cd-key is a little control panel that lets you do something truly useful with those ugly, damnable function keys sitting at the top of most Mac keyboards nowadays. If you have a CD-ROM drive and the aforementioned function keys, cd-key lets you control the basic playback of audio CDs right from your keyboard, all without having to launch Apple’s well-designed but intrusive AppleCD Audio Player.
What does it cost?
cd-key is freeware; you don’t need to pay anything for it. You can give copies of cd-key to anyone, just as long as you include this read-me file.
How to install cd-key
Just drop cd-key on top of the closed System Folder icon, and the Mac will automatically put it where it belongs. Then choose ‘Restart’ from the Special menu. If you want to remove cd-key, drag it out of the Control Panels folder and restart the computer.
How to use cd-key
You can turn cd-key on and off by opening the cd-key control panel in the Control Panels folder and choosing the ‘On’ or ‘Off’ buttons (you don’t need to restart). Here’s how it works:
I’ve also included this visual guide as a separate clipping file for quick reference.
If you have more than one CD-ROM drive attached and turned on at start-up, cd-key will automatically control whichever one has an audio CD in it. If you have audio CDs in two or more drives simultaneously (why the heck would you do that?) cd-key will control the first drive it "sees" (i.e., the one with the lowest SCSI number).
Caveats
cd-key complements Apple’s AppleCD Audio Player; it doesn’t replace it. You can do some neat-o things with Apple’s player (like choosing tracks by name and creating a play list) that you can’t do with cd-key.
cd-key intercepts the function keys whether there’s an audio CD in the drive or not, so you can’t do anything else with them while cd-key is turned on…not even in the few applications that actually make some use of them.
You can only skip directly to the first 20 tracks. If your CD has more than 20 tracks, you can only skip to higher tracks with the Back (F11) and Forward (F12) keys. Deal with it.
The Back and Forward keys don’t have a memory. That is, you can’t hit one of these keys nine times in rapid succession and expect the CD to skip exactly nine tracks, because cd-key loses track of how many times you’ve hit the key if you don’t pause between keystrokes. This bugs the heck out of me too, and I will fix it.
I wrote cd-key while listening to Morrissey. I have no way of knowing how this may have affected cd-key.
All in all, I’m not responsible for any crashes, data loss or non-specific bodily discomfort including but not limited to spontaneous decapitation that you might conceivably suffer because of cd-key.
Feedback
If you want to report a bug or make a friendly suggestion, you can e-mail me at chriswd@geocities.com. The most recent version of cd-key can be had at my web site, http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/4289.
