[Abbas]

I have the Logitech S530 keyboard/Mouse combo and I've been using their products for a very long time with Windows. Almost all the keyboards I've used on Windows previously have had media keys for controlling volume as well as play/pause and skipping back and forth.

The S530 also has these keys, however these keys seem to be hardcoded for iTunes. I'm not sure if this is a keyboard issue or an O/S issue. Under Windows, whichever the active application is (Media Player, PowerDVD or WinAMP etc.) would utilize thise buttons. So for instance, if I'm watching a movie using PowerDVD, the pause button on the keyboard would pause the movie. If I'm using Windows Media Player, it would skip the track playing on that.

With the S530, if I have Quicktime on and press the play/pause, iTunes gets loaded and starts playing- very irritiating. Again, not sure if this is a keyboard issue or an O/S issue. Would love to hear from others.

[Gee4orce]

It's to do with the drivers for the keyboard. See if this is re-configurable in the driver software preferences. FWIW, being able to control iTunes from the keyboard even if it was in the background I would consider a feature not a bug.

[Abbas]

The Control Panel offers the ability to customize other buttons but not the media playback buttons.

-a

[SSharon]

On my logitech KB the volume buttons control the system volume while the previous/next buttons change the song in itunes even when it is in the background. I am very happy with this setup. I changed a few of the default shortcuts in the logitech prefpane but I don't remember changing those specific buttons.

[Visnaut]

If you were willing to ditch Logitech's drivers, you could program the keys to do exactly what you want using ControllerMate.

You could specify programming for keys either system-wide or application-specific, or a mixture of both. It's really quite powerful.

[Abbas]

Wow- that application certainly sounds interesting.

-a

[monkeybrain]

It could be easier to just use the space bar. I think in all OS X multimedia apps the space bar will act as play/pause.