Today I bought an Apple Mac keyboard …

For some months now I have been looking for a new, small computer keyboard, to replace the great wide clunky accountancy keyboard that you are usually obliged to use, complete with an extra pocket calculator stuck on the right that I don’t use occupying desk space that I can’t spare.

I’ve tried other small non-accountancy PC keyboards of the sort you can buy in Tottenham Court Road, usually made by a company called “Cherry”, but they are just as clunky as the big keyboards, and far too fiddly and generally horrible, not unlike the keyboard of the accursed Jesus (the Eee PC laptop that I am trying to forget and get rid of). Anyone want that? Might be good for a small and rather geeky kid with totally impoverished parents. Tenner anyone? Immediate next day delivery in the London area.

But now, I have this:

It’s an Apple Mac unclunky keyboard (this one I think), pictured there next to the dirty, clunky old keyboard I’ve been using until now. I saw it in a department store in Kingston this afternoon. I said: Will that work with a PC? He said: Should do. I said: Show me. He did. It worked. Bingo. Bought it. Took it home. Plugged it in. It worked. Bingo.

It’s beautifully solid, the opposite of clunky, and I am rapidly getting very used to it.

Is this how the Apple habit starts? You buy an Apple something. It works. It is nicer. Even the cardboard case that it came in is nicer. Everything about it is nicer than the PC equivalents. Even the price of this little keyboard was nicer, by a bit. And pretty soon you are converted.

My only problem so far is that I can’t delete the character to the immediate right of the cursor with just the one keystroke. That particular delete button seems to have been lost, along with that superfluous pocket calculator. To accomplish this, I now have to move the cursor to the other side of whatever I want to delete, and then delete it with the button, which mercifully remains, that deletes the character just before the cursor. I could get used to this, but would rather not have to. Anyone got any ideas about that?

Does that closer up picture of the new keyboard help at all? Hope so.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog