Mac Gamers chime in...

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dextr3k

Gawd
Joined
Aug 3, 2004
Messages
550
I am thinking of picking up a keyboard and mouse combo for my 27" imac to play games. I'm not hardcore into gaming, but am getting sick of the magic keyboard that came bundled. The keys are too shallow, and while tactile feedback is great, its hard to find finger positions by feel alone, and i find myself pressing 2 keys or edges when im getting slaughtered.

Obviously I *want* to use the media/desktop controls on the magic keyboard (volume, brightness, dashboard etc...). I *want* to have a nice feel gaming keyboard... and I only want to use 1 keyboard, so the keyboard needs to have OSX drivers, programmable if possible.

So what are you guys using these days? I'm leaning really hard on the Logitech G15....but wanted to hear what people are using these days....
 
I actually like the apple keyboard so much that I bought one for my PC. Even before I owned a mac.
Now I do have an imac and two apple keyboards in the house. The F and J keys have ridges on them so you can find home row. And once you find that you should know where all keys are by touch alone. That's how I do it.

Though I did get a refurb razer Lycosa recently that is not as good as I had hoped. The keys are too loud on it. Feels cheaply made. But I do love the backlight it has.

But really, a keyboard is a keyboard. I don't have any desire for any special "gamer" keyboards. I don't use the macro keys. I just want a backlight on them.

For mice I have a Razer Deathadder I use on my imac. It works well.

But something I have to use are gamepads. I have a belkin N52 on my PC and a Logitech G13 on my imac. I use them primarily for MMO's but for shooters I find myself still using the WASD keys on the keyboard.
 
I have a Logitech G15 for my two PC keyboards, there is basically nothing I dislike about it. The G510 is the new update of the G15 and I bought one for work, basically a slight update to the G15, but typing on it feels exactly the same.

For mice I have a Logitech G5 (2nd rev) a Razer Oranchi, Razer Mamba, and a Deathadder. The Mamba out of all of them is easily my favorite, but to each their own. The logitech is a great everyday mouse, but being a lower DPI it doesn't work out as well for me playing FPS. Others may disagree.
 
One thing to note with the Deathadder - if you unplug it and plug it back in you have to set the mouse speed in the OSX settings again. It doesn't save for whatever reason.
 
C7J0yc3 said:
I have a Logitech G15 for my two PC keyboards, there is basically nothing I dislike about it. The G510 is the new update of the G15 and I bought one for work, basically a slight update to the G15, but typing on it feels exactly the same.

For mice I have a Logitech G5 (2nd rev) a Razer Oranchi, Razer Mamba, and a Deathadder. The Mamba out of all of them is easily my favorite, but to each their own. The logitech is a great everyday mouse, but being a lower DPI it doesn't work out as well for me playing FPS. Others may disagree.
Click to expand...

The G-series keyboards are really getting into mechanical keyboard territory. The latter are far superior to type on and use.
 
I use a Logtiteck g7 on my macbook pro with the built in keyboard. the g7 has onboard memory and no osx drivers but you can use a windows computer or bootcamp to set it up. you can then disable acceleration and do whatever you want and it will work on OSX. I use steermouse aswell however just for profiles. I mostly just play SC2 though so ymmv.
 
I play SC2 as well, among some FPS games....

The key gripe I have for the Magic Keyboard is that the FN key placement. Often when I'm trying to press control I end up pressing fn instead. I guess its a throwback habit from when I was a pc gamer, the last key on the left is always control, thats always been my position finder.

Its fine for asd and 1-2-3-4-5, but once you move away from the position, its hard to find v-b-n without pressing 2 of them. The keys are too flat and shallow....

I had a reclusa for my PC before and I remember it being decent, but I was curious if I can program the G15 for the media controls, which would be great.

The mouse I am less picky about, I am using a microsoft sidewinder that I got free with my SC2 purchase. Its light and finiky, but feels alright on the hand and has somewhat decent dpi. I will pick up a G5/G7 if I decide with the G15 tho...
 
apple doesn't actually have anything called a magic keyboard. :)

Now if it's the keyboard that I have the FN key isn't anywhere near the control keys. I do have the wired keyboard so perhaps you have the wireless one? On mine control is in the same spot as any other keyboard.
 
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dextr3k said:
Sorry, I thought everything apple made was magic, so i just assumed.....haha...

Yes, I do have the apple wireless keyboard http://store.apple.com/uk/product/MC184Z/A?fnode=MTY1NDA1Mg&mco=MTMzNzkxNjU

You can zoom into the keyboard to see it, the bottom row goes fn - ctrl - option/alt - command, completely scrambled from the normal ctrl - fn - windows - alt configuration im used to.
Click to expand...

Well you could get the wired one. Then you'll have the keys you need and a layout you're used to.
 
Chibo said:
One thing to note with the Deathadder - if you unplug it and plug it back in you have to set the mouse speed in the OSX settings again. It doesn't save for whatever reason.
Click to expand...

I noticed this too, annoying. However I just dont use drivers in my mac os partition of the HD so no longer an issue. All my gaming is done via bootcamp and there it saves all my settings. :D

Anyways to answer the questions I would suggest anything logitech for keyboards. I love my G510, but have also really enjoyed both the G15 rev1 and rev2. Great stuff.

As far as mice go, I have a Deathadder mac edition, and I would really like to update soon, maybe to a black edition, if not then get a naga for wow and keep my DA. Razer mice are good, but don't get their KB's, cuz, well, they suck. ;)
 
Yeah I've always liked logitech products. Had a G5 for a long time and it was my favorite mouse.

Thanks for the input guys.
 
Just a small update to tell anyone thats interested.

I ended up picking up a combo, Logitech G510 (G15 replacement) and a G500 (G5 replacement). Both of these are the newer versions.

Logitech G510
Keyboard is nice and heavy. Keys are smooth, a little on the big side, but I'll get used to that. Can display any color backlight (256 color spectrum) which is neat, I have it set to pink on the "advice" of my friend haha. I haven't found a use for the macros buttons yet as I stopped playing WoW, but it does have preprogrammed gaming profiles (COD MW, WoW, are 2 that I remember, can check if anyone is interested). But so far every single media button works. Since its a windows keyboard, it does not have brightness adjust options, and I have not yet found a workaround, but volume, play, stop, dashboard (F12), cmd (windows key) + tab shortcuts, are all operational. The 2 options I'm trying to find a workaround are keyboard Eject (so I can cmd+alt+eject to sleep computer) and the brightness options. These are all minor as they can be achieved by some method and not completely disabled, so it is just a matter of convenience more than anything else. One thing I have noticed is that I'm so used to the shallow apple keyboard that I don't have the vertical finger pressing distance anymore, so I end up not pressing far enough on the keys for them to register, lol. It has Mac support software for the adjustments.

Logitech G500
I picked this up because I remember I used to love my G5 rev 1 when I had it. Looking at the Razers (had a death adder before) and the G9X (small, hard, and lots of edges, so doesn't look comfortable) they didn't appeal to me, and the G500 is cheaper than other options. Right off the bat, it does NOT have Mac support, no software. The work around is you boot into boot-camp, install setpoint and set up your buttons that way. HOWEVER, I have not yet had to do that, dpi adjustment buttons work, the scroll wheel works, there are 3 buttons on the thumb section, middle one auto sets to cmd+tab (switches window), left and right are preprogrammed to forward and back on a web browser. They are programmable in-game if you feel like it.

So there is my first few days of having the combo. It is a very nice upgrade to the default apple ones for gamers, I highly recommend getting gaming peripherals as I didn't know what I was missing. Feel free to AMA
 
You are also going to have to fix the mouse acceleration in OSX. It makes using a mouse terrible for any one that isn't a new computer user.




Some one should start a petition to fire every one in apple that designs mice and whoever decided on the retarded acceleration curve in OSX. Their 'magic mouse' is expensive and cannot keep up with a decent mouse for doing things quickly.

Death adder / tenkeyless filco is a great combo for mouse keyboard for any one else interested.
 
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