So you’ve succumed to the anodised aluminium wonder and purchased the slimline Apple keyboard (wired in this case)... but you don’t own a Mac and you want to get it working on WinXP.

You could just plug it in and it would work satisfactorily as it is.

However, what about the INS (Insert key) or the NUM (Numlock key) and all those specific OS X keys? What do they do now that this brushed beauty is running on a legacy OS?

Solution: Get the Apple driver.

If you’re an OS X user you’ll know that OS X 10.5 comes with BootCamp. This allows you to run a Microsoft OS on your Apple hardware with no OS X in sight. To fascilitate this desecration Apple have provided a swag of Windows drivers to allow the hardware to function.

One of the drivers is for the Apple keyboard.

To get the driver you could try downloading it, or you could ask one of your OS X using friends to get it for you.

If you have an OS X 10.5 DVD as I have you do the following:

1. Mount the OS X DVD on a Windows PC
2. double click the “Drivers” folder
3. double click the “Apple” folder

To install the drivers double click the “applekeyboardinstaller.exe”.

You can reboot if you like, it’s Windows afterall and it’s never happy without a reboot of some type.



Now when you plug in your slimline “twiggy” of the keyboard world, WinXP will detect it and away you go!

Key equivalents:

fn = INS
clear = NUM LOCK


Hiccups that I’ve found:

1. When installing NetWare in ESX server you are required to press the F10 key to accept the licence. In this instance F10 is not translating. Could be the Apple driver, could be the keyboard mapping to ESX. Fairly obscure I know, but worth mentioning.
UPDATE:- The F10 key is working fine, along with all the function keys. Solution: press the FN key in combination with the function key of your choice. All good. So now I have no hiccups.

2. Let me know if you find more and I’ll add them to the list.

Tags: apple, technology, mac