What are the downsides of getting a foreign keyboard layout on a MacBook Pro?
A 13-inch MacBook Pro costs £999 in the UK, compared to $1,199 (about £760) in the US.
For this reason (I guess), brand new US models cost about £850 on UK eBay. The obvious downside is the keyboard layout is US, not UK.
Only a couple of keys are different on US keyboards. So if it's possible to change system preferences to interpret it as a British-layout keyboard, then I'm happy to put up with a couple of wrongly labelled keys, if it saves me £150.
But are there any other downsides I should bare in mind? Any possible incompatibilities etc?
Solution 1:
I once was in a similar situation to what you described—I'm an American and brought my U.S. MacBook to the UK. A couple observations:
U.S. keyboard layouts are substantially different from the UK ones. Many common punctuation characters, including quote marks, are mapped very differently. I found UK keyboards too awkward to use and did virtually all of my work on my own U.S. keyboards.
U.S. keyboards do not include the pound sterling symbol or the negation symbol used in the UK. You can get them by using Option key combinations, but that can be a bit of a pain.
As bmike mentioned, if you need a keyboard repair you'll face a substantial delay. Someone spilled a drink on my MacBook in a pub towards the end of my stay, and about a third of the keyboard was shorted out; when I took it in to an Apple Store, they warned me they would need to hold the computer for several days while replacement parts arrived. I couldn't spare the laptop for that length of time, so I spent the last couple weeks of that trip using an external keyboard with my MacBook, and repaired it when I got home. (That option, of course, won't be available to you.)
All in all, I don't think I would recommend it for you. That £150 is buying you freedom from a lot of hassles.
Solution 2:
If the physical key layout is different, you will have to get a replacement part for the exact keyboard you have chosen. It could result in a slight delay if you needed the mac repaired in the future.
Another gotcha is that the warranty for Apple products is established in the country of sale. For someone in the UK where Apple has official retail stores for service, this formality shouldn't be of any consequence - but if you are buying a mac from a country without official support it could add logistics to contact Apple in the country of sale and they could ask you to present the mac in that country for service (or pay for the shipping).
Again, in practice this is not a huge drawback for most - but it can add cost and delay if Apple chooses to enforce those terms of the warranty when you want to take advantage of that specific service.
Solution 3:
One major difference that you cannot change via any software layout is that Apple British and International keyboards are ISO and not ANSI: They have an extra key to the left of the z not present on the US keyboard.
Also as far as I know it would be a mistake to think that a "British" Macbook will have the standard UK keyboard with quote marks at Shift + 2, as shown at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#United_Kingdom
Instead it will have Apple's own version of a "British" keyboard, which is essentially the same as the US keyboard except for #/£. Shift + 2 will produce @ and the quote marks are the same as for the US keyboard. This is shown at
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2841