G5 and the Aluminum Keyboard

First...Apple, hello? It'd be nifty keeno if you had a separate hardware heading for the aluminum keyboards...my forum search turned up a lot of posts, but all over the place, in hardware and software forums both. You have a new product here. It would be nice if we could coordinate Q&As so you don't have to keep telling us the same thing over and over and over again like you're going to have to do with me.
Second. I just bought the lovely wired aluminum keyboard to replace my dying MacAlly keyboard. Loaded and installed the 1.2 update. However, the F keys remain utterly unfunctional beyond their graphically indicated use. Cannot be turned back into function keys, and shortcuts that were set up previously do not work with them, either in Apple's own System Prefs or in Quick Keys. F13 and higher just make a nice "error" noise when pressed. Nowhere do I see any means of programming them. Um. Help?

BDAqua wrote:
Am I correct in thinking it is safer to stick to Apple keyboards for the G5?
Not really, in fact I consider the latest Apple KBs the least desirable ones.
Oh, dear. I wish I were surprised by that comment. In what way(s) do you feel the keyboards have declined?
I have a brand new aluminum keyboard connected to the Mini… any risk in test-connecting it to the G5 to see if it is agreeable?
As you know about the Function key problem,,, no worry.
If there's no harm in going third-party, what brands/devices do you think are solid for my purposes?
No, no harm.
OK. It seems to me back in the day, I read a lot of stories about bad commands or data from malfunctioning keyboards causing Macs to seriously freak out. So that's why I'm uneasy about this.
Thanks again for your advice. Not many left out there able or willing to guide the likes of me including Apple store personnel. Most of them in my recent experience are so young and so blasé that they seem to have barely a clue what you're talking about when you mention using a Power Mac G5—or how amazing it is that the thing still gets out of bed in the morning, so to speak. The company has an extraordinary history, but the staff I've talked to lately haven't been schooled in it much.

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