Power button on keyboard

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Level 2

407 points

Power button on keyboard

Can someone please explain to me why Apple stopped putting a power button on the keyboard?

My old B & W and everything before it came with a power button on the keyboard. I've been using those little keyboards that came with the B & W's ever since.

I've recently purchased some new Macs and some new Apple keyboards. Now I've known that they stopped putting the power button on the longer keyboards since the first iMacs came out. But I never really thought about it until now.

Now with my new Apple KBs, I'm really missing that power button.

The Apple tech I spoke with on the phone was so young that she never even heard of a power button on the keyboard. LOL!

(2) Mini 1.66 Ghz Duo Core • MacBook 1.83 Ghz Duo Core, Mac OS X (10.4.7), (2) B & W G3/500 • Gigabit G4/1.6 Ghz Dual

Posted on Aug 2, 2006 10:57 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Niel

Level 10

726,515 points

Aug 2, 2006 11:37 PM in response to sparky67

The Power button may have been removed in some keyboards because many of the computers it could be attached to also had an easily accessible power button, and certain iMac models don't support the use of the power button on an external keyboards. With later keyboard revisions, the space used by the Power button was used for the Eject button.

(14910)

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Answer 2

varjak paw

Level 10

170,200 points

Aug 3, 2006 12:16 PM in response to sparky67

Adding to what Niel said, Apple stopped making systems that could power on via the USB bus several years ago now (about the time of the slot-loading iMacs if memory serves, though I could be misremembering about the exact model timeframe), and at that time they removed the power button from the keyboards since it would no longer function.

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Answer 3

sparky67 Author

Level 2

407 points

Aug 3, 2006 1:08 PM in response to varjak paw

Yes. This all happened around 2000.

I just tested it on a slot loading iMac. It functions only to do a shutdown and will not power it up. Same thing on the Minis and the MacBook.

Works fully on my G3 and G4 towers.

Never really could use it to "power up" since everything here is on a KVM anyway. Shutdown still worked for all the computers though and that's what I really miss now.

~ Thanks! ~

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Answer 4

Aug 22, 2006 5:52 AM in response to sparky67

This reminds me of something... In OS 8 or earlier, there was a thing called 'QuickKeys', a utility that let you make shortcuts for just about everything. Amongst these was the option to have a certain keycombo to have the Mac shut down. It could very well be that you can configure a keycombo to do this very thing, you just need to make a macro and attach a shortcut/keycombo.
Good luck!

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Answer 5

sparky67 Author

Level 2

407 points

Aug 22, 2006 6:34 AM in response to Willem Frederik

This reminds me of something... In OS 8 or earlier,
there was a thing called 'QuickKeys', a utility that
let you make shortcuts for just about everything.
Amongst these was the option to have a certain
keycombo to have the Mac shut down. It could very
well be that you can configure a keycombo to do this
very thing, you just need to make a macro and attach
a shortcut/keycombo.
Good luck!

It's even easier than that.

In the Keyboard & Mouse control panel, I assigned "Shut Down..." to the F13 key under All Applications. This works perfectly.

However there are now two Shut Down items in the Apple Menu. One assigned to F13 brings up the Shut Down dialog box, the other shuts down instantly.

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