Twenty-seven years since Microsoft did so, Apple too wanted a Windows-style key that only they could control.
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?
Is this where I can complain about command+q? All day every day I use command+tab/tilde/w/a/s, and smack in the middle of that is command q. It's like if automobile manufacturers decided to put a third pedal between the accelerator and the brake that immediately shuts off your car in the middle of the highway. And you can't disable it, instead you can map it to such helpful things like... invert colors.
Not only can disable it, but with the right tools like Karabiner elements you can turn it into something useful - double tap cmd+Q to quit: no accidental activations, but retains muscle memory
In System Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts > App Shortcuts, add the shortcut: app Safari, name "Quit Safari", command-option-Q. This will leave command-Q doing nothing, yet still allow you to quit. Repeat for other apps.
Wow. 55 images, all carefully prepared and placed, not a single AI-generated. I love the quality of this post. Not to mention, I learned something new and new perspectives.
The button is now the shortcut for voice dictation.
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.
Agreed, but my biggest problem with this, is that most external keyboards don't really have an equivalent (at least in the some location). So while I have Fn mapped to my speech to text tool (Hex), I have to figure out something else when I'm at my desktop keyboard.
Looking at this IBM pc keyboard image in this article, where all the function keys are on the left, it makes sense that Alt+F4 and other similar shortcut on Windows made sense at that time, but these days function keys being at top row make such keyboard shortcuts unergonomic.
This article covered many historical aspects I was never aware of.
> 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.
> Apple used to be good at cannibalizing its own product lines.
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.
Add to this that the Apple IIe had two keys with the Apple logo on them. One just an outline ‘open Apple’ and one a silhouette ‘closed Apple’. These two keys did different things to each other!
The open and closed apple keys first appeared on the Apple ///, initially next to each other on the left of the spacebar. On the Apple /// plus, the closed apple then moved to the right of the keyboard, which is what the Apple IIe inherited.
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.
Apple just seems to be in a rush to launch half-baked features then keeps them in a weird state of stasis for years. The globe/FN key changes the keyboard layout when tapped, which is very useful since I type in multiple languages, but after a few dozen uses it simply... stops functioning. It's been broken for years. The only way I've found to fix it is to open the command line and killall Dock and killall Finder. But then language switching fails again a few more switches later. Not fixing a feature that has a whole key dedicated to it just shows how careless they've become.
I'm so fucking tired of trying to do a super spock pinch with my keyboard. I've always thought composition of typing various keys in sequence is better than trying to press 4 keys at once, particularly if your left handed or right handed, say.
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.
> Most crucially, both keyboards introduced a new tenant: Control (⌃). This was modifier key number four, and to this day, I don’t fully understand why ⌘ wasn’t repurposed here
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.)
Why is Control-C ambiguous? Oh wait, you guys use Control-C for copy, but you have forgotten that both Windows and Linux support Control-Insert for copy. That's what I use.
That would not be a good approach on Macs where most users are using reduced/laptop keyboards that have no Insert key.
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.
Not using the combination for one of its ambiguous purposes does not strip it of ambiguity, you've just trained yourself to avoid those circumstances.
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.
It doesn't change randomly. There are zero apps where Apple+C becomes Ctrl+C, for example. Same keys across the whole OS for cut, copy, paste; select, find; undo/redo; fullscreen, zoom; print… the list goes on.
Keyboard shortcuts are truly a mess on mac os. Windows does it much better and with more consistency. That results in third party apps also having sensible shortcuts. Example: Ctrl+G is widely used in code editors for "Goto line". On Windows it makes perfect sense to use because Ctrl+ shortcuts are used for text editing everywhere. But on macos it is out of place, because there Cmd+ is the standard for text editing. But Cmd+G is used for some obscure find feature. So editors fall back to Ctrl+G which is out of place.
The "goto line" feature on most Mac text editors is Cmd+L. And it's consistent.
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.
I don’t know why this comment is downvoted, but I don’t agree with this either because the OS (historical) conventions are different, and there may be unintuitive shortcuts on all OSes. What matters is consistency across applications on the same OS.
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.
While this is a problem for the default user experience, I think if you're an enthusiast there's less of a problem because you can get an external keyboard you like.
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.
My Mac has no keyboard, it's just a metal box that sits on your desk - so an external keyboard is the only option. Nobody told me I had to get any specific type in particular!
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:
On my keyboard, metakeywise, I then have 2 x Shift, 2 x Ctrl, 2 x Option (marked Alt), 2 x Command (marked Start), 1 x undetectable-to-macOS (marked Fn), and 1 x Fn (got that little Windows context menu logo on it).
I have an external keyboard and I keep accidentally hitting the fn key when I mean to hit backspace. And that toggles the keyboard layout if you have more than one.
Twenty-seven years since Microsoft did so, Apple too wanted a Windows-style key that only they could control.
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?
Is this where I can complain about command+q? All day every day I use command+tab/tilde/w/a/s, and smack in the middle of that is command q. It's like if automobile manufacturers decided to put a third pedal between the accelerator and the brake that immediately shuts off your car in the middle of the highway. And you can't disable it, instead you can map it to such helpful things like... invert colors.
Not only can disable it, but with the right tools like Karabiner elements you can turn it into something useful - double tap cmd+Q to quit: no accidental activations, but retains muscle memory
In System Settings > Keyboard Shortcuts > App Shortcuts, add the shortcut: app Safari, name "Quit Safari", command-option-Q. This will leave command-Q doing nothing, yet still allow you to quit. Repeat for other apps.
That's a lot of work to do it per app! And remember to do for every new app
Nah, I installed karabiner and set up command+q to require a three-second holddown to activate.
Wow. 55 images, all carefully prepared and placed, not a single AI-generated. I love the quality of this post. Not to mention, I learned something new and new perspectives.
I never noticed the Globe before, and now I know why the emoji keyboard sometimes pops up.
The button is now the shortcut for voice dictation.
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.
Agreed, but my biggest problem with this, is that most external keyboards don't really have an equivalent (at least in the some location). So while I have Fn mapped to my speech to text tool (Hex), I have to figure out something else when I'm at my desktop keyboard.
Also https://whisperanywhere.app
Looking at this IBM pc keyboard image in this article, where all the function keys are on the left, it makes sense that Alt+F4 and other similar shortcut on Windows made sense at that time, but these days function keys being at top row make such keyboard shortcuts unergonomic.
This article covered many historical aspects I was never aware of.
> 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.
> Apple used to be good at cannibalizing its own product lines.
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/
Add to this that the Apple IIe had two keys with the Apple logo on them. One just an outline ‘open Apple’ and one a silhouette ‘closed Apple’. These two keys did different things to each other!
The open and closed apple keys first appeared on the Apple ///, initially next to each other on the left of the spacebar. On the Apple /// plus, the closed apple then moved to the right of the keyboard, which is what the Apple IIe inherited.
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...
Apple just seems to be in a rush to launch half-baked features then keeps them in a weird state of stasis for years. The globe/FN key changes the keyboard layout when tapped, which is very useful since I type in multiple languages, but after a few dozen uses it simply... stops functioning. It's been broken for years. The only way I've found to fix it is to open the command line and killall Dock and killall Finder. But then language switching fails again a few more switches later. Not fixing a feature that has a whole key dedicated to it just shows how careless they've become.
If you're using multiple layouts, CapsLock is a great option for the switch key.
but then how would you press escape?
I'm so fucking tired of trying to do a super spock pinch with my keyboard. I've always thought composition of typing various keys in sequence is better than trying to press 4 keys at once, particularly if your left handed or right handed, say.
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.
Isn't this what sticky keys does? https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-keyboard-set...
Yeah my least favorite key since the globe was added. Randomly opens emoji keyboard on me
I love my Fn/Globe key. It fires up Aqua Voice and begins transcribing. My fingers appreciate the break from typing.
> Most crucially, both keyboards introduced a new tenant: Control (⌃). This was modifier key number four, and to this day, I don’t fully understand why ⌘ wasn’t repurposed here
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 article states:
> 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.)
Why is Control-C ambiguous? Oh wait, you guys use Control-C for copy, but you have forgotten that both Windows and Linux support Control-Insert for copy. That's what I use.
That would not be a good approach on Macs where most users are using reduced/laptop keyboards that have no Insert key.
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.
Not using the combination for one of its ambiguous purposes does not strip it of ambiguity, you've just trained yourself to avoid those circumstances.
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 least it's the same on all applications across the entire OS. I'd rather have it be ambiguous than change randomly
It doesn't change randomly. There are zero apps where Apple+C becomes Ctrl+C, for example. Same keys across the whole OS for cut, copy, paste; select, find; undo/redo; fullscreen, zoom; print… the list goes on.
Any Mac with the globe on the key is Apple Silicon.
Keyboard shortcuts are truly a mess on mac os. Windows does it much better and with more consistency. That results in third party apps also having sensible shortcuts. Example: Ctrl+G is widely used in code editors for "Goto line". On Windows it makes perfect sense to use because Ctrl+ shortcuts are used for text editing everywhere. But on macos it is out of place, because there Cmd+ is the standard for text editing. But Cmd+G is used for some obscure find feature. So editors fall back to Ctrl+G which is out of place.
The "goto line" feature on most Mac text editors is Cmd+L. And it's consistent.
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.
> Cmd+G is used for some obscure find feature
How is find next 'obscure'?
ctrl+G may also mean "find next" on Windows (e.g. in Chrome), so it's not particularly obscure.
At least in VS Code, ctrl+G on Mac is the shortcut for "goto line" (but yes, cmd+G is "find next")
I don’t know why this comment is downvoted, but I don’t agree with this either because the OS (historical) conventions are different, and there may be unintuitive shortcuts on all OSes. What matters is consistency across applications on the same OS.
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.
While this is a problem for the default user experience, I think if you're an enthusiast there's less of a problem because you can get an external keyboard you like.
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.
My Mac has no keyboard, it's just a metal box that sits on your desk - so an external keyboard is the only option. Nobody told me I had to get any specific type in particular!
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:
On my keyboard, metakeywise, I then have 2 x Shift, 2 x Ctrl, 2 x Option (marked Alt), 2 x Command (marked Start), 1 x undetectable-to-macOS (marked Fn), and 1 x Fn (got that little Windows context menu logo on it).I have an external keyboard and I keep accidentally hitting the fn key when I mean to hit backspace. And that toggles the keyboard layout if you have more than one.