A tale of two keyboards

3/16/2008

I have both of the Apple aluminum keyboards. They are nearly perfect. But the few areas they fall short make them also amazingly annoying.

Long time readers know that I have a love hate relationship with Apple. Apple makes great stuff and pays attention to style and usability like few others.

The Keyboards

Both are a bit funny to type on the first day. However after my first day of usage I absolutely love the keyboards. I have been using them for about 2 months now.

The Wireless

I originally bought the wireless to work with both my tablet and the Mark3. I love the size, and the fact that it is quite durable. It is near perfect, but it has a few serious usability flaws.

The keyboard has several missing keys for Windows users. Things like the delete key. But these are easily overcome as I posted in Using the Apple Wireless Keyboard on Windows.

The keyboard has an on off button, and a LED. However it is nearly impossible to tell if the keyboard is actually on or off. If you plan to use it on your coffee table or on a desktop PC this is not a real problem. However even after you figure out how to power it off and confirm its off, the keyboard will turn itself back on if you depress a key. So want to use it with a notebook or in my case a tablet? Well as soon as you put it in your bag, it turns on. This runs down the batteries quickly, and the only solution appears to be to remove one of the batteries each and every time. The only good news here is that unlike many devices, the battery compartment is very durable and made of metal. Opening and closing it hundred of times will not cause it to break. It is made of a metal end cap that corkscrews in and out.

The critical problem for me is that it is bluetooth. I have always hated bluetooth and have blogged on bluetooth's many problems before. With the Apple Wireless problems surface again. With the Microsoft stack, a few times a day the keyboard just simply stops working and the only way to fix it seems to be to reboot. With the Toshiba stack (The best and most reliable bluetooth stack) the symptoms are worse. Several times a day a key gets "stuck" and repeats itself until you reboot. One time the delete key got stuck and deleted all my mail and then pressed "Yes" somehow when I closed and it asked me if I wanted to empty deleted items. I cannot tell if the problem is in the keyboard, bluetooth software, or other. But others seem to have this same issue on the older Apple keyboards, and even on Mac OSX. I used to use Toshiba Stack v4 and this problem occurred. I have since upgraded to v5, and the problem still exists.

If anyone has any solutions or ideas to either of these problems I would be very eager to hear them. Maybe we can fix it in Cosmos.

If Apple would only make a USB version of this keyboard, everything would be solved. And I could even then use it on an airplane and not have to worry about batteries.

The Wired

I also bought the wired version. And I really love it. It has two USB ports underneath and has all the great features of the wireless one.

I have only one complaint about this keyboard. If you plan to use with a portable, they keyboard is rather big and will not fit in most bags.

I have gone so far as investigating how to take it apart and maybe with a cutting device shorten the keyboard and the PCB underneath. I would like to remove the number pad and maybe even the cursor keys. This would present some problems however as the wireless has little arrows inside the main keyboard, the wired does not. But with a magic marker some of the shift and other keys could be made to serve.

I have found some basic information on how to take it apart, but no photos of the inside. If anyone has pictures of the PCB etc, I would very much appreciate them.

Improvements? Because of its thinness, Apple could make a really nice folding keyboard and free us from the nasty folding alternatives that exist today.

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