Mac Keyboard insanity
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Well, I've just locked my account trying to VPN in to work. The reason: the caps lock key only works about about a third to a half of the time, and I've long found it easier to use than than shift when entering passwords. Turns out the key does actually work, just the control-freaks at Apple don't want you to use it like the other keys - so they introduced a delay on the firmware. A delay which seems to be hovering around my average keypress length. It is possible to switch this behaviour off - you need to disable and re-enable the key. For every keyboard you connect. Each time you log in. Or hack the system which, being a work computer, I don't fancy. On my travels I found the usual Mac community help: https://discussions.apple.com/message/17211984#17211984[^] it's your fault expecting the key actually work like an elephanting key. Change yourself to accommodate the insanity. Could be the Apple user's mantra. The machine itself has been fast and very stable - just lots of unecessary UI niggles like this, which is odd because Mac users always claim they are much better designed in this regard than other OSs.* Apple Fans: Bring on the downvotes, I don't care - been working 12 hours straight and have now hit a brick wall instead of getting ahead as I hoped. *Interestingly, the Windows VM I have been running is also fast and very stable - indicating that it's the hardware which is SNAFU'ing windows
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
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Well, I've just locked my account trying to VPN in to work. The reason: the caps lock key only works about about a third to a half of the time, and I've long found it easier to use than than shift when entering passwords. Turns out the key does actually work, just the control-freaks at Apple don't want you to use it like the other keys - so they introduced a delay on the firmware. A delay which seems to be hovering around my average keypress length. It is possible to switch this behaviour off - you need to disable and re-enable the key. For every keyboard you connect. Each time you log in. Or hack the system which, being a work computer, I don't fancy. On my travels I found the usual Mac community help: https://discussions.apple.com/message/17211984#17211984[^] it's your fault expecting the key actually work like an elephanting key. Change yourself to accommodate the insanity. Could be the Apple user's mantra. The machine itself has been fast and very stable - just lots of unecessary UI niggles like this, which is odd because Mac users always claim they are much better designed in this regard than other OSs.* Apple Fans: Bring on the downvotes, I don't care - been working 12 hours straight and have now hit a brick wall instead of getting ahead as I hoped. *Interestingly, the Windows VM I have been running is also fast and very stable - indicating that it's the hardware which is SNAFU'ing windows
KeithBarrow.net[^] - It might not be very good, but at least it is free!
On the odd occasions that friends and family have asked me to do something on their iPads, the thing that gets up my nose is that the case displayed on the keys on the on-screen keyboard does not change when you press the shift/capslock as it does on Android. This makes typing a pain, especially when entering passwords that contain mixed case.
========================================================= I'm an optoholic - my glass is always half full of vodka. =========================================================