and <> characters, which is kind of annoying.

[volvik]

Macs must be the only keyboard that offers either language. Since 2008 I thought all keyboard had bilingual key function.

[CyrusKafaiWu]

Keyboards in Canada

English Only:
- purchasable in every province other than Québec.

Canadian multi standard keyboard:
- only can be bought online (apple.com) or in a store in Québec (not sure with New Brunswick)
- accent keys. just like the post above. (i have it on my air)