G-Series Gaming Keyboards

[cwestpha]

One of my freinds had thought he killed my original G15 keyboard that I gave him a while back since I switched to a Mac Pro. Pluged it in and the G13 utility poped up and detected it (I had it installed because I was going to be buying a G13 soon anyways).

As has been said before the programable G keys work perfectly as does the on the fly programing. Profiles work as does fast switching between profiles. The LCD display works too though many of the aplets are buggy.

Here is what I have found so far:

*I have 8 GB of ram and it aparently cant detect that. it says I have 75% RAM utilization even though I have 6 gigs free. 

*CPU utilization, as has been said before, appears to be only for one core.

*I thought media display didnt work, you just have to already have iTunes running for that aplet to initilize.

*No LCD aplets for games yet that I can find, as has been pointed out before. However the programable G keys have always been the largest draw with the LCD just being a nice touch.

Here are a few questions for the logitech people with one statement:

1) will Logitech officialy be supporting the G15 series along with the G13 series? Or will you only officialy support the new keyboards and keypads going forward?

2) will the code (scripting language) used to program aplets for the LCD be compatable/similar between the windows and mac version? That is will I be able to recycle a lot of code between the two versions?

3) I hope you make a line of gaming keyboards for the mac that have the full apple layout in the future. I understand if you want to wait until you get third party support and the software side solidly nailed down, but a mac special eddition would be great.

4) Please get rid of the person that thinks orange backlighting is "cool". A nice soft blue is a lot more astheticly pleasing, especialy in low lighting conditions, then an orange one. Atleast to me its better to have a more soothing less intrusive color scheme then one that cries out for attention. If you are trying to go for something that has a more red shift to be easer on the eyes in the dark that concept is a bit countered by the bright LCD monitor infront of you.

Message Edited by cwestpha on 12-22-2008 03:55 PM

[CharlesB]

I noticed the RAM utilization bug once, but upon restart, it dissapeared, so I wasn't able to replicate it. Thanks for the heads up on the other ones though: I don't know if all of the things you mentioned will make it into the 3.01 release, but we are definately looking to improve our mac user experience over time

1) With 3.01, all G-Series keyboards will be supported on the mac

2) The SDK will be forthcoming, and will be slightly to moderately different between the platforms to account for OS differences. There should be no limitations in what you can do between the Mac and PC SDKs

3) We will look into that. For the time being, I'd use the Apple Keyboard & Mouse preference pane to switch the behaviors of the alt and windows key so that your keystrokes of the modifier keys will be at least in the proper physical spot

4) Well, we begun that with the G13: This device has user selectable LED colors. We are evaluating other solutions based on user feedback on this feature.

[Tseran]

Okay, a couple of points and comments.  I like what I am seeing so far, it is coming along great.  Having beta tested for others, I must say you are headed down the right path with the Mac drivers.

First, the comments: When you get closer to finishing the drivers, please have all the configuration accessible through the system preferences.  Even if it is opened in another window or application like it is now, having the interface there is what most Mac users are used to.  To help with development for it, you should try and talk to the big developers directly.  Take the SDK to Blizzard, tell them what you are trying to accomplish, and ask them what they would like to see.  The Mac guys there are great, considering they added features to Mac WoW that aren't in Windows side.  Once a dialog is open, I am sure things will go great and you will get a lot of great feedback.

Now, the questions.  First one I have is that if it is possible to have the G keys behave like something different.  For me, in WoW, I use the G keys to activate a set of bars I have.  I even have them set up like the G key banks, so the physical representation is there.  Problem is, even when I used this keyboard on the WinBox it used to be on, I had to make up key strokes (alt-shift-1 for example) to attach to those buttons.  Also, is it possible to have pressing the M1-M3 keys also send something to the game?  What I would really like is if those keys would actually do something in game as well as change part of my interface.  For those familiar with the game, I want to use them on my druid.  M1 for caster, M2 for cat form, M3 for bear form.  I press the key, and it changes my form and what the G keys do.  This way I can do quick changes without re-organizing my UI.

[outZider]

Slightly offtopic, but will this eventually allow the use of the LCD in the MX5500 Cordless Desktop? From what I gather, the way they're accessed is pretty similar, but I know the goals are different.

[AMarty]

I have been using the original G15 style keyboard with my PC since the board came on the market and I like it a lot.  Although a longtime Mac user, I have made the gaming transition from WinPC to a Power Mac Desktop running both OSX and Vista 64 using Boot Camp.  I grew up 'touch typing' thanks to a class many (many, many...) years ago in junior high school, and thus hate the Apple chiclet keyboards.  Even if the G15 didn't have the G Keys, it would be worth it to me to have a real typing keyboard.

I was ecstatic to see that the old board was available again online, even if only for a short time and I am typing on the new one right now!.  There are two issues that have surfaced for me using the keyboard in both operating systems -

1.   Opening the CD drive.  On a standard Mac keyboard and on the Windows under boot camp, there is a specific key to open and close the CD drive.  With the G15 keyboard I haven't seen anything that equates to that. Could you add a new 'Function - Open/Close CD' to fix this, in both OSX and Windows?  Now to open the CD drive, with a disk in it, I have to use a right click on the graphic representation and 'eject' the disk. I haven't tried an empty CD drive yet as to whether it can be ejected or not.  To close the CD drive, I have to manually push on the tray since Mac don't have a visible eject button.  It would be a lot easier with one of the G Keys set for this.

 2.  Apple's 'Option' button instead of an 'Alt' button.  I think the Mac-based GamePanel software recognizes the G15 Alt key as Option, but I'm not completely sure yet.  Where I do have a problem is when I am usng Windows under Boot Camp and on system startup.  With the Boot Camp configuration, as the system is starting up, if you hold down the Option key, you will be presented with a selection of the bootable harddrives and operating systems on your computer.  You can select the one you want and continue startup.  The Boot Camp startup doesn't seem to recognize the Alt key as equivalent to Option, so it just goes on to whatever the default startup is.  This makes it quite a bit more tedious to go back and forth between the operating systems.  This also has an impact on item 1 above, because if you have two CD drives, pressing the CD Key opens the top one, and  Option-CDKey opens the bottom one.

I have been using my new G15 (v1) to play Call of Duty 4 on the Mac and it has performed flawlessly for me since I am only using the G Keys. I also set up a small profile to use with the Cinema 4 D program and it has been a big boon to my 3D editing.

Thanks to the Logitech for making this keyboard available again and for bringing it into the Mac world... ... finallly

[AMarty]

Just as a follow up to my previous post...

I tried using the Superdrive on my Power Mac and it looks like I have to make sure and leave a disc in the drive all the time.  If I am using Vista under Boot Camp, there is no big problem as I can click on the Explorer DVD drive icon and choose Eject to open the drive, even if there is no disk in the drive.  However, if I am using OS X and don't have a disk in the drive, that I can eject by right clicking on the graphic disc, there doesn't appear to be any way to open the disk drive since there is no graphic disc to click and no key to press.

I tried several of the keys on the G15 with no sccess.  If there is one that opens the CD drive, which one is it?

[SpecialK]

The only way to "react" to the M-keys is to use the Lua scripting.

For a given profile, edit the scipt. You can try something like..

function OnEvent(event, arg)
    if (event=="M_PRESSED" and arg==1) then
        -- M1 was pressed. Do something to trigger a character change
        -- For eg, you can play an existing macro to do this          
        PlayMacro( "ThisMacroTellsTheGameToChangeToWarrior" )
    end
    if (event=="M_PRESSED" and arg==2) then
        -- M1 was pressed. Do something to trigger a character change
        -- For eg, you can also play a keyboard command to switch
        -- Let's simlate a "ctrl-b" command. 
        PressKey( "lctrl" );
        PressAndReleaseKey( "b" )
        ReleaseKey( "lctrl" )
    end
end

Message Edited by SpecialK on 01-05-2009 01:06 PM

[Theodric]

I had to go into System Preferences and take F12 away from Dashboard (under the Expose/Spaces option) - I just disabled it, since I dislike Dashoard, but you could also choose to remap to another key - and now F12 works to open/close my empty DVDROM drive.

There's a way to find out what your system's default mapping for the DVDROM open/close function is, with the handy side effect that it puts an eject icon on your menubar, negating the need for a key mapping. Go to /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/ and double-click Eject.menu. As with most menu items, you can CMD-drag the icon where you want it to live on the bar, or CMD-drag off the bar to "destroy" the icon. When you click and hold on the icon, it will say "Open Combo Drive   F12" (or whatever the type of drive in your system is-- but anyway, F12 is the default mapping on my system).

[Theodric]

"3) We will look into that. For the time being, I'd use the Apple Keyboard & Mouse preference pane to switch the behaviors of the alt and windows key so that your keystrokes of the modifier keys will be at least in the proper physical spot "

You can also go one step further and, after remapping the modifier keys, pop the Alt/Option and Windows/Command keycaps off and swap their positions. You're still stuck with a flying window icon on your keyboard, but at least then the keys look like they're in the right order, too! 

[Theodric]

CharlesB (or any Logi internal), any idea of a release date/ballpark for the SDK? I'd happily take beta code-- just want to start hacking on it!!