Making a new Apple keyboard behave (almost) like the old one

[mikehalloran]

I just replaced my wired Apple keyboard and found that it was different than my old one, built with OS 10.6.4 in mind. This also works if your Mac shipped with OS 10.5 and you used F3 to go to the Desktop.

The new keyboards (released after OS 10.7) have the F4 key mapped to Launchpad instead of Dashboard and F3 mapped to Spaces. I go to Dashboard many times a day and have no use for Launchpad. Everything I looked up on the internet was wrong regarding how to change that. Apple Support showed me how to map the F5 key to Dashboard which was fine by me (No, you don't need to buy shareware or use freeware as is reported everywhere). It's very easy:

Go to System Preferences, select Keyboard, Shortcuts, Mission Control
You will see that Show Dashboard defaults to F12 (actually, it is fn + F12 since F12 is used to increase volume)
Click on F12 with your mouse. This will highlight the text box. You may now hit either the F5 or F6 key, both of which are unmapped. When you close System Preferences, it will save and now you have Dashboard mapped to an F key (F5 in my case). I could have used F6, 13, 16, 17 18 or F19 as they are also unmapped.

On the same screen, I saw that Show Desktop was mapped to F11 (again, it is really fn+F11 since F11 is used to decrease volume). So I changed it to the other unmapped F key (F6). In my day job, I often access alias folders on my desktop. Now I no longer have to hide my browser to do so. This will make my life a little easier.

When I scheduled the call from Support through Apple.com, I checked the box that said I'm entitled to a free call because I just bought software - there's no such box for new hardware. When called, I explained that I had actually just bought new hardware and the booklet didn't cover this. The tech said that was fine and I was not charged $19 for the support call.

I was very happy with Apple Support and am good to go.