Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mac and keyboard

That's Bluetoothwang!

cmoj — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:48:28 -0800

Help me get a wireless/bluetooth keyboard and mouse that don't suck. I have MacBook Pro with 10.5.8. I have it hooked up to a home theater screen and want to be able to use either from anywhere in the room (no more than about 30 feet, almost always more like 15).

Theoretically, bluetooth should have plenty of range for this, but the Rocketfish bluetooth combo I have now ranges from annoying to unusable. It lags. I assume this partially has to do with varying interference. The scroll wheel on the mouse and the volume, etc. buttons on the keyboard don't work unless I use the bluetooth dongle it came with, but the connection gets randomly dropped when I use it. This happens anyway, but less often when they're connected directly.
I know the Rocketfish wasn't meant for use with the Mac.

What I want: The number one consideration is reliability and accuracy. I game only moderately, but it makes me flip out when I lose something because my mouse is acting wonky. After that, things like extra mouse buttons and volume/playback control on the keyboard are preferable, but not the top consideration.

I don't care if they come as a combo or not, and within reason I care about quality over price.

Don't look into the light!

nam3d — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:14:12 -0800

I currently have an iMac 24" (early 2008). If you are acustom to the iMac you'll know that the brightness setting is extremely high. Unfortunately everytime I boot the computer up the brightness settings reset and I have to go through the hassle of lowering the brightness. Why is the keyboard/mac doing this? and can it be fixed?

Wireless keyboard for G4 Mini?

caution live frogs — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:44:18 -0800

Trying to find a keybaord / mouse combo for a G4 Mac Mini (no IR, no bluetooth) that will work in a living room PC without costing me an arm and a leg. Recommendations? Short story: Wife will be having the baby in the near future (due on three weeks!). Computer is downstairs in the basement. I'm in the process of refurbishing a 1st-generation G4 Mac Mini which I plan to connect to our LCD TV for her to use as a computer, for web / email access, to keep her from having to drag the kid up and down the stairs just to get online.

Mini was a freebie, needed a new HD (done). Leopard installed, runs fine, TV has an RGB input for use as a monitor, and I've already dropped a Cat5 cable into our living room so the thing will be wired into our home network.

Basically my little Mother's Day present is all set except for the input devices - I need a keyboard and mouse combo that will work in our living room. She'll likely be sitting about 8-9 feet from the Mini.

I'm leaning towards the Microsoft Laser Wireless for Mac keyboard. Had also considered the Kensington Ci70.

Both are about in the price range I'd be happy with, and I do prefer Microsoft's mouse shapes over Kensington, but (a) the MS setup has some poor reviews for range and connectivity from some people, and (b) the Kensington layout is PC-specific with an Apple key tacked on in the bottom corner. I'd prefer a native Apple layout.

Searching for keyboards online has given me hundreds of PC keyboard combos that work on a Mac but aren't native layout, and every time I find something that might work it turns out to want Bluetooth. (Yes, I could get a BT dongle, and I might eventually, but for now I just want something that works out of the box!)

Any help? I'm trying to keep this a surprise...

Blue Keyboards

nam3d — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 09:51:02 -0800

I am looking for an alternative bluetooth mac keyboard that has the same functions keys as bog-standard mac keyboard. Any suggestions?

Useful iTunes keyboard shortcuts?

OmieWise — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 07:28:55 -0800

Is there a way, within iTunes, to change playlists (or navigate back to the main library) and to place the cursor in the search box using just the keyboard? I cannot find these options on any list of iTunes keyboard shortcuts, but I'm trying to rescue many gigs worth of music, and all the clicking around is killing me.

First They Came For The Keyboard Shortcuts, And I Did Not Speak Up, Because I Was Not a Shortcut

foxy_hedgehog — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 05:54:35 -0800

For some reason, my MacBook pro suddenly won't let me use standard shortcuts- i.e. cntrl-x for cut, ctrl-v for paste, etc.- on any program, including MS Word and web browsers. I've never had a problem with this, and didn't have to set up these shortcuts when I got the computer. I've checked system preferences and made sure the "shortcuts" option is set to default, but to no avail. It's driving me crazy to have to use the drop-down menus to cut and paste. Any idea what might be wrong?

Possible troubleshooting:
The only new software I've installed is the new version of Firefox.
I just returned from Spain and was using different wireless connections there- however, I did not encounter or download any suspicious files.

Yes, I know these sound like unlikely candidates for causing the problem I just wanted to give you the complete lowdown.

Thanks!

Getting milk out of computer keyboard

i_am_joe's_spleen — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 03:10:19 -0800

Crying over spilled milk - in Mac keyboard. My darling spilled a glass of milk over her keyboard. The milk has drained away, but the keyboard is not happy, with some keys not working and others apparently stuck on.

What is our best bet for salvaging it?

Best keyboard skin for Mac Air? Best shell?

jeffmacintyre — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 07:11:59 -0800

Best keyboard skin for Macbook Air? Best shell case (not for carrying)? I've used keyboard skins in the past but gone away from them because I'm lazy and hate whipping them off before closing the unit. When I don't, the covering can smear the monitor of my old Powerbook. (Duh.)

With my new Air, is there a next-gen keyboard skin that avoids this problem? I plan to resell this Air if Apple introduces a Penryn model next month, so I'm invested in keeping this unit in mint condition.

Also, is there a shell case people recommend that doesn't present overheating complications?

New MacBook functionality for old MacBook?

alitorbati — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:49:37 -0800

I have the first generation intel MacBook with this keyboard. Some of the F keys have special functions like volume up/down, and screen dimmer controls. The newer keyboard has additional functions like play/pause, next song, previous song, etc. I want to add the functionality of the new keyboard buttons to my old MacBook's keyboard. Is there software that will do this? Is there some other solution? Thanks!

My desktop is a mess. Help!

grumblebee — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 08:41:46 -0800

Help me stop cluttering up my (OS X) desktop. My busy job(s) lead me to create and download many files every day. I have a bad habit of saving everything to my desktop. After a while, it gets insane. I then have to spend a long time sorting and filing everything. I know I should just put things in their proper places to begin with, but does anyone know a good way to manage the clutter?

What I'd really like is some app that would let me select a bunch of files on my desktop and quickly shuttle them to a folder. I'd love to be able to do this with a keyboard shortcut. E.g., I'd like to select a group of files and press Command+Shift+D (or whatever) to send them to the documents folder. And I'd like to be able to add in the alt key if I wanted to file them in a subfolder. In my imagination, alt would bring up a text field. I'd then type the name of the subfolder. If it already exists, the files would go in there. If not, a sub-folder would be created and the files would go inside it.

If that app doesn't exist, maybe you could help me out with some good filing habits.

If I May Be So Bold

sjuhawk31 — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 07:12:38 -0800

MacFilter: The keyboard shortcut in Mail to make bold text doesn't work properly. When I use the Command + B shortcut in Mail.app, it gives me the Narrow Bold version of the font I'm using. Where can I change the keyboard shortcut to make it regular bold?

Fast user switching a pain with a Mac Mini

dance — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 05:03:10 -0800

Fast user switching on a Mac with a custom keyboard layout Hi,
I have a family set up with a new Mac Mini. Re-use of existing monitor, keyboard, mouse - everything works as advertised save colour calibration of the monitor.

The problem is, in order for the keys (e.g. the forward slash, tilde and @ symbols) to be correctly mapped to the keyboard button labels, I found it necessary to download and implement a custom keyboard layout. This works great - but as soon as fast user switching enters the fray, things go to pot. The appearance of the login window changes the current input language to the system default (Apple's version of a UK keyboard) and it doesn't then reset to the user's preference on login.

I have logged this as a bug with Apple but I have no idea how long they'll take in fixing the bug and I'd really like my users to be able to fast user switch. It's much more convenient for them.

Does anyone have any idea how I can get around this? Possibly with DoubleCommand? Is that a global or per-user solution, and is it still giving kernel panics under Leopard?

Thanks a lot!

how do I enable constant backlighting on my keyboard?

krautland — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 19:07:13 -0800

how do I enable constant backlighting on my keyboard? you know how sometimes the ambient light sensor will tell your mac book that it's so light in the room that you don't need the backlight keyboard? you know how in these situations it will prevent you from activating this feature using the F10 key?
I hate that. I also hate that it dims the backlight back down after I've adjusted it manually.

I would like to adjust the brightness of my keyboard manually and not have my mbp change it at all, battery life be damned. is there a software app or workaround that can help me achieve this?

I am aware that I can influence the backlight by placing my hand on top of the speaker grills but that's not really an option as it makes typing at speed rather difficult.

(this is not a question about a bug with my specific machine, I'm trying to find a way around a general design issue that bugs me with my mac.)

Indestructible Mac keyboard?

Mwongozi — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:22:16 -0800

I break keyboards. Help me find a Macintosh keyboard that I will not break, or one that is easy to repair if I do. So far I've managed to break the white keyboard that came with my iMac (dropped it), and the shiny new metallic keyboard I bought to replace it. (Space bar got stuck down. Don't know why, can't open it up to fix it.)

What keyboard can I buy that:
1. Is USB.
2. Has Macintosh keycaps. (No Windows logo please.)
3. Is robust, and easy to take apart to fix and clean.

Bi-incurious Keyboard Sought

yerfatma — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:14:56 -0800

Recommend a keyboard for use on a Bootcamp'd Mac. Desires:
1. Wireless in some form.
2. Keys in their proper, standard-Windows keyboard places and shapes. No thanks on funny arrow keys and oversized Delete buttons. No thanks on Mac keyboards.
3. If USB and with a mouse, one USB receiver is preferable, though not required. I'm working on a stainless steel work. surface, so the signal has a bit of trouble with that.
4. Has Mac drivers/ ways to customize keys.
5. QUIET!

I just bought this and it's going back because it doesn't have any Mac drivers and sucks in two operating systems. On the plus side, the mouse USB dongle plugs into the keyboard USB receiver a la Voltron if Voltron were shoddily made and incapable of defending the universe. And the mouse is fairly nice, except the scroll wheel click is some kind of joke.

Price isn't too much of an issue, as I'll be using this 365 days a year. I'm open to Bluetooth, but it looks as though that's not an option as the Bootcamp Bluetooth drivers don't seem to work well in Windows (I have a copy of Leopard sitting on my desk uninstalled if that will help me*).

* I realize it would need to be installed to help me. It wouldn't help for much but killing large bugs right now.

Mouse-free Shortcut No Longer Works on Mac

10ch — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 13:49:42 -0800

Before my hard drive died and I had to reinstall Tiger, I used to be able to trigger dialogue box buttons (e.g. "Yes" or "No") on my mac by typing the first letter of the option I wanted to choose (e.g. "n"). It doesn't work anymore and I have to navigate with the mouse and click on things. How can I activate this feature?

Macbook keyboard functionality problems

birdlady — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 15:04:39 -0800

Macbook keyboard issues: I clicked on a google search result and was sneakily redirected to one of those malware scan sites, now macbook keyboard is doing funny things. The arrows do not work and the apostrophe and forward slash keys bring up the "find" window at the bottom of the screen (firefox). How do cancel out whichever setting was changed and get my key functionality back? I love my mac, but I am not so mac savvy so I have no idea what happened. If it helps, it is a macbook running os x 10.4.10.

Keyboard shortcuts to control monitor brightness in Mac OS X

kenneth — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 08:28:52 -0800

How might one go about creating a shortcut to controlling monitor brightness with a Mac Powerbook running Tiger (this problem also existed in 10.3) for a Keyspan remote? Simple, right, push the monitor brightness key on the keyboard. Yes, that works -- but I'd like to be able to control the LCD screen's brightness on my Keyspan remote control. One way to do that would be to create a keyboard shortcut in that software to do that. But while the brightness keys are shared with the function keys, there's no way in the Keyspan software to affect the function keys' alternate uses (volume, brightness, Dashboard, etc.) Volume has other work arounds, does anyone know of something similar for the screen brightness?

How to remap a key to right click in OS X?

secret.osha — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 16:06:42 -0800

Is there any way to remap the oddly placed (in my opinion) enter key on the right side of the Mac keyboard to right click in OS X? I'm running an Intel Macbook triple booted with OS X, Ubuntu, and XP, and I was able to remap the enter key to right click in Linux and XP, but haven't been able to find a similar solution in OS X. It's really not a big deal, but I was wondering if anyone had the same idea and found a solution.

Thanks!

jhnrfjhrhuio54w89wefw

Armitage Shanks — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 08:43:19 -0800

I'm looking for an OS X utility that will capture and discard all keyboard and mouse input until I tell it to stop. Typical use case: I want to play a movie without the cat or baby interrupting it by banging on / walking on the keyboard. Bonus points if it also prevents the screen saver kicking in.

Keyboard-to-Mac, minus the MIDI

hifiparasol — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 11:27:09 -0800

I'm looking to connect an Alesis QS8 keyboard to my iMac, with the intention of making some music. I'd like to do a bit more than use it as a simple MIDI keyboard, though. My girlfriend just got her old keyboard shipped out from home, and we want to connect it to my iMac (Intel core duo, if that matters, which I don't think it does). We could get a MIDI-USB converter cable and use it as a MIDI keyboard -- I'm running GarageBand, of course, and I've got Soundtrack Pro -- but it's such a kick-ass keyboard that we'd like to be able to import the sounds it can make into my machine. I know that's more or less impossible with GarageBand, but I'm not so sure about SP Pro.

How can I go about doing this? I've asked pros at various music shops, and even phoned Alesis tech support, but honestly, they seemed less concerned with helping out a beginner than with feeding their own egos by spewing a bunch of technical terms I don't know, and looking at me like I'm an idiot because I don't know them (yeah, I'm bitter). I know I'll need at least one piece of hardware and (maybe) one piece of software (though my gf would like to avoid ProTools). I'd like to save as much money as I can, but I know these things can get a little expensive.

We're willing to go the MIDI-USB converter route for now, but we'd definitely like to improve our setup in the future. Keep in mind I'm not an audio pro, though I am a pretty fast learner and can teach myself stuff if I have sufficient resources.

Does there exist on the Mac a picture/video viewer that is as easy to use as ACDSee on the PC?

Caviar — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:28:31 -0800

Does there exist on the Mac a picture/video viewer that is as easy to use as ACDSee on the PC? Required features:

- Must allow browsing of the filesystem, with preview thumbnails. A dedicated db for thumbnails/metadata is acceptable. "Importing a directory" or building a playlist is a killer. I just want to browse the files I have already, whereever they are.

- Must support keyboard-only navigation and playing. Notably, ACDSee allows tab and arrow keys for navigating files in a directory, pressing enter to descend into a directory or play (for video)/view large (for images), pressing enter again to get back to the file browser, and pressing backspace to go up a directory. If I'm required to touch the mouse to do these things, this isn't the program I'm looking for. Doubly so if any of these features are mouse-only and listed under the "Keyboard shortcuts" section of the help.

- Must support a full-screen mode that's easy to toggle with a keyboard command.

- Must support (or with easy codec installation) all popular video and image formats. Canon Camera RAW support is a huge plus.

- Free is good, but commercial is fine.

Anything like that out there?

Make my Gnome OSX'y

ChrisR — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 14:16:16 -0800

How do I configure Gnome (on Fedora Core 5, if it matters) and X11 to act like OSX with respect to keyboard input? I've migrated my home PC to OSX, in a dramatic change of direction, and I love it. However, for consistency's sake I'd like to keep all of my computer interaction consistent, and it's unlikely that I'll be replacing my Linux desktop at work with a Mac any time soon (or ever).

So, how can I make it work in the same way? Ideally, what I want is the same keystrokes on my 104-key keyboard for both OSs for text navigation and (to the extent that it's possible) application shortcuts. The only caveat is, none of these changes may break Emacs :)

Even incremental improvements are welcome.

Macbook Keyboard

ryecatcher — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 12:15:47 -0800

Are the keyboards on the MacBook really that bad? Looking to get a Macbook or Macbook Pro...but really, the only reason I'd spring for the Pro is because the keyboard seems a little bit more, uh, 'normal.' I've gone to the store a few times to test it out...it seems like I could get used to it.

But still, I don't want to buy it and end up hating it.

But I also don't want to thrown down an extra 1k just for a keyboard.

I'm a writer (if you can believe it with this post) so I spend a lot of time on the keys.

Thanks!

Mac-compatible keyboard recommendations?

mkultra — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 06:46:09 -0800

Mac-compatible keyboard recommendations? Several keys on my Apple keyboard died this morning, so I need to pick up a new one today- in other words, I need something I can pick up in-store in NYC. I don't care about wireless, but I'd be willing to pay extra for some extra functionality (e.g. programmable keys). Unfortunately, most of the programmable keyboards are Windows-only.

Mac users, what's your keyboard of choice?