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Apple Keyboard drivers for Windows machines (*not* Apple hardware)?

Hello, I want to connect the new (wired, USB 2.0) Apple keyboard to a Windows machine, i.e. +non-Apple hardware+ running Windows, not Apple hardware running Windows via Boot Camp. It generally seems to work ok, but I am missing some functionality, details below.


*Q. Does Apple provide keyboard drivers for non-Apple hardware?*



My Observations:

Connecting the new Apple keyboard to a non-Apple machine running Windows does not require any driver installation - Windows recognizes the Apple keyboard as a standard Microsoft keyboard. Which is mostly ok as it seems to map the Windows-specific keys quite reasonably:

Ctrl (apple) > Ctrl (win)
Option (apple) > Alt (win)
Cmd (apple) > win-key (win)

The right Option key also maps to AltGr. Furthermore:

Numpad-Clear (apple) > NumLock (win)

and the F1-F12 keys seem to map correctly as well.

However F13-F19 don't seem to map to anything; I a missing at least the following:

F13 (apple) > PrintScreen (win)
F14 (apple) > Break/Pause (win)
Fn key (apple) > insert key (win)

I would also like to be able to use the media keys on the F7-F12 and the dedicated Eject key.

All of this would be easy to accomplish with a dedicated driver from Apple; the problem seems to be that Apple currently only supplies windows keyboard drivers for Boot Camp users, i.e. Apple hardware running windows. Am I correct?

Polyglot (Mac OS, Ubuntu Linux, Windows)

Posted on Dec 7, 2007 10:37 AM

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Apple Keyboard drivers for Windows machines (*not* Apple hardware)?

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