Macbook keyboard Do you ever get to like it?

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Glow

Supreme [H]ardness
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Jul 20, 2002
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Alright this is one of the couple things keeping me from switching. I played around on a macbook the otherday and I can say that OSX is nice but I really didn't like the feel of the macbook it felt cheap. I dunno even the keyboard with the spaced out wierd keys really didn't do it for me. I love iLife but I don't like the hillbilly spaced teeth keyboard didn't feel comfortable at all.
BTW what kind of actual battery life do you get out of this thing?
 
step up to the adult table with a MacBook pro then. the keyboard is fabulous and is backlit(can be turned off). plus, it has a dedicated video card.
 
Personally I love the MacBook keyboard. While it does feel a little different than most other keyboards, I like it better than any other keyboard I've ever used. I type fast and never (and I mean never) find myself "double-tapping" keys, meaning I never accidentally hit two keys at once.

I don't know why you think it feels cheap. To me it feels slightly different and I wish more keyboards were like it (like the Apple desktop keyboard I'm typing on now).
 
I thought the same thing but it gets easy to get used to quick.

The think I don't think most people realize is the "hat" to the keys is the same size relative to most other keyboards, they just don't have the trailing piece of beveled plastic that other keyboards do to flow into the next key. Most laptops tend to have a flatter bevelled edge than your typical fullsize keyboard but it is there, including on the dell lat800d I'm using right now, but it's not a part of the key that you use, so why should it matter? All Apple has done is take that out and dropped the key straight down rather than give it a beveled edge and molded a keyboard frame that identifies each key.

I find that I like that they don't have that trailing space/bevel between keys like a typical laptop keyboard I find that I make fewer mistakes as a result of catching other keys in my typing. The keys also feel much more responsive than any other laptop keyboard I've used while still maintaining a softer typing style of a laptop keyboard. And neither side stops dreaded hair and dust particles from getting down in between keys, or helps cleaning out, so it's relatively irrelevant to the case.

I just wish it was backlit like the MacBook Pro keyboard :/
 
I love this keyboard. Like mentioned already, I never hit two keys at once. I seem to do it a lot more with conventional keyboards than I do with this one. Give it a week or two and you'll probably grow to love it.
 
The Macbook keyboard is one of my all-time favorite keyboards, including both regular keyboards and laptops. It's awesome!
 
I love the macbook keyboard....it is quiet and easy to type on....takes like 3 days to get used to, but once you do, its very nice.
 
Another vote for the MB keyboard. I have a MBP and I wish it had the MB keyboard. It does feel kind of funny at first, but the keys are very responsive and easy to use once you get used to it.

My friend's MacBook gets about 4 hours of battery life depending on what exactly she's doing.
 
Does the screen darken after a certain time of being idle and can you change the time it does this? On the trackpad can you increase the sensativity on it? so like shorter movements on it mean bigger on the screen?
 
One of the reasons I shelled out for a MBP was the fact that I didn't like the keyboard on the MacBook. It might seem like a miniscule thing to people, but I need to be comfortable typing on it to use it.
 
Glow said:
Does the screen darken after a certain time of being idle and can you change the time it does this? On the trackpad can you increase the sensativity on it? so like shorter movements on it mean bigger on the screen?
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Yes on both accounts. You also have full control of the brightness of the screen from the function keys and the trackpad is one of the smoothest I've ever used (some of the ones I've used on other laptops have had jerky movements or you needed to be too rough with them). I'm also a huge supporter of their double finger and tap functionality, but that's really a feature of all the current Apple Laptops.

Oh and I get about 4 hours on mine continuous.. and that's even while doing "work" with it, unlike my dell laptops where I can't do much more than surf. On the Macbook I've done a lot of playing with images and such and some other stuff. And the sleep mode is awesome, it can go forever just by shutting the lid, on some occassions though I wish it wouldn't autosleep so I could pick it up and move to other places in the room/house without losing the wireless connectivity. I couldn't play games on the battery or do massive video reprocessing, but it's not really a game machine anyway and I don't know of any laptops that game well on battery.
 
at my University I looked at the macbook are the keys yellowy/tan? Or are they white? I'm guessing overtime they get stained?
 
Glow said:
at my University I looked at the macbook are the keys yellowy/tan? Or are they white? I'm guessing overtime they get stained?
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I haven't heard of the keys getting stained, generally it's the palm rests. They're white with white macbooks, and black with black ones of course out of the box.

None of the white macbooks on my floor (all 3 of them) have yellow/tan keys, they're all still white, but some of them are getting stains on their palm rests, so I'm going to help those people get it figured out. My black macbook just shows fingerprints on my keys more, they actually look kinda wet/darker than the rest, but overtime it's uniform haha, had the same thing with the black keyboard on my green alienware area-51m, it's not a problem with the laptop, it's the user(s).

Hmm, yellow/tan keys on white macbook? never heard of that problem, it should get replaced if that issue arises for you though.
 
The new keyboard takes a couple of days to get used to, but once you do you will love it. As for the palmrests looking stained after awhile, just use a Mr. Clean magic eraser and it will look new again.
 
I'm gonna go ahead and echo the "Get a MBP if you don't like the MB's keyboard" sentiment. I freaking love the MBP's keyboard :)
 
I have a macbook, the keyboard is probably my favorite feature.

The moment i touched this kb at a local compusa i fell in love.

I guess it is an opinion thing.
 
I have a MacBook Pro and I love the keyboard, mainly for the same reasons the other people here are saying. The backlight is really nice and I'm now finding myself wishing that my PC had it too. The ambient light sensor on the Pro is also very nice, I don't know if that's on the MacBook off hand.

As for battery life I'm getting anywhere from 3 to a little over 5 hours, depending upon what I'm doing of course.
 
when would you guys guess they would put core 2 duos in there also do you think they would be adding a bigger battery?
 
The iMacs already have Core 2s in them so I'm guessing the next model of the MB/P will have them, but with Apple, who knows?

As for the bigger battery, I have no clue, but I'd guess no since the current ones are working pretty well.
 
I hate hate hated the macbook (non pro) keyboard at first. But I was put into a situation (my friends rely on me for tech support, and I couldn't keep supporting a particular one without having the equivalent platform at home) where I had to get a mac pretty quickly, and so I walked out the door of fry's with a low end macbook. After just a few days, I'm just fine with it. Now, its no Model M, but pound for pound, its a darn comfortable laptop keyboard.

I'm really glad about my purchase. I'll be putting 2gb of ram in it and maybe a 120 gig hard drive and saving what I consider to be 500 or 600 bucks (shame about that 950 graphics though, still, its a laptop)
 
The Macbook keyboard is pretty nice and comfortable, I haven't had any problems with mine yet. Now if only it had 2 mouse buttons as well...two finger use is better than nothing, but not two buttons.
 
An interesting example:

At work, I have a Dell keyboard (and an old Dell CRT, and an old HP computer :confused: ). If I put my finger out on the edge of the right shift key* and press down, I have to press really hard to make the key go down, it looks all tilted and it has issues registering the key as depressed.

I tried the same on the Macbook. It felt exactly the same as pressing down on the middle of it. I sure as hell didn't notice any tilting of it, either. Awesome.


*it's the widest key except for the space bar on swedish keyboards
 
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