Yesterday saw me decide to splurge some cash on Apple's latest kit. iLife and iWork were (obviously) necessary. As some of you may have seen earlier in the week, I gave some early thoughts on iWork. I love it. It may have some shortcomings (and people will always complain that it's not as comprehensive as Office - iWork is not trying to replicate the complexity and feature set of Office), but for the price, it's a compelling package.

Anyhow, this is meant to be about something else - the Apple keyboard. Firstly, i have a little admission to make. I've used a laptop almost exclusively for the best part of 3 years, and love the laptop's lighter touch. I've longed for a keyboard that has a laptop feel and yet has whole set of keys, and the new keyboard appears to be the answer. It's so very thin, and surprisingly resilient to my typing barrages. Unlike the Apple Keyboard of old (which I've been using at the Realmac offices) the keys have a lot less travel in them which allows you to at least feel as though your fingers are typing faster, and being more productive ;-).

Other than the feel of the thing, my other favourite thing is that there's neat is that there's a whole plethora of function keys. Media controls, brightness controls, and dashboard and expose buttons. It's taken a little while to get used to the new keys. One noticeable thing is that skipping tracks is just so much easier. No more Alt-Tab to iTunes, and then the relevant arrow key. It's simply a click away. Sweet.

Now for the bad. The USB ports are unpowered, writing out iPod sync-ing or memory card reader usage. However, for now the real pain is the fact that the F3 and F4 keys simply don't activate Exposé or Dashboard. Inexplicably, they don't work, whilst all the other function keys do. Reinstalling the keyboard update makes bugger all difference. There's no way (in an hour of looking) to sort it via Keyboard preferences in either Dashboard or Keyboard Sys Preferences panes). It's a real shame as I love the design, and keyboard function in general. Of course, the hope is that this is simply a software glitch that will be fixed in due course.

Verdict: I'm impressed with the keyboard. It's great to type with, and I'd give it an overall thumbs up. Expect to see this in use by Jack Bauer & Chloe O'Brien in CTU. Once they can activate their dashboard and Exposé, that is........

Tags: Apple, Keyboard