Fix those Aluminium Keyboard woes
A few days ago, Scott mentioned that some people (myself included) had been experiencing issues with the F3 and F4 keys. Re-installation of the Keyboard Update 1.1 made no difference, and my F3 and F4 keys remained sadly nonfunctional on Apple's slim-line keyboard. Until this evening, that is, when yours truly received an email detailing a way that, in the author's experience, had resolved issues with the F3 & F4 keys. After having run the steps, I too am enjoying Dashboard and Exposé nirvana as Steve intended. So how do you go about fixing this? Read on to find out.
For those who are comfortable with Pacifist, all you need to do is simply download the Apple Keyboard Software update 1.1, and install the relevant contents of the package via Pacifist. If you've never used Pacifist (and truth be told, I hadn't before tonight) here's what you need to be doing.
After having downloaded both the Apple Keyboard Software update 1.1 and Pacifist, you'll want to ensure that Pacifist is running, and that the Keyboard software disk image is open and attached to your Mac.
As you can see above, there's actually 3 sub-installers inside this installer, one specifically for each Mac architecture and then a common installer. You'll need to select the relevant PowerPC or Intel installer and the common installer, and then choose 'Install' in the top left of the window (you'll probably need to authenticate before it'll fully run).
Now this is where it might put you all off. A number of prompts saying "Do you want to overwrite file x?" will appear (including one for Dock.app which made me gulp before clicking replace). I was gung-ho and simply chose to replace, update and overwrite in all circumstances and don't appear to be suffering any adverse effects. That said, overwriting any Apple-supplied applications may freak you out (even if the update is from Apple themselves) so here's the disclaimer: In my experience this has not caused any adverse effects, but you try it at your own risk and agree not to hold me, TUAW, Weblogs Inc or AOL responsible in the unlikely event of something going horribly wrong! It's likely that you'd need to update all the necessary files to ensure the installation works, so just let Pacifist do its thing. Once the installation is complete, restart and you should be all set.
Thanks Ian for the tip!