Laptop Recommendation

[Nicholas Clark]

On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 04:01:33PM +0000, Taka wrote:
> On 24/01/2012 15:52, Andy Armstrong wrote:
> >On 24 Jan 2012, at 15:47, Andy Armstrong wrote:
> >>You have to order them with a US keyboard - or swap it - to get a # key 
> >>and a decent Enter key instead of the nasty hockey stick thing. You can 
> >>order US keyboards from the UK store.
> >
> >Specifically you can order laptops with US keyboards...
> >
> Well, well, well... just add an extra keyboard from OS X! you can have 
> as many as you wish for any different languages!!!

This doesn't change the physical shape of the Apple laptop keyboard.

The UK keyboard has an evil shaped enter key. One of the most important
keys on the keyboard, and it's *half width* at the bottom. Curiously, the
Japanese Apple laptop keyboard doesn't. It seems that it shifts the entire
keyboard left about half a keywidth within the recess available within the
laptop case.

I think the reason for all these problems is that Apple observed that on a
US keyboard, the enter (or return) key is *very* wide, about 2 standard
keywidths, as are several other keys at the right of the keyboard. Hence
it wouldn't hinder usage, but would save space, to cut the width a bit.
So they did this on the keyboard, and on the space in the laptop case for
the keyboard. And only after all this was decided (and set in plastic, if
not stone) did they then stop to wonder how to accommodate the different
conventional layout for UK keyboards.


Also, as well as the physical craziness of the Apple laptop layout, there's
a logical craziness. It has § on a keysim, and no #. WTF? Which UK made
UK keyboard ever has §? Whereas all the genuine items have a #.

You can map that out. But software can't fix the shape of the enter key.
Only the 6 P principal can.

Nicholas Clark