Apple’s Aluminum Keyboard

I got one of Apple’s new keyboards because (1) it looks really nice (and goes with my Mac Pro in a way that the transparent white one did not) and (2) I wanted to decide what I thought of Apple’s little micro-usability efforts (e.g. the fractional delay required to activate the capslock).

So I love the keyboard but for some reason the function key equivalents aren’t working for me. So I look at the manual (WTF?!) and discover there’s a driver download (WTF2). And then I saw this:

OK, I’ve seen software bloat, but this is frickin’ ridiculous. (How is it that Microsoft’s mice work flawlessly in a Mac with no drivers — although you can install drivers if you want to remap buttons or whatever — but Apple somehow requires a download to support its own keyboard? Well, maybe they didn’t want to just give everyone the drivers because, you know, they’re 30 frickin megabytes.)

End exasperated rant.