Product Review: Apple’s Aluminum Keyboard

Apple’s Aluminum Keyboard
was the best stocking stuffer for me this Christmas. It is small and cool-looking and has 2 USB 2.0 ports so I can hook up my digital camera to it( but not the iPhone). What’s more, my cats do not like to sit on it.

Best of all is the action, position and feel of the low-profile keys, similar to the feel of the keys on the MacBook’s built-in keyboard. If only I could admit to typing — and I do not — I would say that all in all this is the best keyboard I’ve used in absolute years . . .

. . . even including the old ADB Mac keyboard. I don’t mean the new old ADB keyboards, the flimsy ones that came with the 7500s or the beige G3s, I mean the old old built-to-last IIci or IIcx ADB Mac keyboards. The ones sold separately. So back then if you were thinking about buying a Mac, you first purchased the keyboard for around $160 and that made a sufficient-enough hole in your pocket as to put you onto the other side of commitment. You remember those, don’t you, Virginia? — they were swell, we became so attached that we even used to lug them around the city to jobs. Guess what, the Aluminum’s a lot lighter.

And the key response? Well, in memory, you can’t beat the old ones, but, I’m not so sure they were all that much better. Especially when you compare design and cash outlay.

Not as a test or anything, but just because I am a klutz, about a week ago I got some coffee on the keyboard. (Mind you, we’re not talking Major Spill.) Nonplussed but recovering quickly enough for someone with “experienced reflexes,” I mopped up what I could see. The keyboard has not stopped working yet.

Matter of fact, I am seriously considering buying one for the office.

One eensy negative: I have not yet gotten used to the position of the function key and have to look away from my work each time to use the fn+F11 in order to get to the desktop. (I could probably take care of that somewhere in the Keyboard system preferences, but got other of fish to fry right now.)