A Drastic Keyboard Change
Extended Keyboard II vs Magic Keyboard
I have always been a keyboard guy. For as long as I can remember, I’ve used big, clicky, important keyboards. The way a keyboard feels and sounds has always been, well, key to my typing enjoyment.
Then along comes the iPad and its Smart Keyboard. Now that I’m spending a great deal of time typing on the little Smart Keyboard, I’m finding that switching between that and my dear old Apple Extended Keyboard II on the desktop is a bit of a shock.
So, continuing my recent trend of making my desktop and mobile experiences as similar as possible, I’ve put a little Apple Magic Keyboard on my desks and retired the big Extended Keyboards. This is a dramatic change for me, but it has brought a few improvements.
- I now have way more room on my desks. Just look at the size difference in the above photo.
- It frees up a USB port (I charge it using an existing Lightning cable)
- It feels similar to the Smart Keyboard, reducing the shock of switching from mobile to desktop
- I can finally remap Caps Lock to Control. (The Extended Keyboard’s Caps Lock key physically “locks” when pressed.)
The down side is that I’m not sure I’ll ever be as good at typing on this little thing. Also, I’m not used to having no numeric keypad or Home keys, etc. I could get the larger Magic Keyboard with the extra keys but I’m trying to learn to live without them. Plus, how will my coworkers know I’m working if they can’t hear the loud clackity-clack of my keyboard? I’m quite sure they won’t miss it, to be honest.
It’s been a week since switching to the smaller keyboard, and I’m dealing with it, if not yet loving it. Eventually I hope I can learn to enjoy living like this and that the benefits outweigh the feeling that I’m giving up an important part of how I interact with these machines.