Fix your Exposé keys
by Eliah Hecht 
Nov 6th 2007 at 9:02AM
Mac-based WoW players have been dealing with an odd little bug for quite some time. (More than one, actually, but I'm just going to talk about one here.) Whenever WoW is launched, it clears your Exposé hotkeys (by default, F9–F11). Oddly, it doesn't clear my Spaces hotkey, which is set to F12, just Exposé. I was hoping this bug would be gone in Leopard and/or patch 2.3, but apparently that's not in the cards. Going back into the Exposé & Spaces preference pane and resetting them isn't that hard, but it is annoying to have to do it every time.Fortunately, the official forums have provided me with a solution. Temari of Kil'jaeden wrote a simple Applescript which sets your Exposé hotkeys back to their default settings. Run it after you quit WoW, and everything is once more as it should be. Here's the application version of it; if you want to tinker or investigate, here's the source code [edit: links fixed]. The script's creator suggests adding it to your dock next to WoW. I don't use the dock much (Quicksilver forever, baby), but that's probably a good idea for those of you who do. By the way, this is apparently an Apple bug, so don't blame the blue.
Edit: Please stop posting your platform war comments. Whether they're pro-Mac or anti-Mac, I don't care; don't post them please. I don't want to have to start deleting people.
Filed under: Bugs, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Junzim Nov 6th 2007 9:13AM
This used to really bug me.
Then I got a 24" Aluminium iMac and just toggle the "use Function keys as xxx" switch in the Keyboard pref pane. The iMac's keyboard keeps Exposé on F3 and Dashboard on F4 so nothing gets screwed up :)
h8rain Nov 6th 2007 9:23AM
Link is broken.
plixer Nov 6th 2007 9:24AM
boo mac!
Brian Nov 6th 2007 9:30AM
Yeah I have the new keyboard too and Leopard. The big issue isn't expose (personally I just use "cmd m" to tab in and out of WoW). the Expose key works fine from there (F3).
A much bigger issue is the new firewall in Leopard. The current advice is to not put any Blizzard programs in there and leave the firewall off. If you do put WoW and the Background downloader in there Leopard alters the files so that they don't work. I had to do a full reinstall and download a massive 600 MB+ patch which was not fun.
Eliah Hecht Nov 6th 2007 9:30AM
h8rain: thanks, fixed
Rambull Nov 6th 2007 9:48AM
I would like to insert a comment making fun of mac users here, but the truthfully I just feel bad for them. Life is hard enough without being saddled up with a computer that is "different" than the other 95% of PC's out there. Thank the maker (um, Steve Jobs I guess) that Macs will run Windows now. Good luck mac people. Keep on truckin' with your beautiful, but cursed machines.
Grifter Nov 6th 2007 9:51AM
lol plixer. didn't you get the memo? macs are a truly blissful user experience. what do you run..windows vista? (rofl)
Eliah Hecht Nov 6th 2007 9:53AM
Guys, this platform war is not interesting...
Samel Nov 6th 2007 10:54AM
Macs are glorified Fisher-Price activity centers for adults; computers for scaredy cats too nervous to learn how proper computers work; computers for people who earnestly believe in feng shui.
dpoyesac Nov 6th 2007 12:05PM
@6 -- you fel BAD for Mac users? That's a lot like people who drive Ford Pintos feeling BAD about the guys in BMWs, since the BMW guys need to buy high-octane gas and get their filter changed at the dealer. In my mind, those are small prices to pay for NOT driving a Pinto.
Of course the analogy is flawed. High-end Windows machines are priced about the same as equivalent Macs. So the Pinto drivers paid the SAME AMOUNT for their crummy cars, simply because they ... what? Why do Windows users CHOOSE to use such a horrid system? The desperate need to fit in?
Chocoblow Nov 6th 2007 10:22AM
I think you should just disable comments now. Everyone is gonna start a platform flame war, even me!
Reasons to get a Mac
1. Most big-name brands already have Mac versions, World of Warcraft, Adobe Creative Suite 3, Roxio, etc.
2. Macs slow down, but never really crashed for me, or spat out error messages.
3. If you do have slowdowns, do this, run Terminal, type "top -u" without quotes, then find out what program you want to kill, open another Terminal, type "kill -9 [ID number of program[". Lets say I wanna kill laggy Azureus who was stated to have a ID number 872 in top, "kill -9 872". There, I just solved all your Mac performance problems.
4. For silly tools that make only Windows compatible software, I also had my Mac dual-bootable to Windows too, XP only though because Vista is crap.
Eliah Hecht Nov 6th 2007 10:28AM
Be careful when you're randomly killing processes, though...you might break something important. It's generally safe to kill a user application like Azureus, but if you see something with an unfamiliar name (like, say, kernel_task), don't mess with it, at least until you figure out what it is.
Eliah Hecht Nov 6th 2007 10:31AM
Also, it's a bit more polite to go to the application and quit it normally; it gives it a chance to save data, clean up temp files, and so forth.
Preston Nov 6th 2007 10:36AM
@Rambull
I love my Mac, and I feel sorry for Windows users. You're either stuck using the disastrous Vista, or you're stuck using XP from way back in 2001. Nobody would use Windows by choice, they HAVE to use it.
As for this bug, Blizzard has said they consider it an OS bug and have filed it with Apple's Radar system.
Doffencrag Nov 6th 2007 10:53AM
I actually wasn't aware of any conflict with the Expose hotkey... I set up Expose to a hotspot on my screen and play WoW on non-full-screen mode, so I've never noticed the problem.
Will check it out when I get home to my Mac (and away from my PC-centric workplace... bah).
Thanks, WoWinsider. :)
Nyx Nov 6th 2007 11:06AM
I'm highly amused that your demographic's hot button issues are whether or not girls are allowed in raids, and the Macintosh platform.
Can we, perhaps, age-limit people who comment on these things? Maybe just restrict it to people who've had their testicles descend? [Girls are so disruptive to conversation I don't include them in the qualifier - they'll come in and mess it all up anyway.]
Ah, well. I don't use Exposé, so I had no idea that the bug existed. Blissful ignorance. I'd be happy if they'd find a way to let the "your battery is dead, idiot" message pop up over the application instead of putting it in the Finder and thus killing all input until the message is dealt with.
Eliah Hecht Nov 6th 2007 11:09AM
Nyx: instead of spending much time on the idiocy of "Girls are so disruptive to conversation I don't include them in the qualifier - they'll come in and mess it all up anyway", I'm going to help you out with your battery issue. But sexism like that is completely ridiculous.
Slim Battery Monitor (http://www.orange-carb.org/SBM/) has a window that (if I remember correctly) pops up over things, and, as a bonus, takes up less space in your menu bar and is much more configurable than the default battery indicator. I love it.
-Z- Nov 6th 2007 10:41PM
haha, anyone that hates macs obviously cant afford one. poverty sucks :)
Nyx Nov 6th 2007 11:30AM
Not to ruin your little diatribe, Eliah, but I need to point out two things:
- I'm a girl.
- That comment was sarcastic, as might be evident to anyone with a scrap of inference who could read the opening paragraph.
But hey, don't let me stop you - you were on such an insulting roll there. Reminiscent of Tseric at his best, and we all know how well Tseric did.
Eliah Hecht Nov 6th 2007 11:35AM
D'oh! Perhaps I should have caught your sarcasm. But judging by the tone of a lot of people in the WoW community, can you really blame me?
I don't see how I'm meant to infer that you're a girl just because you're amused by the girls-in-raids discussion.
And I liked Tseric :-P