So Last Wednesday night I picked up my new MacBook from the Purolator Shipping Centre (apparently no one was home when they came, even though I was home all day, but whatever) and then brought it home, unboxed it and gave it a frustrated look… I mean the technical specifications didn’t frustrated me, considering Apple replaced my 1.83GHz Core Duo MacBook with a 2.1GHz Core 2 Duo Macbook (latest base model), which performs better comparatively. What does frustrate me is its keyboard layout… I do like the addition of the media keys (rewind, play/pause, fast forward), but the rearrangement of the volume keys along with the addition of dedicated/labeled Exposé (All windows) and Dashboard keys where the volume keys used to be is quite annoying, not to mention there’s no longer a number pad… I mean, I know I’ll get used to it eventually, but that’s still stop it from frustrating me from now till then… On my old keyboard F3 – F5 were mute, volume down, and volume up, and F9 – F11 were my Exposé keys, and F12 was my Dashboard key. On the new layout, F3 is the Exposé (All Windows) key, F4 is Dashboard, F7 – F9 are the media keys as mentioned above, and F10 – F12 are the volume control keys. Seriously, every time I try to reach for the Dashboard key now, I turn the volume up, and when I try to turn the volume down, I get Dashboard, if I don’t get used to this soon I might go crazy… The only thing I do appreciate about the new keyboard is the replacement of the apple sign with the word ‘command’ on the command key, now people shut up and listen when I tell them it’s not officially called the ‘apple’ key…
On another note about the new MacBook, I’m going to write it here to remind myself that the retail release of OS X 10.5 Leopard that I have doesn’t have the right integrated graphics card drivers for the new MacBook… I used the retail disc to reinstall Leopard and I got a pretty annoying appearance of a white window every time the screen wakes from sleep, but reinstalling Leopard with the install discs that came with the MacBook lets things run without a hitch, so I’ve learned to never do it again… sigh…