Here are MacBook Air keyboards with US and RU (EU) layout, so as internal side of MacBook Air so called “top case” with keyboard attached.
Recently I’ve flooded my MacBook Air 13″ mid-2011 with half a bottle of Coca-Cola 1L late-2011. Luckily, after immediate removal of the liquids, it was still working, more or less. Only “<” and “>” keys stopped working, keys’ lights persistently dimmed, and all the keys became sticky while typing.
To repair MacBook Air Unibody after such a flooding, you cannot just replace a keyboard. You have to replace the whole top case, which includes keyboard and all the whole aluminum plate with palm rests; the top case does not include the touch pad (only a hole for it).
At the same time I’ve decided to replace US keyboard layout (this MacBook Air was bought in US) with Russian one, which is a subkind of European. Here you can compare US and RU/EU keyboard layouts:
If you need an original non-highlighted image, see below.
Note on “Enter” key form (it is horizontal in US and vertical in RU/EU layouts) and location of the “slash” button. In case of RU layout it contains the letter “Ё” (in US layout it is located on top of “Enter”).
Also note on the length of left “Shift” key: it is long in US and short in RU/EU layouts. But the shorter length of “Shift” is compensated by additional key in RU/EU layout (absent in US one).
For some weird reason, in RU layout they have put “tilda” key near the left “shift”, while “paragraph” sign instead of “tilda”. I don’t know what stopped them from putting “paragraph” key near the “shift”, keeping “tilda” in its usual top-left corner.
Anyway, the good point here is that the RU/EU keyboard is native, so to speak: letters are located on the corners of the keys (even latin letters), and are highlighted. In contrast, in the US keyboard, latin letters are in the center of the keys, and if you ever could engrave Russian letters, they will be too small, asymmetric, and usually not highlighted.
And here are photos of my old flooded MacBook Air top case with US keyboard from the back side. Here you can see that keyboard is connected with the case itself, and why it cannot be replaced separately. I will try to separate them later, though. For fun.
