>The ⌘ symbol (the "looped square") was chosen by Susan Kare after Steve Jobs decided that the use of the Apple logo in the menu system (where the keyboard shortcuts are displayed) would be an over-use of the logo
Never thought about over-use of the logo, but Jobs did have a good point. I always felt that Windows key on keyboards felt a bit ugly and out of place.
From what I understand Jobs was probably fine with using the Apple logo on the physical key, the problem was rather displaying the logo everywhere in the menus, where the shortcuts are displayed. That would have been way too much indeed.
Indeed, I may be misremembering, but I think macintoshes had both the looped circle and the apple logo. Some of the Apple II series had two apple keys, one open and one filled.
That came in beginning with the //e, they were mapped to be equivalent to paddle button 1 and 2. Ctrl-open apple-reset triggered a reboot. It’s 36 years since I’ve used an Apple //e but this is still wired deep in my brain. This approach to the new keys meant that applications could use the two Apple keys as modifiers without a whole lot of effort since you could read the key press and state of the paddle button easily enough.
At some point, they also required ctrl to be pressed along side reset to prevent it from being accidentally triggered (it was right next to the return key). Reset on its own terminated the currently running program (as opposed to ctrl-c which stopped a BASIC program but you could resume the program—this was an early means of debugging since you could do things like PRINT A$ to see the value of A$ at the time that you stopped the program or even alter program variables before resuming).
There was one occasion when someone at my high school was experiencing great frustration because every time he did ctrl-reset, the computer rebooted. It turned out that a book was sitting on top of the paddles depressing the button.
When I was in school (beige Macintosh era) our teachers told us the keyboard shortcuts as "open apple-S" or "open apple-Q". At the time the keyboards did indeed have both the looped circle and the Apple logo[0], but both were open apples. I had an Apple IIe at home but hadn't figured out keyboard shortcuts yet.
I think the open apple was introduced with the ADB keyboards, which worked both with Macintosh and IIGS computers. The open apple was for Apple II computers and applications; the knotty loop was for the Mac and its applications.
The original Mac keyboards (serial, with the telephone handset connector) did not have the open apple symbol. I don't recall any Mac applications making reference to the open Apple key, it was always "Command Key." From the Mac side, "open apple" was a colloquialism.
macOS (even back when it was OS X, and I assume before that) systematically refers to special keys with symbols, not written names. In addition to the CMD symbol, SHIFT is ⇧, CTRL is ^, and ALT/OPT is ⌥.
> I've always wondered why they don't put the shift symbol on the keyboards when all the other symbols exist.
My keyboard doesn't have any key for the symbol ⌥ or ⌘, either. Or do you mean that all the other modifier keys on Mac-branded keyboards are labelled with their symbols, whereas shift isn't?
So you meant that the non-shift modifier keys have symbols on them (same for me!), not that there is a key that is intended to produce the symbol that denotes the modifier, right?
I can't imagine them doing that when they already had an Apple logo symbol built into the font in ROM. They were trying really hard to emphasize the graphical capabilities of the Mac, and using a text abbreviation like that would have felt like a waste of those capabilities.
I don't find it that similar. Windows key is rarely (never?) used as a modifier at the application level. You'd never see it as a keyboard shortcut in menus likes you do with command.
Windows key shortcuts are all (I think) operating system shortcuts. Super+R, Super+X, Super+right arrow.
I have to agree with you (and Jobs) here. The Windows key is related to Windows functions. I think using the Windows logo I this instance is particularly apt. As you pointed out, the Command key is really a very generic key and has no particular affinity to Apple or the OS itself.
I haven’t used Windows 11 yet, but the Windows key has become much more associated with premier Windows features beyond initially the start menu. Windows+G opens the integrated gaming experience (if you’ve enabled it, I believe) and even Windows+tab gives you a similar, but more modern experience over alt+tab. Windows+v gives you an expanded clipboard view and I think this may be where the line begins to blur a bit, but it’s still the improved Windows version of the paste command that is essentially the same across most OSes.
It has its utilitarian uses such as window management with Windows+arrow key, but that of course is an OS level action.
> Windows key is rarely (never?) used as a modifier at the application level. You'd never see it as a keyboard shortcut in menus likes you do with command.
Yeah that's because the Windows key was only introduced with Windows 95, which means a) ctrl- and alt- shortcuts were already convention; and b) most keyboards didn't even have a Windows key! If you were writing an application at the time, it would have been a gamble whether end users could even access your shortcuts. So of course devs stayed with ctrl and alt.
The windows key is very mnemonic in nature because window correlates to display and to an app window from which there are multiple display/window moving keyboard shortcuts tied to that magic button
ChromeOS had a similar chance to make Search button (Globe) the window management key. But somehow they messed it up and now window/desktop management is sometimes using Search button, other times using Alt. Huge missed opportunity for those of us with worse memory.
Windows key is super-useful on Windows, and it gets better every version.
Aside from the Win+Arrow combinations, which are probably among the most useful, other ones that I use daily are Win+. to bring up emoji keyboard, Win+V to bring up clipboard history, Win+T to navigate the quicklaunch/taskbar apps and (less frequently) Win+Plus and Win+Minus to zoom the display. There are some new settings shortcuts too like Win+A for mini-settings (like Android swipe from top), Win+I for proper settings and Win+P for projector settings.
Plus there are all the old keypresses that have been around forever like Win+R run, Win+L lock workstation, Win+M minimize everything, Win+D for show desktop toggle, Win+S for search (used to be Win+F/find), Win+E explore... I think nowadays I use Windows button as much as I do Control and Shift.
Alt is less useful since applications stopped having menus, but AltGr is great for international input. I suppose Win+Space is important to know too, if you switch keyboards a lot (I do).
The Gnome and friends defaults puts Linux in 2nd place IMO. However, like nearly everything Linux, if you're willing to put in a little bit of effort and/or go down more esoteric routes (i3 is clearly the most efficient I've ever been...the problem is that I'm forced to use macOS and Windows as well, and switching from i3 to the others is really difficult) it can easily be the best.
macOS seems the weakest. There are utilities that can equal functionality from the other OSes, but even then it feels unnatural (a lot of animations in nearly everything doesn't help)
It's been a long time since I used Windows 95, but I'm pretty sure most of the basic window manager keypresses were there. Stuff like Win+R (run), Win+E (explorer), Win+M (minimize everything) etc.
A lot more backstories to many design, technical and political aspects of early Macintosh development can be found at https://www.folklore.org/ - it's a real treasure trove for people interested in how the Mac came to be.
Sure, but I wish they would at least be consistent. My 2015 external keyboard has keys for "control", "alt/option", and "command ⌘". I'll find documentation online that says "press the ⌥ key" and I'm like, what the hell is that?
I use it as the modifier key for my window manager shortcuts so I just think of it as the lowercase w windows key and not the uppercase W Windows key and it's fine.
it's very clearly an operating system logo though, it's like if you had the Pepsi logo on your water dispenser on your fridge. Would look weird and out of place.
EDIT: I'm being downvoted and I'm note sure why, perhaps a lot of the newer folks aren't aware of what it used to look like; it was very clearly "Windows the operating system": https://i.redd.it/fnligi5oa0h51.jpg
Windows keyboards are designed around the Windows OS so they feature that logo? I have an Ethernet adapter with an Apple logo on it but it's plugged into a Dell running Linux. Is that absurdly out of place? I just don't understand this thread at all.
By "windows keyboards" you likely mean the very common IBM PC Keyboard layout which was expanded many times, most famously in 1994 with the addition of 2 keys: Windows and Menu
I do wonder why my laptop which I bought with Linux pre-installed has another vendors operating system logo as a standard key on an otherwise vendor neutral keyboard.
I wonder why IBM, who created many keys that I commonly use on my keyboard does not have their logo anywhere.
The "fridge" analogy was because the universal sign for "liquid" is not "Pepsi".
But imagine that the keyboard had other vendor logos, the "B" is the Broadcom logo, because frankly it's almost assured that there is Broadcom tech in there. Intel puts an "intel inside" logo for turning on numlock since they're the owners of the patent.
Just feels surreal, silly, and very out of place.
Unless of course you say "all non-Apple personal computers are exclusively Windows PCs" which feels a bit grotesque to cede control in such a way. Even when Intel was extremely dominant in CPU manufacture did we allow them to put their logo into standards in this way. (thunderbolt, USB et al.)
You'll say "ah, but they invented a new key and it was useful so we kept it" except;
The current Windows logo is just four squares, that's hardly an obvious logo. It's not even that different from the looped square, or the meta diamond.
I hate when people downvote without saying why... maybe because there is no reason except: "I do not like your opinion, I have no better one, but I do not like yours"
This is yet another example. I see no wrong in this comment. I would like that HN changes something about it.
You (not OP) are being downvoted because your post has no content other than complaining about post votes, and that's in the HN guidelines as something not to do.
> Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
OP's comment hasn't been meaningfully downvoted; it's still black text. Yours has, though.
It's just a symbol, like the square loop symbol. I'm sure you can find a use for the key. And I'm sure you can understand historical reasons that the key is there. I imagine if you dig into the reasons behind some other keys you'll find that a single company was behind some of them. And what would be the difference other than the symbol used?
On top of that it's just big. If you have a keyboard with backlight shining through the letters, Win button is gonna be by far the brightest due to its design.
Important to note the relationship between Microsoft and PC OEMs. The same time period that introduced the Windows key (late 90s) was also one in which some (Be Inc.?) accused Microsoft of having anticompetitive practices in their contracts with OEMs, such as charging for Windows licenses even if a machine was not pre installed with Windows. Forcing adoption of the Windows key seems right in line with that.
I remember Linux advocates being very irritated by the sudden introduction of that key. If you got a PC in 1996, no windows logo on the keyboard. By 1998 they all had it.
I seem to recall that up to 2012 or so, the apple logo was printed alongside the looped square on the physical key. We used to refer to it as the “apple key” (2000s CS program anecdote) and I recall it taking a while to adjust to referring to it as the command key.
EDIT: now that I follow the link I see this information is in the first line. Oh well!
That was a later change. The original Macintosh keyboards showed only the Command symbol, and we called it the "command key". The Apple logo did not show up until years later, when Apple introduced the ADB keyboards, designed to be compatible with both the Macintosh line and the Apple IIgs; their command keys showed both the cloverleaf symbol, used on the Macintosh, and the Apple logo, which had been the convention for Apple II keyboards.
You can use the Sun Type 7 USB keyboard which has a diamond symbol super key. Under Windows it functions as the Win key. Plus it has application keys on the left had side.
I like Apple using Alt/Option/Meta as "alternative option"
I don't like Apple applications using Super/Windows/Looped Square for their own shortcuts.
On my Linux workstation I standardise to:
- Super for all window operations. Quit, resize, move to workspace.
- Super+alt for system wide action: lock, suspend, reboot.
- Hyper (super+ctrl+alt+shift because it's easily accessible on my keyboard) for global shortcuts such as mute microphone.
And Ctrl and Alt are reserved for applications themselves. I like Emacs approach: Ctrl is (mostly) the first layer, and Alt/Meta tends to work on semantic blocks: words, lines, sentences, etc. Shift often means Option, i.e. alternative to the base shortcut.
On the contrary, I like Apple’s Cmd for its location. It sits right under a thumb, and is less awkward to reach to than to Ctrl with a pinky. I liked it so much on Mac that I added Alt-W and similar Alt-variants of Ctrl-shortcuts to my PC browser and Vim. I also tried to switch Ctrl and Alt at a system level, but it didn’t feel right.
Cmd is the only thing that works well on a Macbook keyboard and everything else is a travesty. `fn` should be banished from the left side entirely and letting it occupy the Fitz Law ideal of the corner is a goddamn atrocity against good design for how little use it gets.
Complex chords are extremely painful when done one handed because the other meta keys are tiny and crammed all together. On Windows keyboards, `fn` either doesn't exist or is in the middle (creating ctrl-fn-win-alt), making for tons of comfortable space for one-handed chorded keys.
Honestly if I given a chance to redesign keyboards, I’d leave these corners completely empty and put cmd, alt, ctrl and probably shift where alt-spacebar-alt group is on a pc keyboard. Space “bar” itself would be just a key, maybe 2x width. Or maybe between B N even.
6x+ is too much honor for a key that produces blanks and allocates 20% of fingers, also useful ones. More than half of my spacebar area has no wear signs if you look closely.
> I don't like Apple applications using Super/Windows/Looped Square for their own shortcuts.
I strongly disagree. The distinction between OS and applications is arbitrary, it does not make sense to separate along this line. And a consistent command key is great, particularly compared to the mess we have on Windows. The fact that this leaves control free for command-line applications is a great bonus as well.
I couldn't count the many times I've been saved by the menu key, when my mouse somehow stops working for no reason. I hate that my current keyboard relegates it to be second-class citizen in lieu of the Fn key taking its place (which on the other hand I find to be useless).
I map language switch to menu key on linux (also temporary switch to rwin key, and use scroll lock indicator (not key) as a language indicator). It’s much more comfortable than regular ctrl-shift or alt-shift, and these keys are in a good place.
Shift+F10 works on Windows and Linux GTK (not Qt) apps, but it's not self-documenting unlike the menu key.
Also bring back keyboards with external media keys that don't require holding Fn to either change volume and tracks, or press F# key shortcuts. Also please give me an EC firmware which maps top-row keys to media keys when pressed alone (for convenience), and to F# keys when either Fn or any other modifier keys are held (so you don't need to add an extra key to complex modifier chords relative to on desktops).
As the article says it's used for cultural locations here in the North. I asked my family members what they associate it with and got a variety of answers, including Viking ornamentation, a citadell layout, house foundation, reminiscence of the infinity symbol (persistence through time). As a kid seeing it on the keyboard next to the Apple logo I thought it looked like a leaves or maybe vines. It's a funny thing the potency of such abstract symbols, adaptable to different contexts via multiple interpretations, but whose shapes are also not completely separated from what they represent.
I've always thought the symbol came from its resemblance to the letter H for "Historical location" but the reasons you and the article brings up are probably more likely now that I've heard them.
Growing up with Mac computers at school in the 90's, teachers referred to ⌘ as the "splat" key. I'm not sure of the etymology or origins, but I inferred it's because the symbol resembles a cartoon animation splat, as might be produced from a character running straight into glass wall and getting flattened like a fly with a swatter.
I never heard anyone call a symbol or key 'splat' until taking database courses in college (15 years ago). Instead of saying 'asterisk' or 'star' all the time, they would read a SQL query like 'select splat from table...'
I'm pretty sure that it was another class at the same time where I picked up 'bang' for 'exclamation point'. Looking back, I'm surprised that both had eluded me for so long.
I've never heard it used like that but actually makes a lot of sense if thinking of an asterisk as the glob wildcard. Plus it sounds much better when spoken aloud in the context compared to asterisk or star
Yes, true, and I have heard that. Python, too, now that I think about it, but what I meant (unclearly) is I've never heard "splat" used for anything but (star); regardless of what the (star) represented.
I’m moderately* proud as a Scandinavian, that both this symbol as well as the (Harald-)Bluetooth rune have become part of the global IT symbology. Also that Apple kept the “Siri” name for the voice system they bought.
* (I’m not normally proud of things I didn’t contribute to)
⌘ Key is often equivalent to ctrl on windows.
Ctrl-C,-V,-X copy'n'paste actions are done with that key on Mac.
I think it's much better placed since you can reach it with your thumb and don't have to rotate your wrist when using it as opposed to ctrl, so when typing macs you might have less strain on your hands.
Unless you have tiny monkeypaws for hands, ⌘-V is a painful gesture and doesn't make sense on any human hand. This is one of apple's major human interface messups. And I'll die on that hill.
Ctrl on the far left of the keyboard (where FN is on apple keyboards) is far more ergonomically laid out, doesn't require a radical twist of the fingers, and also allows your fingers to remain in home-row with thumb on space.
Personally I think ALL modifier keys should be on the far left/right of a keyboard where they can all be accessed by a pinky finger. It is faster, doesn't require bone crossing, and allows you to remain in a typing position. Combinations of multiple modifiers should be very rare, if it isn't someone needs to go back to UI/UX school. (I blame Emacs for that!)
> Unless you have tiny monkeypaws for hands, ⌘-V is a painful gesture and doesn't make sense on any human hand.
I don't find this true at all, and as far as I can tell I have normal-sized hands.
How do you rest your fingers on the keyboard? When I have my eight fingers on the home keys, I can hit ⌘-C by bending my index finger in isolation. To hit ⌘-V, I have to rotate my entire left hand very slightly to the right while also bending my index finger. However, I've never once thought consciously about how to perform this action before today, despite having hit ⌘-V millions of times - so it's never struck me as a difficult or uncomfortable maneuver.
Standard home-row position. Having to scoot my thumb over to square-loop is very uncomfortable because it naturally rests on the spacebar.
It might be that I've been programming for close to 40 years and have grown accustomed to CTRL being an involuntary gesture for the pinky. Just like escape (from using vi for 30+ years).
It could be that people born using loop-* are used to it, plus Apple pushing ctrl into a weird place on its keyboards just means that your never had the opportunity to experience the ergonomically superior CTRL-C/V from the "old days" of keyboards before modifier madness took over. TBH emacs CTRL-ALT bothered me as well, and I had similar debates on Usenet. :) Or you are young and flexible. :)
I'm confused by this subthread. Are people hitting the Spacebar-adjacent modifier key with their index finger? It's meant to be hit with the thumb, and it's far more ergonomic than the pinky holding the bottom-left modifier key. ⌘-A should be nothing but an easy thumb contraction.
I use the usual Caps Lock position as my "Control" key, which is faster and more ergonomic than any of the traditional modifier positions, but the second place is easily the Spacebar-adjacent modifier key (I use it as my Super key, for window manager controls like workspace switching and application launcher). I have Alt bound to the bottom-left position where Control usually is. Alt doesn't get used nearly as much, and that's the third-best spot. The spot in between the two bottom-row modifiers is the least accessible by far (hard to hit accurately with the pinky, out of reach of the thumb). 101-key keyboards don't have it at all. I've recently started using it as push-to-talk, which works fine since it's not used for anything else and you don't have to chord it with anything.
Agreed, if trying to do it with one hand. If you chord with the alternate hand’s thumb all is well. However, I would expect most people tend use only one half of the shift ctrl alt cmd/win keys. Typically with the left hand from what I’ve seen.
My favourite aspect of this is that I have ctrl-c for SIGINT when I'm working in terminal and cmd-c for copy. No tracking which terminal emulator or IDE I'm in and which keyboard shortcuts to use for very common actions.
When using desktop keyboard, then Ctrl key is so easy to take with your palm, this small part below pinky. Doesn't work on laptops, but this is one of the reasons to prefer normal keyboards.
I like the ⌘ glyph but outside the United States, keyboards don’t have the “command” name on the key. I find it hard to describe to my parents when doing support over the phone.
It was much easier when this key also featured the outline of the Apple logo , I could describe it as the key with the Apple on it next to the space bar.
I envy my Northern European neighbors that actually have name for the ⌘ symbol, or in Northern America where you can simply say the “command” key because that’s written on it.
The “” (F8FF) unicode code point is in the “private use” section of Unicode, and therefore could depict anything, depending on the font. The closest thing to a standard is the Under-ConScript Unicode Registry¹, which reserves F8D0−F8FF to Klingon, where the F8FF character is the KLINGON MUMMIFICATION GLYPH:
I learned it as the "Open Apple" key, and I used that for many years, until people stopped having any idea what I was talking about. And it's way too many syllables. I had to retrain myself to call it "command".
On my laptop, with a Danish keyboard, it says "command" right below the ⌘ sign. Weirdly enough the larger USB keyboard it just says "cmd" on the left of the key and have ⌘ right aligned.
From memory, more recent non-US keyboards do have "command" as well as the symbol, and recent US keyboards have added the symbol, so we have eventually reached consistency.
Somewhat tangential, the Command+Q shortcut to immediately, irrevocably, infuriatingly QUIT WHATEVER YOU HAVE OPEN is absolutely diabolical. Considering all day I type Command+Tab to switch applications, and Command+W to close browser tabs. There's no way to remap it to "do nothing", so you have to remap it to do "something else". The best I could figure out is make it show and hide my app bar.
It was, but there were exceptions. It turns it that this symbol, in the Chicago font, is mapped to a control code (this is pre-Unicode; fonts were limited to 256 characters, so such creative use wasn’t considered deadly sin)
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/technotes/te/te_...:
Chicago Control-Q prints propeller or clover symbol
Date Written: 7/4/90
Last reviewed: 6/14/93
How do I get the character that represents the clover used for Command-key equivalents in documents and in menus?
___
This key is documented in the Apple Style Guide, which is available on the latest Developer CD Series disc as well as from APDA. One little feature of Key Caps which is not widely known is the Control key (not the Command or Option keys). Pressing the Control key in Chicago shows that Control-Q in Chicago maps to the propeller symbol for which you search. Control-Q generates the character code 17; the standard Macintosh character set (see Inside Macintosh Volume VI, page 12-5) specifies this symbol for it.
It was a uniquely Mac thing when it came out, unless you lived in Scandinavia you probably had never seen it. It's also a pleasing shape in general I think, because of the symmetry.
Diameter of the thermal vs loss of lift when banking for a right turning radius.
If the thermal is wide enough, any pattern could do. If it's too narrow, any attempt at flying a circle inside of it will become an exercise of keeping maybe just the tip of one wing inside the thermal.
I don't know, but surely it's to have more of the flight times in the warm centre of the updraft. Circles would miss the centre region for at least half the flight. Also a looped square would reduce the amount of flight when you're pitched, reducing strain?
I'd expect they might do a crossover in the middle to do turns to both sides (left wing down, right wing down); but perhaps flyers prefer one side for turns.
It is called "hannunvaakuna" in Finnish (or "käpälikkö" it seems), literal translation being "Hannu's coat of arms" and it's an old religious symbol similar to pentagram or swastika. Used for protection against spirits and whatnot. Although that name has fallen out of common use and people just call it "komento" -> "command". A nice symbol though so can see why they went with it.
If you follow the text deep enough in Wikipedia, you see that the symbol may find its origination in the architecture of Sweden's Borgholm Castle, which from above is shaped just like ⌘ . You can see this here[0] in Google Maps satellite view.
This is the only thing I like about Apple keyboards.
For programming, their layout is so different than standard keyboards, it's horrifying (I'm talking about the AZERTY ones, don't really know about the QWERTYs) : for example
-_(){}[]*`!+= characters are on different keys.
Also, are standard keyboard still recognized as apple keyboards if you plug them on a mac ?
When you plug a new one in, you have the option to run through a "layout detection" process. Typically it asks you to press the keys directly adjacent to the "shift" keys and goes from there. Also, IME, there is not a "mac" keyboard on a hardware level - the key directly to the left of the space is alt on Windows or Command on OSX.
I call it the "flower" key, mainly due to the response I got from a couple other devs when I switched from years of Windows to doing some Mac stuff, and didn't know that it was called "command".
Snabel-a is also very common in Sweden. It's the "correct" colloquialism here, with the exception for children and teenagers who say "bulle/kanelbulle".
Never thought about over-use of the logo, but Jobs did have a good point. I always felt that Windows key on keyboards felt a bit ugly and out of place.