The new small Apple keyboard
While drooling over the new iMac in the Apple Store today, I was a little perplexed when I noticed that all the display models had a small compact keyboard that looked like a Macbook keyboard, with no numeric keypad or separate arrow keys. The salesman confirmed my suspicions that this was indeed the way that Apple was now shipping them and not just the store display. My immediate thought was “how desparate is this company to save money?”
On their website, Apple say:
The wired Apple Keyboard comes standard with your iMac. Its ultracompact design saves space and lets you mouse comfortably next to your keyboard. Or you can choose the Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad or the Apple Wireless Keyboard. In addition, you can select the language of the keyboard and documentation.
The older, full size Apple keyboard...
This sounds like public relations spin woven around the fact that the company’s value engineers have been at work here, potentially to find some cross–platform common components to reduce manufacturing costs (this keyboard is most likely based on the one that is in their laptops) and manufacturing inventories.
I can’t imagine buying a desktop machine without a full keyboard, a fact that a quick survey amongst my computer using friends seems to confirm — with every one of them saying that they could not do without a numeric keypad in their day–to–day usage of the iMac, and many of them saying this is one of the reasons that they use external keyboards on their Macbooks.
Fortunately, for now at least, it seems you can select the old full sized keyboard at no cost when you order a new iMac from the online Apple store, so if you don’t want a compact keyboard, be careful when you checkout, as no doubt you would have to purchase the larger one should you chose to do so at a later date.
