fyi....
what's great about apple products is that they have both form and function. case in point is the latest and greatest thing, the apple pro usb keyboard. it's amazing to see the looks of wintel users in general and comment on how unique the design of apple's products are. a buddy of mine who lives across from me in our dorm always says how he wishes he could use the pro keyboard on his wintel because it looks great and has quiet keys. i picked one up for my Pismo 500 so that i could type more comfortably on my desk, but soon realized that i was taking it on the road for most of the time, and had no need to use the keyboard that much. so the keyboard has not been used for quite some time.
just recently, i received a decent wintel box for next to nothing and decided to use it as my desktop box while reserving the pismo for mobile use. as my choice of os, i decided to go with windows2000 pro as i believe it is the most stable and robust of the windows family.
to make the whole story short, a friend of mine asked if it was possible to use the pro keyboard on a wintel. initially, i said that there was no f#@&ing way this was going to jive because although it may be USB, it may still have proprietary technology which could cause incompatibility or malfunctioning.
several people huddled around me, and as i took a big breath, i connected the keyboard to my wintel. as we looked at the screen, nothing happened for the first few seconds, then win2k's plug & play detected the keyboard as "Apple USB Extended Keyboard," followed by detecting the two-port hub or something of that sort. my mind was blown! i couldn't believe that this was working. now for the real test. i began typing statements in word and what not and everything seemed to be working great. what really blew my mind was that when i press the open apple key, it acts as it's wintel counterpart as the START button. but to put more iceing on the cake, the volume up, volume down, and mute button functioned flawlessly. but on a minor note, the eject as well as F13-15 do not seem to function. I have verified that it also works on Windows98 and no additional drivers are necessary to setup the keyboard. it's interesting how apple does not state explicitly that it also works with wintel boxes. after all, if apple makes the most profit from hardware sales, than wintel users would purchase them and eventually become more interested in apple products.
LONG LIVE APPLE AND THE MAC!
P.S. - I know some wintel users that are ordering their keyboards right now as we speak. They'll love it!
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