The real question: why doesn’t Apple let users program their own F-keys? Or more accurately, why did they stop letting us do this (as we could do with OS 9)? Up in Cupertino there’s sometimes a kind of “father knows best” attitude which makes us do things somebody else’s way rather than the way we want.

I’m guilty too, though I do use the real numeric keypad on my desktop keyboard, I’ve never used the embedded keypad on a laptop. THe new arrangement is actually annoying as when I use my MacBook at my desk in OS X everything works perfectly, but when I boot into Windows I have no numlock key and strangely even the real hardware numeric keypad on my Apple keyboard (the new aluminum one) doesn’t work in Windows unless numlock is enabled.

Well, then it’s all your fault.

Peace,
Gene

P.S. Since I never use the numeric keypad, I really don’t care, actually.

I’m probably one of the people who helped cause the change. I have the last PowerBook G4 17″ model, and I was always pressing that num lock key by accident. When you do this, and suddenly your typing becomes a bizarre mix of letters, numbers and nonsense, and there’s no clear way to figure out what you did other than the LED on the num lock key, it’s easy to get downright frightened that something’s wrong with your machine.

And it is is so easy to press by mistake. I was doing it several times a day for a while .

So please, Apple, don’t bring back that num lock!

I have to admit, though, that I never use the numeric keypad on my regular, standard sized Apple keyboard, either, so I may just not really understand the advantages. Maybe I just don’t type enough numbers to like it.

D