Discussion

I don’t know what is Apple’s endgame for the Fn/Globe key, and I’m not sure Apple knows either

perryizgr8: 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.

perilunar: > Cmd+G is used for some obscure find featureHow is find next 'obscure'?

joeframbach: 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.

kdheiwns: 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.

cyberax: If you're using multiple layouts, CapsLock is a great option for the switch key.

mproud: Any Mac with the globe on the key is Apple Silicon.

MFHava: > 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 hereBecause 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...

kccqzy: 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.

comex: 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.

sbinnee: 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.

bombcar: I never noticed the Globe before, and now I know why the emoji keyboard sometimes pops up.

pulvinar: 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.

eviks: That's a lot of work to do it per app! And remember to do for every new app

bb88: 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.

bombcar: Isn't this what sticky keys does? https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/change-keyboard-set...

eviks: 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

joeframbach: Nah, I installed karabiner and set up command+q to require a three-second holddown to activate.

dabinat: For me it’s Ctrl + C / V. I will frequently hit Ctrl + C when I want to paste, and some software helpfully copies a blank line to the clipboard if nothing is selected, thus erasing whatever I copied.

eviks: > Most importantly for our conversation, the Fn key was resolved internally inside the keyboardThat'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 line 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

joeframbach: The fact that there is an entire _industry_ of tools to patch every little shortcoming speaks volumes of Apple's usability.

astrostl: Huge enabler for the mini keyboards for me: Fn + L/R for Home/End, Fn + U/D for PgUp/PgDn.

rmunn: The "compose" key on Linux is one of my favorite things about the Linux keyboard system. You can pick which key is your "compose" key, choosing from about a dozen options. Then just as you describe, you type it in sequence (though on Linux, compose then c then s produces š, because compose then c is the shorthand for the "caron" diacritic: compose, c, g is ǧ, compose, c, h is ȟ, and so on).

rgoulter: 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.

tom_: 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: sudo hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000065,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0xFF00000003}]}' 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).

junk245435254: Yep, this is what I have in my Bash config, for the external Microsoft Natural Keyboard attached to my Mac: # 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"'

Twenty-seven years since Microsoft did so, Apple too wanted a Windows-style key that only they could control.

em-bee: 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?