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.

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