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Keyboards

Apple Mac keyboard

9owners with an opinion
38%of verdicts positive
1/0positive/negative since 2024
30 yrslongest happy owner
1happy after 3+ years

Praised for ergonomics; criticized for comfort and ease of use.

What people wrote

Doesn’t like it
A tricky one that I’ve seen cause harm is white space or otherwise invisible characters (eg line breaks). Super frustratingly, Macs populating HL7 fields caused intense pain. It turns out that the character ’ when typed on a Mac keyboard is not compatible with all versions of HL7, or perhaps wasn’t compatible with what the HL7 was passed off to. It’s a distant memory now but it was words like o’clock versus o′clock, or something like that which broke radiology report distribution. It went on for years before being caught. Edit: HN is displaying the ’ differently to how it looks when I type it, but it’s still the same character. The fact that we couldn’t see the difference when debugging was half the problem, so this is quite funny.
Doesn’t like it
Lots more different than that: + Windows has the Windows key (which Linux called "super") + Windows also has the context menu key, which I think it pretty useless to be honest but others might get value from that + The Mac keyboard layout is US-like, even on European models. Which means a bunch of keys are in different places from their European IBM counterparts (like @ and "). The # and / keys I find particularly hard to locate on Macs. I often end up redefining my Mac keyboard to be an IBM keyboard even though it differs from the key caps. It's a nightmare for anyone using my Mac but much easier for me who's had ~40 years of muscle memory. Not the keyboard hardware (so somewhat out of scope for this context) but it's also worth noting that there's some macOS keyboard shortcuts that differ in really confusing ways too. Like + Ctrl+C vs Cmd+C + Text area navigation on a Mac is totally different too. Home and End buttons behave differently. Ctrl+Arrow keys don't work. Shift+Arrow keys don't select. etc Every time I spend a few months in Linux and then switch to a Mac (or visa versa) I inevitably have a few days of pain relearning short cut keys.
Likes it
Unless you're only using built-in laptop keyboard/trackpad, why is that limiting. It's USB compatible with pretty much any 3rd party. I have a full size Mac keyboard with 10-key and home/end/del/pageUp/pageDown. I hate not having it. So I'm not sure why you're unable to use the same. I do agree on their mice being a bit lacking, but again, any mouse can be used. It's not like you have to have Dell mouse with your Dell comp. Gamers all use different mice, so why the hate on a peripherial?
Doesn’t like it
Are you right handed? I am and my right hand is larger/more muscular and fatigue for the weaker hand might be occurring. Or, with a normal key layout you might have more keystrokes on the left side - have you tried a Dvorak or split keyboard. Finally, is your posture and wrist angle/support the same as for your right hand? I had wrist soreness due to the extreme thinness of a previous apple/Mac keyboard (wrists were bent upwards).
Doesn’t like itDoesn’t say they own it
One thing I don't like about the default mac keyboard is the weird placement of the command key. If you are a touch typist and learned by rote to type with your pinky, the command key placement on the mac just sucked. I'm not saying Windows got this right, but MS instead overloaded the left pinky with the windows key. And on the right pinky, it's function and menu keys. That made control and alt even harder to use. I think the A500 keyboard layout was better in every respect where the control key is where the caps lock key is now. Less keyboard options forced people to think more about software design.