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I'm a luddite and have a hardwired keyboard on my iMac. Booting into Windows is never a problem. A family member has an iMac with a Bluetooth keyboard and a Mighty Mouse. Never having used these, I find booting into Windows to be troublesome.

If someone has a slick trick for keeping the keyboard awake so that simply holding down the option key works, that would be excellent. Thanks in advance for any helpful replies.

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What precisely is troublesome? Not being able to get to the boot picker and over-ride the default selection? Not having drivers once booted into Windows? – bmike♦ Feb 26 at 20:15

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If you can't access the boot menu at startup, you can always select which OS to reboot into from within OS X or Windows.

In OS X, just go to Startup Disk in System Preferences, and select your Windows partition, then restart.

In Windows, you need the Bootcamp tools installed (but they should have been already). You should see Startup Disk in Control Panel, which allows you to do the same thing.

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This is not a good solution. The whole point of Bootcamp is booting into Windows occasionally, not by default. I want to encourage this family member to use the Mac OS, not remain as a Windows user who tries the Mac OS once in a great while. – Zippy The Pinhead Nov 16 '12 at 2:34
Well, doing it this way, it would only be set as the default for as long as you're in Windows. Once you reboot back to OS X, it's reset. But I suppose if the computer is turned off regularly it might be a hassle. – robmathers Nov 16 '12 at 3:25
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I use a program called QuickBoot which gives me a menu to select an OS and reboot. I haven't found a good way to get the alt and keyboard to work, but this is about as good.

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Wait until the Mac just finishes playing its power-on self test, (or POST) chime, then immediately press and hold down down the Option key. Holding the Option key down as soon as you reboot, but before the chime, will not work. Failing this, only a wired keyboard will work.

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