i always thought that was the command key, it even used to have an apple logo on it. and i thought it was microsoft that created the windows key because it wanted its own key like apple had.
wouldn't you also map the windows key to command when you used such a keyboard on a mac?
Win was conceived as a modifier reserved for the OS (not to be used by applications), while command never was. Command is for commands. If you come to the Mac from Win or Linux it often helps to think of command as what ctrl does on those systems. Ctrl on the Mac started as Terminal-Emulator specific modifier— Which to this day is great, because your universal copy shortcut (cmd-c) and interrupt (ctrl-c) are different things.
Indeed one would map win to command, but only because you need another key for a modifier that‘s not ctrl or opt/alt, conceptually they are different
It did, but when starting history with the first Mac, it started as being absent. The Mac initially had shift, command, and option modifiers.
Apple introduced control keys (separate left and right ones) because companies writing terminal emulators needed it.
Not only useful for mistakes but also just if you jeed to eg copy someone's bank info to separate fields without doing 4 switches from invoice to bank app
From the days when both hands were on the keyboard.
Back when I [Steve Jurvetson] was a student, I had Steve Jobs over to my house for a fireside chat with the GSB [Stanford Graduate School of Business] High Tech Club. When I asked my childhood hero if he would sign my Apple Extended Keyboard, he looked a little surprised to see Woz’s signature already there, and then he exclaimed, ‘This keyboard represents everything about Apple that I hate. It’s a battleship. Why does it have all these keys? Do you use this F1 key? No.’ And with his car keys he pried it right off. ‘I’m changing the world, one keyboard at a time,’ he concluded in a calmer voice.
https://archive.nytimes.com/dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/10/06/...
Personally, I would take an Apple Extended Keyboard (or II ;-) ) over anything they've sold in the past, well, whenever they stopped selling them. (Typed from my Unicomp Model M Mac)
The closed apple key then appeared on the Lisa keyboard alongside an option key (both on the left of the spacebar), but the Lisa's closed Apple key acted like and is what became the Mac's command key.
https://www.nightfallcrew.com/09/12/2014/apple-iii-apple/
https://mirrors.apple2.org.za/Apple%20II%20Documentation%20P...
https://vintagecomputer.net/apple/lisa/apple_lisa_A6S0200_ke...
Because then we would have ended up with the same mess that is Windows (and Linux for that matter) when it comes to ^C being ambiguous...
> The Control key is used with terminal-emulation programs for control-key sequences. For all other applications, it is reserved for end-user-defined shortcut key sequences using a macro-key facility.
I find that a good reason. It's prioritizing the experience of terminal emulation programs. Control-C means SIGINT. And also in Cocoa text controls, many Emacs keybindings with Control are available: C-a, C-e, C-k, C-b, C-f, etc. (And it's very easy to add Emacs keybindings with the Meta key too: it's a somewhat obscure functionality but Apple never broke it. I have configured my computer with M-f and M-b for example.)
It may have just been lack of user education, but I don't think the ctrl-a/e/etc commands to move the cursor came until they rebased onto UNIX/NeXT.
In this respect, Apple got pretty lucky. Most users were not using reduced keyboards in 1987 when they originally decided to add the Control key separate from Command. Plus, Mac OS didn't even have a native terminal at the time; I assume there were terminal emulators for networking/serial use but I can't imagine that was top-of-mind for Apple either.
Regardless, Cmd-C is definitely a more convenient shortcut than Control-Insert, even if you do have the keys for the latter.
That, of course, is one of the pain points that the article addresses: Training yourself to do so is additional cognitive load that never should have been necessary in the first place.
I flip between macOS and Linux and, occasionally, Windows. On one of my laptops, insert is also a Fn switch away, so I have to either remember that this machine needs Ctrl-Fn-F11 specifically when I'm copying from terminal.
On another keyboard I have the same problem, but insert is mapped to a different key entirely, so it is ctrl-fn-equals, and fn is on the opposite side of the keyboard from ctrl.
Contort my fingers in which way on which keyboard? Mental load and annoyance I don't need.
At the moment, apps like Wisprflow or OpenWhispr are using it as their main shortcut, and I’m sure it’s just a matter of time before Apple integrates it as the default for Siri.
The only common thing between the two is that the fn key is only used for the special modifiers under F1-F12.
I was given a magic keyboard, and my plan was to replace it with a standard one, but then I found about the keys mapping from Karabiner, and the fn key is exactly at the control position...so I started remapping.
Now, I can do almost everything with fn+key. Fn+c=command+c, fn+s=control+s and so on.
> Suddenly, the globe key on the iPad and the hybrid globe/Fn key on the Mac were equipped with a million Windows-like tasks
It seems like Apple has been in a bind to make the iPad a better Mac and the Mac a better iPad while at the same time insisting that the iPad is its own device with its own purpose and that the Mac is its own device with its own purpose. IIRC, it took a long time to bring a keyboard and mouse to the iPad. Despite Apple’s repeated claims that it doesn’t see value in a touchscreen Mac, rumors point to one being launched next year (albeit with limitations).
Apple used to be good at cannibalizing its own product lines. But now it seems stuck with the desire to sell more iPads and more Macs without one cannibalizing or destroying another.
Arguably only iPhone from iPod.
Lisa to Mac wasn't an organization being "good" so much as corporate infighting ("after Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project by Apple's board of directors, he appropriated the Macintosh project from Jef Raskin") [0].
Low End Mac's "Road Apple" features [1] list out many Apple products that were hobbled in one way or another to prevent a "consumer" product from cannibalizing higher margin "pro" products.
After 2012 Apple's pro desktops did encourage cannibalization by being rarely updated corporate vanity/art projects, which like Lisa to Mac isn't an example of being "good" at managing product transitions.
A more daring Apple would have freed the Watch from the iPhone in the same way they freed the iPhone from iTunes sync.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
1. https://lowendmac.com/2014/road-apples-second-class-macs/
Any time I get a new computer, one of the very first things that I do is remap Caps Lock to Ctrl for exactly this reason. I literally never use Caps Lock, but my pinky hits it all the time.
I also took inspiration from ChromeOS's replacement of Caps with Search (and a popular article from that era about the history of the hyper key), and rebound Caps to be Escape. I hardly ever use the actual escape key (which is handy on a 60 key board, because they that's just the `/~ key).
Escape (Caps) by itself is Escape. Esc+A is opens the search (goto file/line/etc. in a text editor). Esc+S is the Command Palette in apps that have one.
Very handy to be able to chord keys right next to each other!
> I also took inspiration from ChromeOS's replacement of Caps with Search
It’s always nice when it’s supported directly in Linux distros but sometimes have to remap it with config files or a helper tool.
On my MacBook I use Alfred now for search and Win11Debloat for Windows which ensures apps load near instantly when typing.
Works great in Sublime. Have this request open for Ghostty:
https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/discussions/10499
On Linux, there's xremap. It lets you remap key chords on a per-app basis. I'm using it to use Apple-style Command shortcuts with Chrome for Linux:
https://github.com/appsforartists/device-config/blob/master/...
That's the worst part about Fn, limiting user customization and wasting keyboard space. Good that this was partially dialed back, but bad that Apple added another exclusivity barrier breaking external keyboards.
> What if Apple at some point decides that Esc means something, and you already used it for something else?
You continue to use it for something else? How is it different from any other default shortcut you don't like and change?
> It’s just a modifier key.
That should be the end game! No lock in, no weird limitations like "cannot map Mission Control to ↑"
There is no hope for Apple to make anything good out of it (⌃⌘X is their peak ergonomic design), but at least you'd be able to freely use the key yourself
The author points out that Apple defaults often don't allow you to reuse them. They talk pretty far in the article about how that can't map globe+H to a different function. So, this theoretical is about them not being able to continue using their combination for what they want at Apple's whims.
For me its capslock as ctrl, super (windows key) for window management, altgr for layers, right side ctrl as compose key.
There were "compose" keys that let you type characters to combine other characters -- (not ai) but they weren't forcing the person to super spock pinch the keyboard to get the character they wanted. It was "compose" then "c" then "s" to get the "ç" character.
I honestly would like to be able to do the same thing with ctrl-alt-x, eg. where ctrl alt and x are separate key presses.
I came across this[1][2] the other day; the "bug" is that macOS Japanese input prioritize visually similar but unintended characters over ones matching in pronunciation being entered - it's hard to describe, but it's as if keyboard was autocorrecting word to "enterprising" over "entrepreneur" for entry "antreprenewer", just because the former is considered more common than the latter, or something like that. This apparently has been bugging Japanese users for YEARS, with no improvements or recognition.
I'm not saying who should prioritize what for whom, just that, I think non-English experience in modern computing environment is rapidly degrading lately, for some reason, unbeknownst to American English speakers.
Laptop keyboards will always be disliked by someone: the standard keyboard layout is awful, and dealing with this either involves trying to stick to the conventional design (wherein different people will dislike different changes); whereas a good keyboard design is going to be so far from the standard keyboard that laptops aren't going to do that.
(People will quibble about where to put the arrow keys or however many modifier keys there are or that caps lock is badly placed.. but the most glaring issue is that the spacebar doesn't need to be over 6x the size of other keys).
It's a problem if the OS is inconsistent/unclear about what scan codes are required to do things.
Both that, and there's an internal list that allows only Apple's (plus a few makers' like Logitech and Keychron) keyboard to _send_ the modifier keycode. Others are simply ignored. Sorry enthusiasts, Apple don't want to favor you.
It looks like you can still use hidutil to remap some other key. This invocation seems to remap the Application key to the fn key:
sudo hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000065,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0xFF00000003}]}'
# note: works for e.g. Fn-F (fullscreen), but not Fn-F{1..12} (brightness etc.)
alias app2fn+=$'hidutil property --set \'{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000065,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0xFF00000003}]}\''
alias app2fn-=$'hidutil property --set \'{"UserKeyMapping":[]}\''
alias app2fn?=$'hidutil property --get "UserKeyMapping"'On the Mac the Control shortcuts are used for text manipulation everywhere and they come from Emacs: C-a, C-e, C-f, C-b, C-k, etc. The Cmd key is not the standard for text editing; it is the standard for all app-specific commands. For example Cmd+I usually makes text italic in a word processor, but in a non-word processor app italic makes no sense, so for example in Finder it means bring up the inspector.
One point on macOS is that it’s very weak on keyboard based navigation and shortcuts for apps by default (compared to Windows). Even Apple doesn’t bother with keyboard based navigation in its own apps. One look at any app “ported” from iOS is enough. Apple hasn’t even spent time to check what the Tab key does in these apps. It’s a shame.
At least in VS Code, ctrl+G on Mac is the shortcut for "goto line" (but yes, cmd+G is "find next")
How is find next 'obscure'?