Buying an iMac in France with QWERTY keyboard

seventy one wrote:

The key to this is the language you intend to use. Clearly you want the azerty if you intend to write in French.

That is nonsense. Regardless of the language you are typing, you want the kind of keyboard you are used to. Typing French on a qwerty keyboard is no problem at all.

Clavier Apple

Par défaut, votre iMac est livré avec le clavier sans fil Apple. Son format ultra compact permet de gagner de la place et de disposer la souris aisément près du clavier. Vous pouvez également opter pour le clavier filaire Apple avec pavé numérique. De plus, vous avez le choix de la langue du clavier et de la documentation.

• Clavier sans fil Apple (Anglais britannique) -- QWERTY
• Clavier sans fil Apple (Anglais international) -- QWERTY
• Clavier sans fil Apple (US) -- QWERTY
• Clavier Apple avec pavé numérique (Anglais britannique) -- QWERTY
• Clavier Apple avec pavé numérique (Anglais international)-- QWERTY
• Clavier Apple avec pavé numérique (US) -- QWERTY

As mende1 says, you just need to set the keyboard type in "System Preferences Language and Text / Input Sources". Make sure you ONLY have "British" selected if you have a UK keyboard. Then the UK keyboard should work perfectly.

Regarding the language, go to "System Preferences Language and Text / Language" and drag English to the top of the list. Mac OS X and the Apple applications will then all work in English as if you were in the UK.

If you buy third-party applications in France, they might only support the French language. If in doubt, but such applications over the Internet from the UK. It is very unlikely that they would force an AZERTY layout, since applications don't talk to the keyboard directly. I don't believe that having a French App Store account should be a problem. Some of the content on the Fench iTunes store will naturally be in French, but many of the apps will be international ones (e.g US):

http://support.apple.com/kb/ht2242

The key to this is the language you intend to use. Clearly you want the azerty if you intend to write in French.

Take a look through the options in "More like this' to the right of your initial post; that will show you other people's questions of a similar nature.

I have never seen anything similar.

Are you sure OS X is set up to use an English keyboard layout? If it's French, it's normal that it doesn't work properly. Open System Preferences > Language and Text > Input Sources, and you have to tick English and untick French, so now OS X is set up to use an English keyboard. Can you type correctly now?

lowcarbon wrote:

The QWERTY keyboard gave an AZERTY response to keystrokes.

That just means that someone has made the French keyboard layout active instead of US or British. As Mende1 said, you go to system prefs/language & text/input sources, uncheck the box for French and make sure that only the box for US or British is checked.

The explanation you got from the Apple store is totally moronic.

Fair comment, Tom, but ... English keyboards cannot allow for accents anywhere near as easily as the Azerty version. As you say, you want the keyboard you are used to and if you are typing in French, ideally you would want the keyboard that allows you to type naturally ... in French.

Well, that's how I see it and I often have to type in French on my English keyboard.

seventy one wrote:

I often have to type in French on my English keyboard.

For a qwerty touch-typist, I would guess that the most natural layout for inputting a lot of French would be US International PC, where you just hit the ' key before the e, etc. I would think that switching to azerty would require abandoning touch typing for most users.

I don't know whether it helps to clarify things, but the French and UK keyboards are effectively the same apart from the letters printed on the keys. So when you press an "A" on the French keyboard it sends the same code to the computer as when you press the "Q" on the UK keyboard, since they are the same key. It is the "Input Sources" setting on the computer that determines how those codes are interpreted as letters.

It seems like the store used an AZERTY keyboard to set up the computer for you, but left it set to AZERTY, so when you got it home your QWERTY keyboard did not work properly. It's as simple as that.

lowcarbon wrote:

For example to make sure the iMac stays configured for qwerty keyboard you apparently need to set / register the App Store / iTunes with a uk billing address. Otherwise other apps default to azerty settings. Anyone agree this would happen??

No, this is total nonsense. As you have already been told, the keyboard layout is regulated by system preferences/language & text/input sources. You uncheck the box for French and make sure only the box for US or British is checked. Also make sure you check the box for Show Input Menu in Menu Bar. That way you will see a US or British flag at the top right of the screen for a qwerty layout.

If you let the French store set up the iMac using an azerty layout, it is not impossible that the Login page may be stuck on that. If so, there are ways to try and fix it.

Have you not yet made these settings in system preferences/language & text/input sources?

lowcarbon wrote:

I also find it very strange indeed that the Apple Store in France conceded that it was not possible for them to sell an iMac and qwerty keyboard and have this working correctly. So they took back the iMac as they were unable to configure it for my folk.

It is too bad that you had to return the machine. Keyboard layouts on a Mac can be switched from azerty to qwerty by users in a matter of seconds via system preferences. The staff in this particular store must be incredibly stupid. Could you tell us which one it was exactly? It is not uncommon to find Apple store staff poorly infomed about language issues in the US, but in France one would expect better. There are no laws there which require the use of an azerty keyboard layout, they only regulate the language used for various things.

lowcarbon wrote:

so with qwerty keyboard and all iOS and apps (even safari or chrome / google searches) to behave as if UK.

PS An iMac uses OS X. iOS is used by iPhone/iPad. Search engine behavior is something independent of keyboard layout and may need some special settings adjustments of its own to get it to work as if you were in a different country.

Dr.Mac. wrote:

Clavier Apple

What is your point in posting this? The poster said he got a qwerty keyboard with the iMac without problem. But the apple store could not make it behave as qwerty, only azerty, so when he hit the key labled q, it typed a.