The road sign does not mean camping ground here in Sweden and it never has. It means something like "sight", "monument" or "place of interest".

Here's is the road sign at the Swedish Transport Board: http://www.transportstyrelsen.se/sv/Vag/Vagmarken/Lokaliseri...

The description says: The sign indicates a sight of national interest. The nature of the sight is mentioned in connection to the mark.

More information is available here (Google translated): http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&hl=en&ie...

The article doesn't say that it means camping ground. It says it means

> a floral symbol that was used in Sweden to indicate an interesting feature or attraction in a campground

which is something entirely different. (It might still be wrong -- from what you say it sounds as if it's used in plenty of places other than campgrounds -- but it isn't wrong in the way you imply it is.)

> It means something like "sight", "monument" or "place of interest".

It literally means "worth seeing".

It's not even "belvedere" or "tourist attraction", which tell you the type of thing on maps in other countries.

I've always liked it for the ambiguity.

And the shape captures a simplification of early viking forts: http://www.planetware.com/map/trelleborg-viking-camp-c-1-000...

In that respect, the icon means tourist attraction.

"Worth seeing" is a better translation, thank you.

The key I have issue with is the weird sort of smiley. Or maybe it is half a bathtub. Or some sort of plumbing diagram. At least the command key can be described to someone else as a clover. What on earth were people supposed to associate the skateboard ramp with? It is the middle one in this image http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/MacBook_o...

It looks like a line that's taking an alternate route.

The ISO symbol shows that a little more clearly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ISOIEC-9995-7-025--ISO-700...

It's a circuit diagram for a switch. It represents a choice between two paths, as appropriate for the "option" key.

http://electronicsclub.info/circuitsymbols.htm#switches

That's the international, ISO standard symbol for "Two finger salute to any Brits that want a # key". By pressing it with the number '3' we used to be able to type a # symbol, even though it wasn't shown on the key, because Apple hates us.

Since Lion Apple has decided that just making our lives difficult wasn't enough, we really don't deserve the # symbol at all, and now that combination switches desktops. There is no keyboard combination on a standard, un-hacked factory delivered UK Mac that produces a # symbol. Really.

I keep a text file on my desktop that contains a single # character and cut-n-paste it when I need one.

Alt-3 for # working fine here (in the UK). You might have non-standard shortcuts set up in System Prefs > Mission Control or an odd keyboard layout installed.

What?

Alt-3 works just fine me on a UK Mac for making a #. I have made no tweaks.

What OS are you running? What are your physical keyboard and keyboard map, UK or US?

Mavericks, but behaviour has stayed consistent since OS X Public Beta (pre-Cheetah) for me and was probably the same on Classic.

Physical keyboards I've used have always been en_GB, internal or external.

My favourite is "toothbrush head".

I've heard it called "train tracks" since it looks like a set of railway points.

I had heard about this, but didn't know about the "taking the Apple logo in vain" part. It's so wonderfully Steve Jobs in its being both crazy arrogant and also probably correct.

Every now and then I still call the Command key the 'open apple key' which also then shows how much I know about modern Apple computers (as in I don't own or use one normally).

I work at Apple and I still call it the Apple key.

I pinch my nose when I use a Mac and call it the command key. Sometimes you never can tell.

I think I call it this because it's a de-facto super key for me as an Emacs user and the title of it is inescapable.

I think the Apple logo was added to it when ADB was introduced with the Apple IIgs and Mac SE/II. It was eliminated in the new keyboards released in Aug 2007.

The apple keys were on Apple /// and Apple //e keyboards, before the gs or ADB. It's 'open apple' because there was also a filled-in 'closed apple'

http://www.rhod.fr/images/apple3/apple3-01.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9f/Apple_IIe...

Yea, that was why the Apple logo was added to the ADB keyboards. The Apple IIgs had to be compatible with the IIe.

Yuhong is correct, Mac 128 era keyboards have no Control key. Weird. Option also hay the word and no logo. Command is just the clover, no text.

Those don't have arrow keys, they're pretty fascist keyboards. Part of the motivation is to discourage programmers from writing text based interfaces for the Mac.

I believe the addition of the Control key was for the same reason.

What always infuriated me when looking at Apple menus on OSX, when I was a user of it, was the icon for Option/Alt. http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE_ALLGEOS/...

I can't remember if it appeared on old mac keyboards, but it definitely doesn't on modern ones and to me it just looks like a completely abstract symbol. I could never remember if it was control or option.

I cannot comprehend why that symbol is not on the keyboard. There are two words on the key, neither one of which is used on the screen. Insane.

It is on most the international keyboards. Why they leave it out from the US and JP keyboard, I don't know.

It used to be, but was removed.

I wish there was some sort of changelog for Apple internal policies/decisions that end up being public facing.

I think of that symbol as a fork in the road, an "option". Control, on the other hand, is just ^, same as in Unix.

(I'm not saying it's a good symbol, but that's how I remember what it means.)

My friend used to call it the "escalator" symbol.

It is pretty abstract. I see it as a representation of a switch or two different alternatives.

It is on my (UK layout) MBA and Bluetooth keyboard (although its also labelled as Alt and not Opt).

Control doesn't have a symbol on it though.

The way keyboard shortcuts are represented on Mac is one of the things which is actually really user-unfriendly in OSX. I'm supposed to just know that an arrow means shift, a weird line means option/alt, the command key symbol, theres also a caret which means... something? And, to make it worse, most of the keys don't actually have their symbols printed on them, at least with the retina MBP.

That is unfortunate. I have a 2011 MBP with a UK keyboard, and all the special keys have the symbols on them, except for Control.

The way the shortcuts are shown in menus has always seemed like a nice, clear and space-efficient way of doing it. It seems a shame that Apple doesn't put the symbols on all its keyboards, because without those, new users are not going to know what the menu shortcuts are referring to.

aka http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_John's_Arms

To me it looks a little like the symbol for places of historical interest, which is a fort / castle symbol.

In Finland, it is the symbol for a place of (usually historical) interest, and it's encoded in Unicode as such:

⌘ PLACE OF INTEREST SIGN (U+2318)

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2318/index.htm

That's what the article says...

Another article with a picture: http://www.decodeunicode.org/u+2318

Swedish campground is a tent symbol, the first description fits better "interesting feature or attraction". Usually it's something ancient, like a viking burial mound or an old fortress. Real name "fornminne".

I must have wasted hours of my life on that website. Damn you Andy Herzfeld!

I wonder if there are any anecdotes about Steve Jobs that aren't about him busting in somewhere, shouting something.

Why would that be any fun?

Just FYI: the original title I gave the post was "How the Mac got its control key symbol."

It's an okay title, but the Mac has a different key called "control" that is unrelated (other than being a modifier key). That's not the key this article is talking about.

I meant "comand key symbol"

The title was changed by a mod

The symbol means "Place of interest" in all of the Nordic countries, not a campground. It would typically point to a museum or some heritage site. Here's some information about the sybmology:

http://www.seiyaku.com/customs/crosses/hans.html

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2643611

For me as a scandinavian it still is the museum sign. Even after all these years as a mac user.

The swedes actually copied it from Norway.

hahahaha.

Though to be honest we actually do have it here in Norway.

Sweden: not only do they have the best death metal, but they have the best icon design. It must all originate in the Futhark.