Purchase French Canadian rMBP in the US?

[boqyuo]

Hello,

I type in French frequently and am tired of option-e and option-` for the accent marks, I feel like I'd be much more efficient with a real French keyboard. In the US online store, AZERTY French is offered, but that would be too complicated to adjust to - therefore here's my question; how can I go about purchasing a French Canadian MBP in the US? Any advice? And no, going to Canada isn't a viable option for me!

Btw, any feedback in general about the French Canadian keyboard? The short left shift and the tall enter seem weird... would the inconvenience of getting used to this eclipse the benefits of being able to type the accent marks?

Thanks

 

[CptSky]

Hello,

I type in French frequently and am tired of option-e and option-` for the accent marks, I feel like I'd be much more efficient with a real French keyboard. In the US online store, AZERTY French is offered, but that would be too complicated to adjust to - therefore here's my question; how can I go about purchasing a French Canadian MBP in the US? Any advice? And no, going to Canada isn't a viable option for me!

Btw, any feedback in general about the French Canadian keyboard? The short left shift and the tall enter seem weird... would the inconvenience of getting used to this eclipse the benefits of being able to type the accent marks?

Thanks

You might try to go to an Apple Store and ask for a rMBP French-Canadian keyboard... Maybe they can ship a laptop to the local store, anyway most shipments transit to the States before getting back to the Canada (at least when I got my MBP years ago). Else, maybe trying with Staples / BestBuy the same thing. I'm sure at least one shop will accept.

For feedback about the keyboard layout... Well, I've always used a French Canadian keyboard being a French native speaker. You get used pretty fast to the little differences of left shift and enter keys. Anyway, on a U.S. keyboard, I think I press the buttons almost at the same places, it's just the form which is different. Having worked with a U.S. keyboard (it's nice for programming as you don't need to do alt-0 for brackets, etc), it's pretty annoying to write in French... I think with a French Canadian layout, you still have an easy access to specials symbols ([], {}) in comparison to French layout (AZERTY), but it's way easier to access all accents. Plus, there are like 3 French-Canadian layouts, the one used by Apple is probably the best one from my opinion.

Edit. 2 layouts with a supplemental layout. Apple uses the layout n° 445 without the n° 501. The layout n° 058 is popular on cheap keyboards...
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/topics/keyboards/registry_index.html