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Power Button on Keyboard

MacOG728893

MacOG728893

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Sep 10, 2010
1,716
114
Orange County CA
Sorry if it's already been mentioned, however, I got to thinking that it'd be nice to have a power on/off button of the iMac full keyboard.

I normally put my computer to sleep, but it'd still be nice to have in those instances where I do use it.

What do you guys think?
 
flopticalcube said:
On any pther desktop I would agree but on an iMac, the current power button is right there behind the screen which is already on the desk so no. I power down so little that its would be a waste of keyboard space for me as well.
Click to expand...

Technically F5 & F6 are blank. It could occupy one of those.
 
Back in the day, before os X, I used to hack into the mac os with ResEdit and made my own power button command in the finder: :apple: + Q

So pressing too many times :apple: + Q when exiting a programm would cause my SE30 to shutdown and that happend quite too many times! :D
 
Power button on current iMacs is well designed and easy to grab.
The power-off button is on the keyboard - press-hold command/option/control and then touch the eject key.
 
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Older classic Macs used a soft power-on button on the keyboard. For example, I think all Apple ADB keyboards have one. Apple dropped that function when they dropped the power key on the keyboard, somewhere around 2001. I think the last Mac that supported soft-power button on the keyboard was the slot-loading iMac G3, and IIRC, was eliminated with a firmware update even to those.
 
DeltaMac said:
Older classic Macs used a soft power-on button on the keyboard. For example, I think all Apple ADB keyboards have one. Apple dropped that function when they dropped the power key on the keyboard, somewhere around 2001. I think the last Mac that supported soft-power button on the keyboard was the slot-loading iMac G3, and IIRC, was eliminated with a firmware update even to those.
Click to expand...

Do you think because people were accidentally pressing it?
 
MacOG728893 said:
Do you think because people were accidentally pressing it?
Click to expand...

No, my theory is that the power-on is handy, but not worth including in the design of a keyboard. No other keyboards have it, and that time, with Apple moving to USB, that there wasn't a real reason to continue to provide it on a desktop keyboard.
Keep in mind that power-on button was just that: power-on. It had no effect after the power was on, with no means to turn power off in an emergency, other than switch the power off, or unplug from power.

You couldn't "accidentally turn power off by pressing that button"
The only accidental touch would boot the computer, if it was already off - for most folks, not an important consideration.
 
Well control - command - eject will reboot the iMac. I wonder if there's a similar key combo for sleep or power-off?

EDIT:

There you go:

(1) Command-Option-Media Eject (⏏) : Put the computer to sleep

(2) Control-Media Eject (⏏) : Show restart / sleep / shutdown dialog

So with (2), you can power off without pressing the button on the back. Don't know how you'd power it on though.

EDIT2: Sorry, missed Thedeske's post above.
 
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