MacBook Caps Lock Key Isn't Soft Touch?

[armel]

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Hi guys,

I don't know if it's just me being too finicky about my Macbook, or there really is something wrong with its CAPS LOCK key. The Macbook unibody's keyboard is supposed to be soft-touch, right? No need, therefore, to pound on the keys when typing. Yeah that's true with mine except for the CAPS LOCK key. I have to exert extra force to activate the CAPS LOCK. So when I type really fast, "soft-touching" the CAPS LOCK key doesn't work. What the? ;-) Anyway, I'm rationalizing it by thinking that the CAPS LOCK key was made that way to prevent us from inadvertently activating it when we don't need to. But still, I'm getting paranoid. Your thoughts about this situation will be very much appreciated. I see myself heading soon to iStudio where I bought this to have it checked.

Cheers,

Armel

[NeilJohn]

The caps lock key isn't supposed to be hard. Its has the same tactile yet soft feedback as the rest of the keys. I think you really should visit your preferred service center soon.

Cheers

[PatrickGaerlan]

@armel, actually, it might be the normal behavior for the caps lock key. I noticed it on both my wife's and my unibody MacBook Pro. If you just tap the caps lock key VERY quickly, it won't activate. Tap it slightly longer and it will. It doesn't matter how hard you tap it, but how long it's pressed down.

I just checked, it IS a 'feature'. -- Intel-based Apple Portables: Caps Lock modified to reduce accidental activation. Personally, I don't mind it at all, but I think Apple should have provided a way to turn it off for those who don't want it.

[armel]

Hi Neil. Weird ano? But I found some literature over the Internet just now about the Macbook Unibody's CAPS LOCK keys. These articles say that it's actually an "undocumented feature". What do you think?

http://benfrain.com/notepad/category/macbook-caps-lock

TECH: An undocumented 2008 Macbook ‘feature’?
Friday, February 13th, 2009
As soon as my ‘unibody’ (late 2008) Macbook turned up (I’ll be using this until the new iMac’s come out) I was sure there was a fault. When I tapped the CAPS LOCK key the light didn’t come on. As I bashed the key on/off repetitively it would illimunate about 1 out of 20 presses. Balls! The key even felt slightly different to the others so I knew it was hardware related.
Cue a call to Apple support who made me jump through all the usual hoops (booting up in OSX safe mode etc) before confirming that it was a hardware problem and it would need repairing. This wasn’t an option I was about to entertain on a brand new MacBook so opted to have another MacBook delivered.
What do you know - this one is exactly the same! Caps lock only comes on 1 out of about 20 presses.
It seems the replacement MacBook also had the hard drive retention screw put in by Thor. I had a major panic trying to get it out without rounding the screw (jewellers screw driver and a weight on top whilst slowly turning eventually eased it out).
So, back on topic - what the hell is going on with the CAPS LOCK key? After much sifting of Apple’s support forums it turns out that the CAPS LOCK key has an undocumented feature: tap the key and it doesn’t activate (allegedly to reduce the chance of an accidental button press) but press the CAPS LOCK key for just a fraction of a second longer and what do you know - works every time. I thought it was a wind up when I read it, but if you have stumbled across this post because you think the CAPS LOCK on your MacBook is faulty - it probably isn’t! Someone just needs to tell the Apple support staff that.


Here's another one: http://thetechuniverse.co.uk/2009/04...ritten-review/

Track pad & Keybored:
Okay lets start of with the track pad. The track pad is huge! And that is a good thing, the whole track pad is one button, you just push your finger down the make a click, or in system preferences you can turn on tap to click, so you just tap the track pad to make a click. Multi Touch Gestures are amazing, 2 finger scroll I see myself using it a lot. You can swipe 3 fingers to swap between photo’s, 4 fingers swiping down to activate expose, or you can just click f3, pinch in and out to zoom in and out, very much like the iPhone, and click with two fingers to double click. The only bad thing about the track pad is the very top, the last centimeter or so, if you try to click there you have to push in very hard. Now lets talk about the keybored. There are a lot of features about the keybored, some of them you may not notice, but they are a great help. Okay, it is had a full keybored, no num pad though, chick let keys, they light up in low light conditions witch is a big help. A really nice little feature is, if your typing and you press the caps lock button by accident, it will not turn on unless you give it a good press, so this makes accidentally turning caps lock on almost impossible, but I will say its happened once or twice. The F buttons at the top are used for screen brightness, expose etc. if you want to use the F buttons you will have to hold fn, but you can turn this the opposite way round in system preferences so you hold fn to use expose and adjust the screen brightness etc.

[armel]

@armel, actually, it might be the normal behavior for the caps lock key. I noticed it on both my wife's and my unibody MacBook Pro. If you just tap the caps lock key VERY quickly, it won't activate. Tap it slightly longer and it will. It doesn't matter how hard you tap it, but how long it's pressed down.

I just checked, it IS a 'feature'. -- Intel-based Apple Portables: Caps Lock modified to reduce accidental activation. Personally, I don't mind it at all, but I think Apple should have provided a way to turn it off for those who don't want it.

Thanks Patrick! That's a big sigh of relief for those of us who noticed and felt a little uncomfortable about it. ;-)

[jha]

ive been experiencing the same for my mb and mba and i didnt mind. so i guess its good to know its actually a feature.

[NeilJohn]

hmmm.. the regular quick tap works for me. must be a feature of the MBP?

[armel]

hmmm.. the regular quick tap works for me. must be a feature of the MBP?

What MBP do you have? Here are the products that have the peculiar CAPS LOCK according to the link:

Products Affected
Keyboards, MacBook (13-inch Late 2007), MacBook (13-inch, Early 2008), MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2008), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008), MacBook Air, MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2008), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008), MacBook Air (Late 2008), MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008), MacBook (13-inch, Late 2008), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009)

[mig]

Same "issue" here. I thought it was actually a defect and was planning on having my MBP checked. Odd to know its actually a "feature" though. It makes sense to reduce sensitivity so as to avoid tapping it by accident, but it gets pretty annoying sometimes when I wanna actually use it. I'm using to just lightly tapping the other keys so I do the same for the caps lock key. Only turns on 1 out of 10 times if I don't give it a good push. :slanted:

[NeilJohn]

What MBP do you have? Here are the products that have the peculiar CAPS LOCK according to the link:

Products Affected
Keyboards, MacBook (13-inch Late 2007), MacBook (13-inch, Early 2008), MacBook Pro (15-inch Early 2008), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2008), MacBook Air, MacBook Pro (17-inch, Late 2008), MacBook Pro (15-inch, Late 2008), MacBook Air (Late 2008), MacBook (13-inch, Aluminum, Late 2008), MacBook (13-inch, Late 2008), MacBook Pro (17-inch, Early 2009), MacBook (13-inch, Early 2009)

mine is an MB unibody (early 2009). I was thinking that the feature Patrick was referring to may only apply to MBPs. It appears that it does not only occur in MBPs as you just posted.