dallas moore

My Apple Wireless Keyboard Has Arrived Early

First up, I’m surprised that it shipped from China to the eastern portion of the United States in two days. Second, it is way smaller and lighter than I had anticipated. Seeing a picture of how thin it is was one level of amazing. However, experiencing the weight of it in my hands, I couldn’t help but grin. I showed it to a couple of people in my office and their reactions ranged from not believing it was a working keyboard to inquiring how to go about getting one.

From the literature, it appears that it is a Mac Only device which is kind of ashamed. I was hoping it would work with a Windows PC too. I’d like to try test and see if it can, but I don’t want to bother the only person with a bluetooth capable Windows machine with something rather trivial. Another note from the literature states that the keyboard requires my Mac to have version 10.4.10 of the operating system. I’m sure I have that already installed since I updated this past weekend.

Since I’m at work, I haven’t had a chance to pair it with my Mac, but the procedure seemed simple on paper. Assuming the Mac is turned off, load the three AA batteries into the keyboard, turn on the keyboard, then turn on my Mac. The Mac will then detect the keyboard while booting and a Setup Assistant will walk me through the process of pairing.

After peeling off the metallic finish protection stickers, I went ahead and loaded the batteries and turned the keyboard on so I could see what kind of indicators it has. Surprisingly, there’s a rather small LED hidden in the upper right that shows it is powered up. When the LED is not lit, its location blends into the finish and difficult to locate. Transparent aluminum? Probably not, but the effect is subtle.

I was concerned that I’d be some how end up scraping or wearing the finishes. To prevent such an occurrence, Apple’s design included some unexpected rubber feet (two longish ones and two dots).

The rubber foot portion near the power button also has a rubberized area. I’m guessing that is to allow easier access to assemble the power switch components. Due to the rubber feet, the keyboard rests fine on a surface without skidding and at a slight angle easing ergonomic typing.

The keys have a slight texture on the otherwise flat surface. The metal finish portions have a, uh, metal finish like feel. The underside is glossy white plastic that quickly accumulated some fingerprints. I went ahead and tried out the feel of the keyboard even though it’s not hooked up to anything.

The keys seem comfortably spaced. Having used my boss’ MacBook for a quick video editing project, I have to say that the feel of the Apple Wireless Keyboard and the MacBook’s keyboard is very similar. Since I didn’t have any trouble typing on the MacBook, I’m going to go out on a limb and assume I’ll be just fine with typing on this one.

{I’ll another article once I actually hook the sucker up and try some typing and playing World of Warcraft (yeah, I know).}