Mac OS X Lion: The Missing Manual

The Macintosh Keyboard

All through this book, you’ll find references to certain keys on Apple’s keyboards. “Hold down the key,” you might read, or “Press Control-F2.” If you’re coming from Mac OS 9, from Windows, or even from a typewriter, you might be a bit befuddled. (The reader email generated by previous editions of this book made that quite clear. “The alphabet has 26 letters,” one went. “Why do I need 101 keys?”)

To make any attempt at an explanation even more complicated, Apple’s keyboards keep changing. The one you’re using right now is probably one of these models:

• The current keyboards, where the keys are flat little jobbers that poke up through square holes in the aluminum (Figure 6-1). That’s what you get on current laptops, wired keyboards, and Bluetooth wireless keyboards.

• The older, plastic desktop keyboards, or the white or black plastic laptop ones.

  

  Figure 6-1. On the top row of aluminum Mac keyboards, the F-keys have dual functions. Ordinarily, F1 through F4 keys correspond to Screen Dimmer (), Screen Brighter (), Mission Control (), and either Dashboard () or Launchpad ( ...