Follow Up--Apple Pro Keyboard on Older Macs

I canceled my order in response to The Apple Store's email as posted over the weekend. The email said Apple would not have a fix for 4 non-funtional keys with older Macs until early in 2001. Well, one exists today as I confirmed yesterday. The USB Device Extension v1.4.5 that came with Mac OS 9.0.4 on my Power Mac G4 Cube allows the new Pro keyboard to function perfectly on a Power Mac G4 Sawtooth. The Volume Up and Down, Mute and Eject keys all work. The Eject key does eject a CD in the DVD drive and Control-Eject causes the shutdown dialog box to appear if there is no CD in the drive. Yesterday, MacCentral reported their confirmation that this is true for v1.4.3 and v1.4.4 on an early G4 and very early 233 MHz iMac.

In addition, Greg Chan wrote:

"...just wanted to let you guys know that the apple pro kb works fine with the apple usb ddk 1.4.6a1.... the latest version b2 (?) doesn't seem to enable the media eject key... tested successfully on all these machines..

1. g4 with agp
2. imac dv se
3. pismo 400

pressing the control-command/option with media eject key combos allowed to restart, shut down, sleep and bring up the shut down dialog box. the usb ddk software can be downloaded here... they are very stable IMHO."

What remains to be explained is why would The Apple Store make such a false statement to its customers? Apple already had the solution at hand before making the false statement. Some cynically claim that this was a ruse to reduce the number of orders but The Apple Store only had to carry the ones it couldn't fill as backordered as long as it took or until people gave up. Surely doing so would cause discontent but not as much as when customers found out that they had been misled. Perhaps it's simply a case of the right hand not knowing what's in the left hand. If so, then Apple should release the newer extension and The Apple Store should offer people the opportunity to reinstate their order. It's the right thing to do just like the G4 CPU speed fiasco of last year.

I have decided to not reinstate my keyboard order if offered. While the Pro USB keyboard is much better in some ways than the original USB keyboard, I actually don't dislike the original since I use a PowerBook frequently and the two are similar. I'm going to wait and see if there is a Rev.B Pro keyboard with one of those cool touch-sensitive lilac power "buttons".