[OT] MacBook with external Windows keyboard - layout mappings

Have a look at Karabiner Elements. You can modify keyboard events from specific keyboards. So it will allow them to work differently, but you might have to manually create mappings for the keys you want.

Theo

Cool - Thanks Theo.

It's only a few things that are wrong - "@ are transposed, # buggered off and a few similar examples. Shouldn't take long.

I'm just really quite surprised if MacOSX is too dumb to handle this natively - external keyboards, especially Windows layout, are not a rare thing to jack in to any laptop.

Generally the Mac worldview is to eschew anything 'complicated'. So the answer to 'complicated' questions is often 'it can't be done', where the Linux worldview is 'everything can be done, but only if you root around in obscure config'.

(Often something can be done on Macs too, just the config is even less well-known. The Apple forum is particularly annoying for the posters whose default answers are 'can't be done' or 'you'll need to pay $$$ for Shiny Solution X')

Theo

Yes - I had: "What does Logitech say? They have software for their devices."

I shouldn't be rude, the guy did bother to type a reply (the only reply).

But, what? Really? It's a keyboard. A generic USB keyboard. Even Mac users who aren't well versed in other OSes much sure have at some point picked up an external PC keyboard, plugged it in, broken layout, fix layout, notice built in mappings now buggered - and said "this is bollocks - why doesn't it "just work"?

To be fair, I'm quite impressed with the general smoothness of MacOSX (coming from Linux) and it does, for the most part "just work".

I departed from Linux for Lightroom+Photoshop (no, Darktable and Gimp does not really cut the mustard, if you have a choice)

plus the kid's needed access to many of the Adobe apps (which I can get on education discount so pretty cheap) and Sibelius and Logic Pro X (the last is not so cheap!)

I could run most of those on Windows, but I'd rather screw up a blacksmith's vice across my temples than support Windows with 2 kids all over it.

I decided I'd probably have a more sensible conversation here :)

Ah. The Apple mindset in a nutshell.

I was for about a year until it just 'didn't work' and NO ONE could tell me how to fix it.

I wnet back to linux MINT and was instantly bacl in a plavce where stuff could be nade to work

Your keyboard needs remapping.

Oh indeed - linux is the most flexible OS there is (maybe BSD, but I have no experience...)

But when your objective is "run commercial software x,y and z" Mac does make sense.

We have 1 shared Mac. It was not cheap (even with discount) - so we use our other chromebooks and linux laptops for "consumer/everyday" stuff and pass the Mac around for the stuff it does well.

TBF there might be a third party workaround. But if you come from the Linux mindset you automatically expect everything to be included and third party drivers to be complete junk. MacOS is a bit more like Windows in that respect: it's not Apple's job to make the experience nice for everything you might add to your machine - the vendor sold you the hardware and the drivers are also their responsibility.

Increasingly more drivers are being written by Apple these days, and more devices are picking chips for which Apple have already written drivers, so the above balance is shifting towards the Linux position. (It's also becoming increasingly more difficult to write kernel extensions since they're such a security risk and due to the amount of vetting Apple requires)

uk.comp.sys.mac is quite friendly and has quite a few people who Know Stuff. Also covers iOS gadgets as well.

Theo

Thank you :)

Nope. I need toi bin firefox and thunderbird since they now miss keystrokes