The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a cool post showing how a user created a homemade Dvorak keyboard by manually prying off the keys and rearranging them to the new configuration.
The article includes Flickr page as to how to do this, what tools are necessary and how to carefully pull the keys from the keyboard.
The final step: If you’re brave enough to do this, an entry over at mwbrooks.com shows you how to select a Dvorak keyboard input (go to Mac OS X’s preference panes, select “International” and from there choose a Dvorak keyboard input).
Definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you can pull it off and it helps you type faser than you would on a standard QWERTY keyboard, have at it.
If you have any comments or suggestions about this, let us know.
The Unofficial Apple Weblog has a cool post showing how a user created a homemade Dvorak keyboard by manually prying off the keys and rearranging them to the new configuration.
The article includes Flickr page as to how to do this, what tools are necessary and how to carefully pull the keys from the keyboard.
The final step: If you’re brave enough to do this, an entry over at mwbrooks.com shows you how to select a Dvorak keyboard input (go to Mac OS X’s preference panes, select “International” and from there choose a Dvorak keyboard input).
Definitely not for the faint of heart, but if you can pull it off and it helps you type faser than you would on a standard QWERTY keyboard, have at it.
If you have any comments or suggestions about this, let us know.
2 replies on “MacBook User Creates Homemade Dvorak Keyboard”
Be so careful when you pop the keys off. I hosed one of my MBP keys this way, and it made me very sad to have ruined my keyboard. Fortunately, something else unrelated to my mangling broke and Apple replaced it for me – that was just luck.
Good news for the squeamish though:
http://www.macworld.com/news/2006/12/29/dvorakskin/index.php?lsrc=mwrss
Hey everybody. I’ve been using a Dvorak layout since 2001. I was enroute Antarctica on a ship and had plenty of time on my hands, so I popped off all the keys on my powerbook (except A and M since they’re in the same place on both). Then popped them back on, between bouts of 30 degree rolls sending everything flying. I have also rearranged my keys on a work Windows XP pc (yes, they also have the layout in software), and I have my Apple Bluetooth keyboard modded with the swapped keys. Now that I touch type the layout I keep most keyboards in the stock configuration and enable the “Dvorak/Qwerty Apple” layout, so I can use regular Command keys but type Dvorak. I could get into some programming glitches with Word and Macromedia apps, but that’d be overkill for this area. Contact me if you’d like details – stand by for a rant. The Dvorak revolution is gaining momentum! Keep it up.