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Why is there an Eject Button on the MBA?
- Thread starter hwu182
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Yeah the eject button is pretty annoying on a device with no CD drive. I keep hitting it thinking its the volume.
I was wondering why today too, but i think its because apple does sell an optional optical drive that you can connect via usbso yea i guess thats why.
why not make an eject button on the drive itself instead, so users the few ppl that own one can have the ubtton while the rest of us who dont need it wont be annoyed by it. lmao. it just seems more plausible.
You can use other external optical drives besides the MBA Superdrive. You can't expect all companies to put an eject button their drives. It makes more sense to have it on the computer's keyboard. It's stupid to put it in the menu bar because if you have issues with booting up or problems with the screen and you have a disc inside then you won't be able to get it out.
it's there
a) to eject stuff or
b) cos Steve likes to give the forums something else to talk about or
c) <your ideas here>
the real way to eject anything is surely command+E
a) to eject stuff or
b) cos Steve likes to give the forums something else to talk about or
c) <your ideas here>
the real way to eject anything is surely command+E
The argument against that is not all computers have eject buttons, therefore most external drives out there actually have buttons on them.
Also there are other ways to eject a disk such as Command + E, dragging the disk to the recycle bin, right clicking the disk in Finder, etc. Same on Windows. Not all windows laptops have dedicated eject keys.
same reason why there aren't volume and brightness buttons separate from the keyboard. The eject button fits with every other mac keyboard out there. It even has a use on the iPad (via BT KB).
I would assume it's because that there are unified keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS X that use the eject key. Some of these are the auto shutdown, auto restart, auto sleep, etc... I use them all the time.
You do make some really good points! My guess is that they kept it for consistency with the other models; kind of what was alluded to earlier.
Regarding the keycode remapping, I disagree that it cannot be done with software. Apple already does this with the function keys, you can enable or disable the special behaviour from System Preferences. This shows us that the OS does in-fact interpret the keys alternatively. And for the hardware controller, the kernel should be able to define an array that can translate the fixed hardware codes to arbitrary codes which the upper levels would be completely ignorant of.
You beat me to it. That's exactly why. Apple would have to remap shortcuts that utilize the eject button just for the Air, which is absolutely not feasible.
I use the Eject button on my Air all the time to put it to sleep.
I don't think it matters 'how hard' it is to remap the hardware or if it's 'in-line' with older models for consistency... doesn't this just seem a little un-Apple? Steve Jobs insisted on extra screws in the older MacBook Pros just to make sure it's symmetrical (ok, it's a rumor that it was Jobs, but there are certainly "use-less" screws in there). The Air is a flagship computer which heralds many generations of Airs to come... It just doesn't (ahem) compute!
They can remap keys via software or at least put a different symbol on it.
To most people, the Eject symbol means open or spit-out a physical object... Apple is all about the every-day user... the MacBook Air especially. I find it hard to believe that there's a dedicated button for a peripheral that most users aren't going to have or keyboard shortcuts that most users don't use. Heck, I'm pretty much a power user who mounts and ejects drives, iPhones and network volumes all the time... the only reason I ever think to use the eject button is for optical media.
Is it possible that there's some kind of "future" use for this button? A more obvious function in Lion?
I guess I just can't wrap my head around this one.... I really want me one of those new MBAs though.
They can remap keys via software or at least put a different symbol on it.
To most people, the Eject symbol means open or spit-out a physical object... Apple is all about the every-day user... the MacBook Air especially. I find it hard to believe that there's a dedicated button for a peripheral that most users aren't going to have or keyboard shortcuts that most users don't use. Heck, I'm pretty much a power user who mounts and ejects drives, iPhones and network volumes all the time... the only reason I ever think to use the eject button is for optical media.
Is it possible that there's some kind of "future" use for this button? A more obvious function in Lion?
I guess I just can't wrap my head around this one....
I really want me one of those new MBAs though.
You shouldn't have to shut down your Air every day.
The machine has been designed to be more like an iOS device without any moving parts and really don't need to be shut off for extended periods amount of time. I have not yet turned off my iPad since I got it many months ago. And the only time I've had to shut down my iPhone is because of weird glitches in the OS.
Since the Air has a 30 day standby time, powering on and off constantly just seems like an unnecessary exercise for this class of product.
Now, using the eject button for sleep is something I do use every day
I am 'one of those people' who use the Apple Super Drive. So, I can see why it's there. I suspect that they didn't what to have to make that an option for people who don't want to use the Super Drive to not have this feature.
BTW: Both the Super Drive and the eject button work good!
