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I own a first generation MacBook Air and this has bothered me since the beginnings.

When I bought this thing, I was sure I'm not going to carry a DVD drive. I don't use it. WiFi has worked pretty well for me so far and in fact, lack of optical drive was the least problem I had with it (the worst was the heat and CPU frequency reduction).

But there's a useless eject key right in a place suited for a great delete key (the real delete, in PC terminology, of course). It'll help a lot when you're developing in Xcode. I feel it's handled at a lower level than standard keyboard shortcuts. Is there any way to remap it to delete?

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The real delete is called forward delete on a Mac. But that doesn't help you of course. ;-) – Arjan Jul 15 '09 at 15:29
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3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

I have no experience with the application myself, but perhaps DoubleCommand can help you?

Update

According to their website, KeyRemap4MacBook should be able to map the Eject button to a forward delete.

This MacRumors forum also has a thread on the same subject.

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It doesn't support eject key. – Mehrdad Jul 15 '09 at 9:11
You may be able to edit the source so it does: I use a custom version of DoubleCommand that maps Caps Lock to Escape, for instance. – Matthew Schinckel Jul 15 '09 at 10:43
KeyRemap4MacBook (together with NoEjectDelay) works but the problem is, you can't hold eject to delete a long string. It just removes a single character each time. – Mehrdad Aug 5 '09 at 22:56
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up vote 2 down vote

Not related to remapping, but Ctrl D will do a forward delete in most OS X text fields.

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Ack, I wouldn't want to get into the habit of typing <kbd>ctrl D</kbd> or I'd type it at the command line... – Ether Dec 13 '09 at 8:19
does forward delete on command line too. It doesn't send EOF unless you're at the end of the line. – cobbal Dec 17 '09 at 8:01
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up vote 0 down vote

I also dislike using fn for any key, so I basically stopped using Forward Delete altogether. When I need the Forward Delete I often hold down Shift and use the cursor keys to make a selection, and then press Delete. Actually, I do this for every text I want to delete -- those cursor keys go into all directions. :-)

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Wow, apparently I down-voted this, but I have no recollection of doing so. And now it's too late to undo it. Sorry :( – Lawrence Velázquez Nov 29 '09 at 22:27
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