What "magic" means for Apple's UK Magic Keyboard

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What "magic" means for Apple's UK Magic Keyboard

Just a quick warning for those of you in the UK looking to buy Apple's new "Magic Keyboard". I bought one yesterday from John Lewis so that it was covered by their two-year warranty rather than Apple's one year warranty. However on opening the box I found that the 'pound' sign had magically disappeared from the keyboard (along with the adjacent 'euro' sign). Pressing shift-3 still gets me the 'pound' sign but surely at 79GBP Apple could at least have splashed out on a few keys with our currency printed on them? The top photo is of the keyboard Apple claims to sell in the UK whilst the lower photo is what they are actually selling. Very misleading.

Posted on Dec 4, 2015 2:45 AM

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Answer 1

seventy one

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Dec 4, 2015 2:55 AM in response to gdlowuk

Have you had a chance to ask the John Lewis people if they were aware of this discrepency. Problem is, if it is a Magic Keyboard 2 and suitable only for use with El Capitan (10.11.1) it may be that that is the way they are made nowadays. There is a possible saving in manufacturing by not having to make different keyboards for countries with the same language just because they have different currencies.

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Answer 2

seventy one

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Dec 4, 2015 3:04 AM in response to gdlowuk

Reviewing your profile, I can now see you are on Snow Leopard. You should still be able to get older versions of UK keyboards from Apple stores or Amazon though you may need to specify them.

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Answer 3

gdlowuk Author

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Dec 4, 2015 3:19 AM in response to seventy one

Sorry I hadn't updated my profile - I've now got an iMac running 10.11.1. I'm waiting to hear back from John Lewis but find it strange how the supplied product differs from Apple's own images.

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Answer 4

seventy one

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Dec 4, 2015 3:26 AM in response to gdlowuk

Always good policy to keep your profile updated when you are asking questions ... can waste an awful lot of time ... though not this time 😀

You were comparing like with like when you mention images? John Lewis will exchange it if they have the older version available or refund if they haven't... and the old one should work properly with El capitan.

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Answer 5

Tom Gewecke

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Dec 4, 2015 5:40 AM in response to seventy one

.

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Answer 6

Tom Gewecke

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Dec 4, 2015 5:44 AM in response to gdlowuk

The magic keyboard is not yet being made in the British version it seems. You can ask Apple to do that via

http://www.apple.com/feedback

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Answer 7

seventy one

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Dec 4, 2015 6:48 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Thanks, Tom. I rather suspected that but I didn't actually know.

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Answer 8

Tom Gewecke

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Dec 4, 2015 7:02 AM in response to seventy one

Actually I see now they do seem to let you get a British Magic Keyboard if you order an iMac from the UK store:

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Answer 9

gdlowuk Author

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Dec 8, 2015 9:40 AM in response to gdlowuk

I returned the keyboard to John Lewis. They checked all their stock and every keyboard was wrong so they have had to withdraw the item from sale. They have now alerted all the other stores to check their stock as well. Pretty poor that Apple is sending out items like this to stores that then have to be withdrawn from sale.

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Answer 10

Tom Gewecke

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Dec 8, 2015 10:11 AM in response to gdlowuk

gdlowuk wrote:

I returned the keyboard to John Lewis. They checked all their stock and every keyboard was wrong so they have had to withdraw the item from sale.

Interesting! Was it actually labeled someplace as British English? The online Apple store for the UK sells 5 different keyboards: The one you got seems to be International English. US English has no key to the left of the Z.

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Answer 11

gdlowuk Author

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Dec 8, 2015 10:15 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

I would guess the part number would identify what country the keyboard was for but I would have thought British retailers would have been sent British keyboards by Apple. What is strange is that the keyboard is kind of a hybrid design. It adopts the UK standard return key which is spread over two lines rather than the one line return key on the US version and yet they haven't localised the currency keys for some reason.

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Answer 12

Tom Gewecke

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Dec 8, 2015 10:40 AM in response to gdlowuk

It could be the folks at John Lewis specified the wrong keyboard when ordering. The International English keyboard is sold in a variety of different countries as a standard ISO English qwerty layout. Its part number has Z/A at the end (instead of B/A for the British version).

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Answer 13

dmwangt

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Dec 8, 2015 4:31 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

Yeah.... One of my friends has the keyboard you own and indeed it is the "International English" version. Watch out! 😮

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Answer 14

gdlowuk Author

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Dec 9, 2015 7:38 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

Yes it does seem likely someone at John Lewis has ticked the wrong box when ordering and selected International English instead of British English. Probably not surprising as most software for the UK is classified as International English nowadays.

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