Making the switch from a PowerMac to a PowerBook has been one of the best moves I’ve made this year. I don’t even miss my old 19-inch LCD (most of the time…) but there is one aspect that is driving me insane.

The function key. Oh, how I hate that little bastard in the lower left corner!

I’m a person who likes to have a ton of windows open when I’m knee-deep in the muck - SubEthaEdit, Transmit, Photoshop, Illustrator, Firefox, Safari, Preview, etc. So when Apple gave us the gift of Expose, I celebrated by reaching new levels of productivity. Need to see everything at once? F9 to the rescue. Lots of tiny images in need of a tweak? F10 shows me everything I’ve got open in photoshop.

Since upgrading to the 17-inch’er though, F9 and F10 are now reserved for controlling the lighting level of the backlit keyboard. And I know, I shouldn’t be complaining. I mean, how many people have a laptop where the keyboard lights up for you - automatically - when light levels get too low? I know I’ve been dreaming about such a feature for years.

But the keyword here is automatically. Why can’t I make F9 and F10 control Expose like they used to, and fn-F9 and fn-F10 control the keyboard lighting? The computer is so smart it automatically adjusts the keyboard and the LCD backlighting dependent on external light levels. In the few months I’ve had this fine machine, I’ve had zero complaints with its intelligence on lighting control.

Why can’t I revert all the function keys back to their normal F-whatever status and use the function key for it’s “icon” purpose? I change the volume once every couple of days, I change the LCD backlight only when I unplug to conserve battery life, I don’t use NumLock at all…. but I sure would like to remap my xScope apps back to their rightful place. Clicking those little icons in the taskbar is annoying, not to mention how ugly they are up there! (But I’m a purist, I’ll admit it.)