MacBook(pro) right ALT key: not just on new models

Posted by on Feb 27, 2008 in free | 3 Comments

At yesterday’s announcement of the new MacBook Pro, I had a “finally!” moment when I read that the right Enter key was deprecated in favor of another Option (ALT) key on the right side of the keyboard.
If you’re a keyboard freak as I am, you have probably cursed Apple for this missing feature.
Well… it seems that you’re now able to shell some cash out and get a new laptop and throw away the one you bought 9 days ago.
Just Kidding.
Mine is from last august and this is just a tease to whoever bought one last week :D

A bit happy for the newcomers and a bit disappointed for myself, I started wondering whether there’s some utility out there that can do the same.
Well… I stubled upon this great japanese dude who programmed one for his own usage (Emacs etc) and made it available to the public.

Greet KeyRemap4Macbook, everyone.

The utility is confirmed to work on MacBook/MacBook Pro and Mac Mini (not sure which) and is Universal Binary.
I can confirm it works on my MBP 2.4

Personal usage scenario:
having Spaces remapped to ALT rather than CTRL, having a right ALT key makes me super happy (and will soon give me RSI)

below a screenshot of the configuration I used.
system-preferences001.png

Popularity: 5% [?]

3 Comments

  2. arturogoga
    February 27, 2008

    But wouldn’t it remap it to another Left Alt key?) I mean, the real ALT-Gr is another key completely.

    I’m saying this because I tried this program the other day, and Left Alt worked exactly as a Left Alt, not Alt-GR.

    DoubleCommand worked for this, but it is now incompatible with Leopard

  3. ubi
    February 27, 2008

    hi, arturo.

    You’re right.
    This will NOT simulate or map “Alt gr”, but here we’re talking Macs and that key, if memory serves me well (I used to be PC user for 11 years) is PC/Windows specific.
    What Mac users really long for is ALT, same as it is on the left side of the keyboard.

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