I was totally smitten by Apple’s Ultrathin Keyboard (I have the wired version), so I bought one for my XP box. Everything seems to work fine except for three issues, in increasing order of important to me:
(1) The caps lock key is highly inconsistent. Sometimes it works right away but other times I have to press it numerous times to change it’s mode. (I doubt it’s still under warranty, though).
(2): Like a lot of newer keyboards, it does not have a “Scroll Lock” key or equivalent. This key is usually the only one capable of being used to switch between computers connected to KVMs. (I can still switch with the KVM’s front panel, but I’d like to be able to do it on the keyboard).
(3): The main annoyance is that none of the numeric keys on the numeric pad (on the right of the keyboard) work. I installed a key swapper proggie, but when I tried to change, say, the zero key to map to 0, it reported it was already set that way!
Apple use to provide an XP driver for their keyboards, but although Google finds a great many pages to download it from, all of them are dead links.
Does anyone have the driver, or, has anyone else gotten this to work without an Apple driver?
There is no “driver” for the latest keyboards. XP will work automatically with the keyboard to the extent it can and beyond that you will need a key swap program (which it sounds like you have).
Not sure if this is the case under XP, but recent Apple keyboards have a little bit of intelligence built into the caps-lock key: you have to hold it for a shade longer than a brief tap. This is intended to keep you from accidentally brushing it and switching case mode unintentionally.
I’m not sure how it behaves under XP, but on a Mac the shift lock is old-school, like a typewriter: when it is on, everything is caps, and SHIFTing keys does not invert the case.
Of course, mine works perfectly under XP, but that’s because I’m running XP on my Mac :).
I have that keyboard and LOVE it. And you’re correct about the intelligent CAPs LOCK key.
I run XP Pro via VMware Fusion on my MacBook Pro and have all the same issues (keypad does not work, F keys don’t behave like Windows F keys). Luckily, I only use Windows occasionally for AutoCAD.
That chart was extremely useful. Thanks. Once I learned that the “clear” key on the Apple’s numeric keypad was the equivalent to “Num Lock”, even the numeric keypad worked fine without a key swapper.
But I can’t figure out what the chart’s telling me about the Scroll Lock key. It shows four keys: “Fn” “Shift” “alt/option” “F11”. Is it telling me that I need to press all four keys at once? If not, just what is it telling me? I tried several variations, but none of them seemed to work.
FYI my partner has this keyboard on her Mac, and in the latest batch of Apple updates was … an update to the keyboard’s bios! Who knew keyboards had firmware.
So it might be worth plugging it in to a Mac and running an update to see if yours needs it too.