Mac Geekery

Answer

Many of the specialty hardware items in the world are for Windows-based machines, and keyboards are no exception. While I’m partial to Apple’s little white wonder, there’s a billion and one keyboards out there, some with two dozen keys apiece to do all kinds of wondrous things.

It is becoming increasingly more common as people come to the Mac for folks to want to use these devices on their Mac, so I’ll do a little refresher on how to accomplish some of these deeds and make the keyboards more Mac-like.

Moving Modifier Keys Around

You can remap the modifier keys however you like using the Keyboard control panel, as I discussed in my tip/rant Kill Caps Lock. Incidentally, you can also turn off keys from here, or make Caps Lock function as Control, if you’re from the olden-times. Actually, if you use Text Mate at all, it’s wonderful to put Control there because you can hit it much more easily with your pinky. The downside is that using TM on someone else’s computer will make your TEXT COME OUT A LITTLE ODD when you thought you were hitting a mACRO and weren’t.

Using the Media Keys

The media keys are not function keys. They’re a whole other key code and, as such, Mac OS X doesn’t have much use for them. For many keyboards, especially Logitech’s, the sound buttons work in Mac OS X just fine as Apple used the same key codes that other makers were using. Those little mail and web buttons, though, not a chance.

But there’s always hope. Get USB Overdrive and then you can map any of those keys to do anything you want to, including start programs or launch scripts. It’s not free, but it’s worth it if you’re going to live on a PC keyboard.

Automatically Convert

Mac Geekery user unixgeek came up with an article a while back called GUI Automation with AppleScript and the example was how to automate the exchange of modifier keys when you have a Mac or PC keyboard connected. It’s well-worth looking at if this is something you’ll be changing often.