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Apple Hardware

Mac OS X Keyboard Mapping

Back in 2002, Logitech gave away 20,000 Cordless Navigator Duo Keyboard/Mouse sets in celebration of 30 million cordless devices sold. For some reason Mac OS X doesn’t seem to recognize some keyboards correctly such as this, and even my standard Dell 104 Key Keyboard at work. Not sure why this is, but maybe being behind a KVM switch has something to do with it.

For anyone else who runs across this problem (and me next time I upgrade my OS and completely forget this), here’s the fix. First setup your keyboard with the wizard as Mac OS X prompts you to (it asks for the key next to the left shift key, and the right shift key). Once that’s done, go into System Preferences and select “Keyboard & Mouse”. Under “Keyboard” press the “Modifier Keys” button. Then change the settings to match your keyboard. For me the Apple (Command) and Alt/Option were inverted. Control was fine.

Keyboard Mapping On Mac OS X

Easy enough right? Now my keys map perfectly.

The Logitech Cordless Navigator Duo is a really cool keyboard since it’s one of the few that actually put both sets (Mac/Win) of lettering on the keys. There is software for this keyboard but in my experience Keyboard/Mouse software is garbage and should be avoided at all costs. It’s also not yet available for Mac OS X 10.5

2 replies on “Mac OS X Keyboard Mapping”

Hi Robert – this is good info for folks who use non-apple keyboards (like me) – thanks!

Thought you might also like to consider trying a software switch to replace your KVM and all it’s wires – I also used to use a KVM but now I use KMRemoteControl (available at http://www.derman.com) to switch between two Macs (desktop and laptop) and also a Windows PC that I use for testing things in Windows browsers – I absolutely love it. They also make an app called ClipCommControl that allows for clipboard copy & paste across multiple macs – so I can copy any text from one and paste in the other – doesn’t work with graphics or attachments but those are easy enough to copy across my network anyway.

I tried the free Synergy which does the same thing but had major problems with it and eventually gave it up and went back to KMRemoteControl, which I’ve had no problems with.

Cheers!

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