My Apple Aluminium is not working with the new DELL Studio XPS I just bought.

Intel® CoreTM i7, 8GB Memory, 1.2TB Hard drive, 24" Monitor and... Vista 64...

I'm not very happy with it. It's a bit noisy: the fan gets real frenzy as soon as you do anything else than just staring at the screen.

But it's fast. I guess you can't have everything.

Now, the main issue I have is that I can't use my Apple Aluminum keyboard with it anymore, for the moment only hopefully.

I had to go back to the default included Cordless Desktop® MX™ 3200 Laser. What a pain. I miss my Apple keyboard so much.

I just plugged it in. It was recognized successfully but then it was pretty useless. Often while pressing a key you had to wait a second for the key being actually taken into account. The refresh rate was so slow. Often you have to type a key more than once to be recognized. Sometimes, you get your key stuck and it tyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy... sorry, and it typed many keys instead of just one.

That was all without the drivers. I was in a hurry and had no time to try to figure out what was wrong with the keyboard, if it was a problem with Vista 64 or with the keyboard. I'll find some time soon to try to install the Vista 64 drivers. I'll let you know what it gives.

Now, would you be kind enough and share your experience with me?Of course I'm only interested if you are using the keyboard on non Apple hardware.

• What keyboard do you have: Wired, Wireless?
• What bios version does your keyboard have: I got 1.0, was someone able to flash it to 1.1 on Windows?
• What OS are you using: Windows XP(32/64) Windows Vista (32/64)?
• What OS culture? What keyboard culture?
• What have you installed: the Apple drivers, Apple control panel, Windows default HID drivers, My toggle Fn tool? Anything else?
• Was someone able to develop a custom tool to make easier use of the keyboard?

Any interesting resource to share?Drop me a comment please... Thanks.

PS: Sorry for the down time over the last few days. My host, Webhost4life had some trouble getting my site back.

This is me and my friends. Despite the colors and the lack of jaw ala simpson we look pretty much like that.

This is fun marketing, get simpsonized here. The possibilities are countless. They did a very good job. It's a joint operation between Burger King and the launch of the Simpson movie.

Burger King is one of my favorite but unfortunately (or fortunately ) they left France. They where in France about ten years ago then they left Europe (not the UK I guess). As a student Iwas able to get one free hamburger for each one paid. I used to buy 2 double Whooper and got two free. So did my friend Nicolas. I have to admit that we did love it . Over the last years they came back to many countries in Europe but not yet France. Have fun.

The Tiger has grew up and changed to a Leopard and what changed for us Windows PC Apple keyboard users *gasp*?
Bootcamp is dead, long live Bootcamp.
Apple in its greater generosity did it again. Bootcamp is now officially available as a standard free and separate product, just go to the Apple web site and download individual drivers for the hardware you possess. *NOOOOOT*. I'm just kidding; it's free but comes bundled with Leopard only. Nothing can be downloaded, neither separate nor as a whole.

Just let me quote Apple:
"Leopard is the world’s most advanced operating system. So advanced, it even lets you run Windows if there’s a PC application you need to use. Just get a copy of Windows and start up Boot Camp, now included with Leopard. Setup is simple and straightforward — just as you’d expect with a Mac."

Yeah yeah, right. And where will I find the drivers for my legitimate bought keyboard? Here is the answer:
"Drivers galore.
When you install Windows using Boot Camp, you won’t need to search the Internet for drivers or burn a disc. After you run Boot Camp, simply insert the Leopard DVD to install the necessary drivers. Everything you need to make your Mac work with Windows is right there. When you use a Windows application, you’ll have full access to unique Mac features (iSight, Apple Remote, trackpad, specific keyboard keys, keyboard backlighting) and connectivity (wired and wireless)."

Thank you Apple, so this is a favor you are doing to us.

Honestly, I don't understand this. I can understand why the IPhone is locked and only usable trough ITunes. I can understand why Leopard is only meant to be run on Mac hardware. I can understand why music bought on ITunes can only be played on IPods.
I can understand why the IPod touch has proprietary connectors... this is all made for Apple to sell more Apple stuff.

But here it's the opposite logic. Why not provide the Windows drivers for the Apple keyboards so that millions of windows users can buy apple keyboards? I don't get it.

I've been very busy lately at work that's why I did not work on my eventual keyboard tool to let you use the special Apple keys. Also, I have to admit that I do not exactly have the required knowledge to do it.

Is anybody in the room that has good USB HID programming knowledge willing to help? Get in touch with me.

Right now I'm able to control previous track (F7), pause (F8), next track (F9) and Eject. Anyone interested in using this? This lets you use the eject key without the apple kbdr.exe tool. Is this possible with other tools? I couldn't find any.

Are the tools you recommended in my previous articles able to do it? Because I couldn't make them work.

Also before moving along with the development of some obscure tool I thought that I could wait for Leopard because, naïvely I thought that it will solve the various issues I had. Apple control panel freeze and crash, = key on num pad mapped to - key and more.

Now, that Leopard is released, it looks to me that Bootcamp turned to 2.0. Apple keyboard driver turned from version 07/18/2007,2.0.0.7 to version 08/30/2007,2.0.1.4. That makes some version already...

So, where are the bug corrections? I don't know I don't see the difference, do you see any?
How can you tell? Try the new drivers... Where are they? You can find them on the Leopard DVD once you insert it in your drive while running Windows. Apple told you, it's simple.
But what can *I* do since I do not own an Apple computer and thus do not have the need of Apple's operating system? I told you it does not install on a PC. Even if it did I would use it for more than test out my web sites display on Mac OS.

So where can you get those drivers?

You could try to find a Leopard image on the web. Get it here Leopard image. Once you have the image go a get Transmac (again). What an excellent piece of software. Use it to expand the Disk image on you drive. Now you can open the image in a tool like MagicISO to get access to the Windows track of the CD. From there, get what you need.

Right now you are not breaking the Apple's license as far as I know. You are not running Leopard. I guess that having the image and not being able to use it is not illegal. Also Bootcamp as told in the license can only be used on Mac computers. So, here again, as we can't use it we do not infringe the license I guess.

Don't hesitate to tell me in case I'm wrong. If I understand things correctly, Bootcamp is the tool that lets you dual boot your Mac computer. Now, probably that the Apple control panel and the Bootcamp.msi setup are part of what they call Bootcamp. No problem it crashes and has some bugs, I won't use it I promise. Meaning you won’t find it here.

What I just wanted, is the driver for the peripheral I bought. I bought the damned thing, the drivers exist; why not provide them to me?

A long story short, here is the Apple keyboard driver for Windows bundled with Leopard:
AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe (1.60 mb)

Until Apple is releasing a fix and because this is annoying me, I decided to take some time and code a small tool that has the only purpose of locking the state of the fn key.

This is working on my computer. It's a PC computer, not a Mac. It's running XP.

Probably that if you are a Mac user you won't need this because the boot camp control panel is probably working for you. Lucky you!
In case you are using Vista this may not work because I'm accessing to the registry.

Because I'm doing a lot of programming, using Visual Studio and the like, the keys between F7 and F12 are often used. Because I also listen to a lot of music not being able to lock the behavior of the fn key annoyed me to the point that I decided to code a very small tool and follow Thomas's tip to toggle the fn key in the registry.

Just by changing the value of the key at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior

Here is a small screenshot.

 

 

It’s not doing much. Just toggle the fn behavior. You can toggle the status by Right Click->Toggle but also by Double clicking on the systray icon.

Also, you can use F19. Hopefuly you are not using that key too much. In case you do, it should still work. Just it will now also toggle the fn key ;)

I’m sharing this with you in case you have the same problem. Like always, comments are welcome.

Get it here ToggleFn1.0.0.1.rar (9.17 kb)

History
1.0.0.0 Initial release
1.0.0.1 Supports more registry key types 

Because of popular demand and because others are already offering to download the drivers here are the drivers that concerns us directly.

Of course you understand that the official files can be found on Apple's Boot Camp web site. I just provide them here because it is pretty hard for a basic Windows user to get them. The files I provide here are those I extracted myself from the CD. Of course you have to take your own precaution to make sure the files don't have viruses or troyans . Let me know if you think the files have problems.

Thanks to Joan for the link. Go there if you need more drivers.

To make the new keyboard work on your system, first install the keyboard driver:

AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe (1.60 mb)

It supports the following languages : DE, EN, ES, FR, IT, JA, NL and zh_CN.

This will make the standard keys work and some special keys like Next, Pause, Play, Play fast (stay pressed on >>) because they are the same on a PC keyboard.

To make the other keys (sound up, down, eject CD) work you will need the BootCamp control panel. That program is meant to help you configure the different hardware of your mac under Windows.

Get it here:

BootCamp.msi (1.70 mb) 

That program does install a KbdMgr.exe to C:\Program Files\Boot Camp

Unfortunately I don't have mac hardware and because it looks like the Apple programmers expect to find mac hardware the tool is not working perfectly. For example, you cannot open and configure any of the Apple control panel feature. A usefull feature would have been to control the behavior of the fn key.

Thomas is suggesting to change the value of the key at:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\KeyMagic\OSXFnBehavior

Set it to 0 (zero) for off and to 1 for on by default. I have not yet tested this and he says that it may cause problems.

Also a restart of the system may be required. In case you have problems you can try to unplug and plug again your keyboard.

Also the Apple Control panel does sometimes not start automaticaly. Sometimes it crashes. Sometime is makes your PC freeze for about 20 seconds. Sometimes (seldom) Windows freezes definitiveky and will require a hard reset. This is what it does for me.

Sometimes I don't launch the boot Camp control panel because I often press the eject CD key instead of backspace. Because I have an Antec tower with a door hiding the CD slot I have to rush and open the door before the CD is killing itself against the closed door.

Have fun using this and don't hesitate to report problems in Apple's forum. Also you may write to bootcamp@apple.com.

Of course come here to share your tips with us. Thank you.

Short said: HELL YES! And it feels good.
I first saw the new metallic keyboards on Engadget. First, take a look at a couple of pictures. 

 

Then run to your nearest Apple store and try to buy one before they run out of stock. Fortunately I was able to buy the last one at the end of the first delivery day. I guess those keyboards will have a certain success. Only the USB version is out in stores right now in France. The Bluetooth version looks even nicer but I’m not yet ready to get rid of the key pad.

Did I tell you that I’m a Windows guy? I’m currently using Windows XP and find it rock solid. I did not say that I’m a Windows fan but I’m not an OSX fan either. Neither Am I a Linux fan. “Fan” is a word too strong to describe what I am. I started Loving Linux in its early days but do not like what they currently offer on the desktop level. I used to setup a Linux box using floppy disks. I did that with my friends even when Linux reached 99 disks… That was a lot of fun. Fortunately someone invented CDROMs. But I’m losing myself on the road of an already very long story.

So, a long story short, I don’t like Apple’s hardware or software. I find they tend to lock the customer even more to their world then Windows is. I find they are really successful at what they are doing and selling but until now they did not get me. Not the IPod (I hate ITunes), not the IMacs (only one button on that mouse what the…), not the MacBooks (nothing that has 12”?), and so on…

Lately I was getting tired of my big Logitech Cordless MX1000 mouse+keyboard Combo, more on this in another post. I wanted something that looked more like a keyboard as I do not use all the extra keys you can find on the new keyboards.

So, I bought the keyboard and plugged it in. Wow, it get’s recognized through the default standard HID interface. “Apple Keyboard”. That’s it. It’s ready to use. But… hey, what’s going on here… The keys are all mixed up… Yep, you are reading correctly. All the keys except the special keys are working but the problem is that the keys are the same function they had, based on the original PC layout… Some keys have moved. For example #/@ is located on the top left of the keyboard, replacing the ² key on my French keyboard. Typing # on the Apple keyboard is producing ². This means that all the keys not at the same place then on a PC keyboard will have the PC keyboard value by default. It’s the case for all the keys at the outer edge of the keyboard and most numeric keys.

Anyway. That means a couple of things. I will have to find a way of mapping keys to others, find a way to use the special keys that have specific functions, like sound up and down and finally get access to the keys that do not seems to generate events on a PC, like the Eject key. Not very usefull, but fun.

What are my options?
1. Find a hack to make all this work
2. Find a third party Apple Keyboard driver
3. Program a HID usb filter
4. Get my hands on the Apple Keyboard driver used in Boot Camp
5. Live with it? Hum, no, not an option.

Scenario one, was the easy way. It consists of a Windows feature called Scan Code Mapper for Windows that lets you map key from one usage to another. It’s a bit painful to make all the mappings and the computer needs to restart to use the new mappings. A tool called SharpKeys can help you build the mapping with a nice GUI. The problem is that only recognized keys will work. Also it does not make the difference betwenn one keyboard and the other.

Scenario two, did not bring much. I could only find AppleK Pro that looks to be a Windows replacement driver but I don’t like web pages that do not show when they have been updated. The screenshots look nice but the page talks about © 2001-2004 and also I wanted to find a solution that would not add 50% on the total keyboard price. Maybe I'll give it a try later.

Scenario three, was fun to try. You find some info here and there but nothing very easy to use. I guess that with some more work I would have managed to build something up. The nicest sources in case you are interested are the following:
The Human Interface Device controller suite by Robert Marquardt, in Delphi.
A USB HID Sniffer.
Using Raw Input from C# to handle multiple keyboards
Making USB C# friendly
Managed Library for Nintendo's Wiimote (it’s the most up to date HID sample you can find for C#, could be adapted to Apple Keybord I guess)
Also, last but not least would be Usb Sniffer for Windows
OK, all which put together could have lead to something useful that would at the end let me use ALL the keys of the apple keyboard.

While investigating Scenario three, I was also working on Scenario four. Scenario four seemed the best option as one would find normal to get drivers for the peripheral they just bought. Did I told you that Apple locks people to what Apple decide is better for them. Why should I have troubles, if I want to use an Apple Keyboard on Windows PC? Especially when the keyboard is standard USB and has existing drivers. Why is Apple not just writing on all the peripherals they sell, that they are compatible with the Windows world? I'm sure they would sell a lot of them. My keyboard box says that it requires Mac OS X 10.4.10.

Did I understand correctly when I saw that Boot Camp has ALL the drivers for ALL the Apple peripherals to use on Windows? XP, Vista, whatever.

They have the drivers. Why not make them available for the broader crown? Do you think they did not yet think about it?

I guess they did because you can hardly make it harder then Apple did at hiding a drivers disk deep inside other stuff you don't need.

Let me just rephrase something so that it finally appears clearly on the web:
What is Apple Boot Camp? Apple Boot Camp is a CD Image that provides ALL the Apple drivers for ALL (most of) the Apple Peripherals.

More generally, you can find drivers for most of the hardware you can find in Apple computers to make them work like they should under Windows.

OK, Boot Camp also provides, among other features, a boot manager that let’s you choose between Apple OS X and Microsoft Windows at startup.

Apple says on its web site that “Boot Camp will burn a CD with all the required drivers for Windows so you don't have to scrounge around the Internet looking for them”.
Very nice. Why not put the .iso file for download directly on their web site. OK, put it besides the Boot Camp download, I understand that most of the people will use it that way.

 

It took me a long time to figure out how to take a look inside the Boot Camp image and even longer to get my hands on the drivers CD.
Strangely no one is sharing the Drivers Disk it on the web.

Here is how *I* did.

First, download boot camp. Latest version is still in beta despite the 1.4 number. You will get an ugly BootCamp1.4.dmg file.
.dmg? How can you use this on windows? On Apple? No problem, but I don’t have an Apple computer. I only want the keyboard.
It’s an HFS filesystem virtual disk. I first thought you could mount it on Linux like that, but no, you first have to change it to ISO or to IMG.
You could use the DMG2IMG tool, but no, it’s not working on the latest 1.4 release. Maybe it’s because that this is a compressed DMG file.

You can read many things on the web on how to convert the .dmg file to iso or img. Use MagicISO, PowerISO, UltraISO, IsoBuster. I could make work none of them. Did you?

I was so desperate I even tried to download a Mac OS X 10.x image to try to run it in VMWare… Before coming to that extremity (it’s working and I had it running some weeks ago but had no usage of it, so I deleted it) I stepped by accident on TransMac.

Go no further. TransMac is THE solution. Period.

It is commercial but has a 30 days trial. Not very intuitive at first (maybe it’s just because this is all not easy anyway) but worked like a charm at the end.

I had the solution I was looking for. Happy, happy, joy, joy.

Here are all the details:

• Open the BootCamp1.4.dmg file with Transmac. It shows you a HFS+ Volume
• Double click on it.
• Drag and drop the Install Boot Camp Assistant.mpkg to the upper windows that represent you PC file system
• Browse deep to the following directory either inside Transmac or on your computer:

Install Boot Camp Assistant.mpkg\Contents\Resources\BootCampAssistant.pkg\Contents

• Here you have a file called Archive.pax.gz making more than 300GB. This is the file we need
  
• Extract the file content. I used WinRar for that but 7-Zip is also able to do it and also we will need 7-Zip in just a second as the Archive.pax.gz file only contains a .pax file that is an Apple compressed archive. Use 7-Zip to extract its content
  
• Again browse deep inside the directory you just extracted:

Archive\Applications\Utilities\Boot Camp Assistant.app\Contents\Resources

 

•  Here you find a new DiskImage.dmg.

Fortunately as you now know how to extract .dmg files this is just taking a couple of seconds thanks to the use of TransMac. *goshhh*. No it’s not working. TransMac says No Mac HFS volumes found. I tend to work using trial-and-error all the time.

So, I played a bit with TransMac and tried its Tools->Disk/CD/DVD Image->Expand Compressed DMG file.

• Browse to your previous DiskImage.dmg it then asks you a save location. I put in DiskImage.iso
• Save. Et voila. You have what you have been reading for on that post
• Mount the ISO file using whatever you want. I’m using the excellent Alcohol 52% Free Edition. You now have a nice Mac Drivers CD.
  
• I just run setup.exe and installed everything. Am I a warrior or not??? I am.
  

I guess that the files in x:\Drivers\Apple, AppleKeyboardInstaller.exe and BootCamp.msi are just enough. But this will be a future test.
The first file gives you the correct keyboard layout. The second gives you access to the special key, like sound, brightness and CD eject, insert.

Of course the Expose and Dashboard keys are doing nothing on my XP box.

After the setup, it asks you to restart. That’s what I did. After the restart, you have a boot camp icon in the systray and the keyboard is…

WORKING!

I’ll compare the keyboard to my Logitech keyboard in a future post.

The bootcamp tool is not very useful because most of its features crash. Except Help. Also I did not try “Restart under Mac OS”, anybody?
It’s useless, but without that the special keys do not work.

Also, a bad surprise is that I still have both keyboards plugged and that now, it is my PC keyboard that has its keys swapped to the Apple layout.

A message to the Apple guys… Can you try to make sure that when you change something on a computer, it does only apply to the peripheral it is meant to change? It's OK to have that problem when you are a poor lonesome programmer but not a big company. You do that or you change your keyboard layout nbsp;

While you are at it. Could you make the Boot Camp tool work even if I do not use it on an Apple computer, so that I can get access to the keyboard options? I gues it’s there that I can change the fact that the Fn key is on by default? I don’t like to have to press Fn+F2 to rename a file.

Maybe that those minor problems will make me continue the development I started concerning the USB HID tool? Maybe later when I get more time (read, never ).

Thank for reading me trough here.

I could have just written instead:
Can I use my Apple Keyboard on a Windows PC?
Yes, just extract the Drivers Disk you can find buried inside the Boot Camp disk.

Thanks to the TransMac people. Didn’t I use that tool on my Amiga 20 years ago, is this possible?

Some more references: Apple keyboards and keyboard mapping in Windows XP. Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts.

Also some info on Wikipedia.

Do you think I could/should put the drivers online here for easy download? I own the keyboard that I bought from Apple officials. Why should it be so hard for me to get my hands on Windows drivers? I guess we could write to bootcamp@apple.com to ask them what they think. I’ll write them and let you know what they say. That makes me remember that I should install the Apple update tool found on the CD. Maybe that this way it will update my drivers without having to redo all that for the next update.

Finaly, all is there. See the keyboard mapping in Windows XP on the Apple web site. For example F14 is printScreen and alt+F14 is printScreen for the current window. Only CTRL+ALT+Suppr is missing for me. It's opening the task manager, meaning it's mapped to CTRL+Shift+Esc, any hint?

Also note that the keyboard manager does not always start automatically. You can find it here: C:\Program Files\Boot Camp\KbdMgr.exe

For the French users, the AltGr keys (~#{[|\^ @]}) are still available despite the fact that they are not printed on the keys. I wonder how the programmers working on a Mac are doing.

ps: I write this all using my new toy keyboard, I'm glad I bought it.