The new iMac -- I just can't get past this lousy keyboard

Ilene is starting her college-teaching gig this week, and today she found out that the built-in projector in her classroom accepts VGA output only. So the composite video/S-video adapter I got a week ago at Fry's won't fly. They didn't have the VGA adapter, but the Apple store does, so I ventured out today and am at the Apple Store now, blogging on the new 20-inch iMac with 2 GHZ Intel Core 2 Duo processor and SuperDrive. The whole thing costs $1199. For that price, it should have 2 GB of RAM, not 1 GB, but I quibble.

Safari starts almost instantly, the screen is set up to look really slick (all the colors are changed, and the thing looks definitely modern). I even like the aluminum finish.

Where Apple loses me -- and anybody who can type -- is with this lousy keyboard, with chicklit keys that are way too far apart. They screwed up the Macbook with these awful keyboards, and now they've taken the desktops down with it.

I can barely type with this thing. The keys aren't where they're supposed to be, there is very little "play" in the keys, no bounce when you depress them. It's just depressing. First the damn thing is way overpriced, then I can barely type a sentence without seven mistakes.

But the BIG TALK AT THE WESTFIELD TOPANGA APPLE STORE is the recent visit by Stevie Wonder. I bet he hated this lousy keyboard, too.

And p.s., Apple -- if you're going to do an aluminum PC and aluminum keyboard, what's with the WHITE PLASTIC mouse. You're messing with my feng shui.

I am a regular Mac user, and this is awful. For our iBook G4, we still use an old Apple Extended Keyboard with the Macally adapter that converts the old Apple keyboard ADB signal to USB. The Apple Extended remains one of the great keyboards of all time, and this is a travesty -- A TRAVESTY, I TELL YOU -- that makes the Macintosh worthless to writers of all types -- and all people who type. My fingers would ache after a day working on this thing.

Steve Jobs, maybe the collar on your black mock turtle is too tight, but I can't believe anybody signed off on this piece-of-crap keyboard.

File under "holy crap": Movable Type does NOT like Safari. I can't automatically insert a link, or do bold, italic or blockquoted material without hand-coding it. Can't they just give it up and load Firefox on these things?