Apple’s Beautiful New Keyboard (MB110LL/A) on Windows

Now THAT'S a nice keyboard!

(This post may also be useful for people interested in the MB167LL/A BlueTooth wireless keyboard.)

Immediately upon seeing it, I was in love with the new Apple desktop keyboard. I wanted one, but the only place I use a desktop keyboard is at work… on a Windows machine. At home, I’m a laptop user and currently have no need for external keyboards. I will, once I have my office set up the way I want it. But until then, I’m an internal keyboard user.

I knew, thanks to the USB HID protocol, that this thing would likely work, which it did. I didn’t realize I’d run into issues with the keys that are missing. Apple doesn’t have Print Screen (PrtSc), Scroll Lock, Pause/Break, or Insert on their keyboards. The biggest issue I have is the missing Print Screen button.

Fixing this issue is a simple matter of hacking the registry, or alternatively installing and using the wonderful RandyRants.com SharpKeys utility. This utility helps with installing the proper registry tweaks to get this keyboard operational.

More after the jump… Now THAT'S a nice keyboard!

If you don’t want to install the software, you can simply use the following registry hack:

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]
"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,03,00,00,00,52,e0,64,00,37,e0,65,00,00,00,00,00

This hack maps the F13 key as the Insert key, and F14 as Print Screen. Honestly, I don’t currently care about the other missing keys. I couldn’t get SharpKeys to detect the Fn key to remap as Insert, so you have to live with F13.  That’s probably a blessing, as I always accidentally hit the Insert key, so this moves it one step further from my fumbling fingers.  Those of you who do, try out the awesome SharpKeys tool, it allows endless editing of the configuration.

Note, this is Windows, so you’ll have to reboot after changing any of these settings.

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