ThinkMac, the guys behind the NewsLife RSS reader (I used its predecessor, NewsMac, back in the day), just got Apple’s fancy new iMac keyboard and delivered onto us a short, sorta mixed reaction review. There’s no silly unboxing, no “boy it’s sexyyy¡” here, just the opinion of some hard-working Mac developers.
The keyboard itself is fine: much thinner than the old model but similar to the MacBook one, if not a little more sturdy. There is a rather large caveat, however: the keyboard is very power hungry. So those built-in USB ports will work only with the most basic devices like cheap-o thumb drives. Don’t expect to plug in your 500GB hard drive or bulky memory card reader. Hmm, sounds just like my now-old iMac keyboard.
The software for the keyboard was also problematic. Why do you need a 30MB driver to tell the F4 key to open iTunes? A minor point to be sure, but Apple is selling this keyboard as its best one yet.
So is it a good keyboard? Well yeah, it is. If you can get used to the MacBook-like keys and have no problem with having to use an additional external USB hub, then you should feel just fine plopping down $50 for it.
New keyboard [ThinkMac Software Blog]
The Keyboard [Apple]