New Apple Keyboard has smart caps lock avoidance
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The engineers in Cupertino aren’t historically ones to keep old technology around in their products for sentimental– or even practical– reasons. Apple was the first major computer manufacturer to move their entire product line to USB peripherals, the first to make FireWire standard, and one of the first to offer notebooks with ExpressCard instead of PCMCIA.
It makes one wonder then why on earth they’ve kept that useless caps lock key around. Sure, its part of the standard keyboard layout (and arguably not for much longer– the OLPC has no such key), but since when has Apple really cared that much about standards?
It seems, though, that even if Apple isn’t dropping caps lock all together, they’re at least making it less of a nuisance to those of us WHO DON’T SEND EVERY EMAIL AS IF WE’RE YELLING ACROSS A CROWDED CITY STREET.
Jonathan Rentzsch of Red Shed software has figured out that the slim new Apple Keyboards are smart enough to ignore accidental caps lock activation. A quick jab at the key, such as the kind one would do on accident, is insufficient to trigger virtual screaming. Instead, users must hold the key down for a few milliseconds to get the undesired result. All the gory details, plus video, at Wolf’s site.
see, I type softly and I was wishing that the keyboard was more sensitive. I tape the caps lock key and realize that it didn’t activate and the same thing for deactivating the key. Kt’s very annoying!
@Adam Jackson
I am not sure what you’re trying to say…
Anyway, I think the caps lock key has it’s purpose, which is why they kept it. If I have to write something for design sake in ALL CAPS, it is really annoying to hold down the shift key while trying to write. SO… Out of date? Did it really have a purpose in the first place other than that? So, why get rid of it if there are people who need one other than those people who like to yell out their frustrations?
I use caps lock all the time. You know correspondence isn’t the only thing people type on the computer.
So that’s what’s been happening! Bloody things been annoying the hell out of me… I thought there was something wrong with my keyboard. To be honest I’d rather it either worked properly or they just got rid altogether, what’s the point in having a button that doesn’t respond properly when you press it? Or maybe I just type like a girl…
Awesome, why cant they do that to the MacBook Pros?? I almost always bump capslock when im typing quickly and pressing the a key.
Dear Apple:
Please make the caps lock key a shift key. Press caps lock for 4-10 seconds (could be changed in Sys Prefs) & then there will be caps.
I still prefer to disable Caps Lock on System Preferences, but hey, that’s good news.