Clear key on the unibody keyboards?

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Clear key on the unibody keyboards?

On my previous generation MBPros, I was able to synthesize clear by using Fn-6. This does not appear to work on the new keyboard (possibly because the numlock functionality was also removed from these new keyboards).

Anyone know how to feed a clear key equivalent into an application running on a unibody MB Pro?

17" MBPro Unibody, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on Jul 14, 2009 11:01 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 15, 2009 1:40 AM in response to Owen DeLong

Owen,

Uhhh, "C," perhaps??

Scott

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Answer 2

Jul 15, 2009 3:04 AM in response to Owen DeLong

Fn-Delete works for me.
Pete

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Answer 3

Owen DeLong Author

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Jul 15, 2009 8:29 AM in response to Peter Bolter

I tried both the Fn-Delete and C, Fn-C, Ctrl-C, Alt-C, Cmd-C, etc. combinations.

None of them produced the equivalent of hitting the "Clear" key on a full-size keyboard which was achieved by hitting Fn-6 on previous generation Macbook Pro and Powerbook keyboards.

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Answer 4

Jul 15, 2009 11:29 AM in response to Owen DeLong

There isn't one. On older MBP keyboards, there was an embedded numeric keypad (jkl=123, etc.) activated by the NumLock (F6) key. That was eliminated from the MBPs starting with the Penryn models (Early 2008).

Perhaps you can tell us what app/function you need the clear key for...there may be alternatives. The suggestion from Scott (the 'c' key) refers to the OS X calculator app and widget, where the letter c functions as a clear key. FYI, Fn-delete is the same as delete on a Windows keyboard (Mac 'delete' = Windows 'backspace').

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Answer 5

Owen DeLong Author

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Jul 15, 2009 4:28 PM in response to neuroanatomist

I can remap other keys in the individual applications, but, there are a variety of applications that I use which use the "Clear" key for a variety of purposes. I'd rather not have to reconfigure all of my applications, but, if that's what I have to do, I suppose I'll do it.

I'm aware of the numeric keypad and the Numlock capability being eliminated, but, there was specifically a way to achieve the "Clear" key (Apple full keyboard) which is in the same position and I suppose may be the same hardware keycode as the "NumLock" key (PC Keyboards). I guess when they elminated the NumLock functionality they decided we no longer needed the keycode work-around for it either. Ideally, it would be good if Apple came out with a firmware update that restored the functionality of Fn-6 to do that.

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Answer 6

Jul 15, 2009 4:32 PM in response to Owen DeLong

Owen DeLong wrote:
Ideally, it would be good if Apple came out with a firmware update that restored the functionality of Fn-6 to do that.

Makes sense, and probably not too difficult for them to implement. You may want to make that suggestion!

You can submit feedback to Apple: http://www.apple.com/feedback/macbookpro.html.

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