Eject

The MacBook Air keyboard. The eject key is curious. While it can be used to eject an external disc drive, I find it strange that a key used so infrequently would be included when software alternatives are available.

Some speculative, alternative actions for the eject key were discussed on Gizmodo at the time of the first generation Air.

The eject key is also used for some power related actions, which may be useful to some people, but I never use these shortcuts.

• Turn off display with ⇧⌃ eject
• Sleep with ⌥⌘ eject
• Restart with ⌃⌘ eject
• Shut Down with ⌃⌥⌘ eject
• Ask what to do (as pressing the power key) with ⌃ eject

I find it interesting that of these, only Sleep is shown in the menu bar. I believe this is wrong and that all actions with keyboard shortcuts should also be accessible from the menu bar. Secrets like this cause problems, because they are hard to discover and remember. Restart and Shut Down are there, but the keyboard alternatives are not shown. This may be because the menu bar asks for confirmation, while the keyboard acts immediately.

Photograph shot at the Apple Store, Grand Arcade, Cambridge. (Google Maps)