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How Apple Keyboards Lost a Logo and Windows PCs Gained One (2007)
- awa 16y agoI use the logo key a lot in windows. Esp for the 3 shortcuts Win+E = Opens Explorer Win+D = Go to desktop Win+R = Run dialog
- Timothee 16y agoSame here. The two other ones I use are Win+L to lock the current account and Win+Pause to bring up System Properties.
- shrikant 16y agoAlso, Win+Pause = system properties
- CountHackulus 16y agoWin+D is actually toggle desktop. See what happens if you press it twice in a row. Win+M = minimize all Win+U = utility manager
- IChrisI 16y agoI use Win+D to open things on the desktop without affecting my current window setup. Win+D, double-click, Win+D quickly before the program opens. I do try to keep my desktop clean though, I mostly use this on others' machines.
- brosephius 16y agoIt seems they don’t understand why it is useful to draw a distinction between control-C, used to cancel an operation in a terminal environment, and Command-C, used to copy content in a desktop setting. anyone know what he's referring to? why is it useful to have a distinction? Microsoft also added a special key for opening contextual menus... it’s not only superfluous and clumsy for PCs using two button mice, but also less elegant than Apple’s convention... I use the context menu key regularly. using a complex app without ever needing to reach for the mouse is pretty elegant, in my opinion. Microsoft’s contextual menu key is also typically placed on the right side of the keyboard, making it even more puzzlingly useless for right handed users. They’d have to hit the right side of the keyboard with their left hand while pointing the mouse with their right I've never once used the context menu key that way, and that's not even how it works. it invokes the context menu of whatever element has the focus, not whatever element is beneath the mouse cursor. an interesting history with unnecessary and obnoxious editorializing.
- narkee 16y ago>anyone know what he's referring to? why is it useful to have a distinction? I think because on Windows those two very different operations are overloaded onto the same key combo, and there could be situations where in context it is ambiguous which one would be invoked.
- brosephius 16y agough, nevermind, I misread the text. I read it has pressing control+c to copy text, not to cancel something. so the distinction does make sense. though I still don't like how you can't copy and paste files with cmd+c/cmd+v in os x :)
- dlsspy 16y ago> though I still don't like how you can't copy and paste files with cmd+c/cmd+v in os x :) I can. I don't think I'd ever actually do that other than to verify, though.
- Kadin 16y ago> though I still don't like how you can't copy and paste files with cmd+c/cmd+v in os x :) You can remap the Command key to the physical Ctrl key on your keyboard if you want; this makes some muscle-memory actions a bit more smooth across platforms. In general -- and I'm not sure what the official / historical word from Apple is -- I've always thought that the Command key came about because Apple wanted a different key for commands that the OS could intercept, without stepping on any pre-existing application level shortcuts that used Control. It might have been cleaner had they just kept Command reserved for shortcuts going to the OS (cut/copy/paste, open/launch, window manipulation, bossing applications around) and told developers to use Ctrl shortcuts within their applications. But I'm not sure if that distinction would have been meaningful to most users. The Apple HIG on Modifier Keys doesn't give much in the way of rationale for Command versus Control, except to say: > Because the Control key is already used by some of the universal access features as well as in Cocoa text fields where Emacs-style key bindings are often used, it should be used as a modifier key only when necessary.
- narkee 16y ago>A year later in 1987, IBM released its new vision of the PC, called PS/2; it only offered a standard port for the mouse and another identical but unique port for the keyboard, a mistake that would plague PC users for the next two decades Hmmm - for as long as I can remember the keyboard ports were colored purple, and the ones for mice were like a teal. I feel like the frequency of plugging in one's keyboard/mouse doesn't warrant it being called a plague.
- protomyth 16y agoThe colors came a little later (PC97) and were much welcomed.
- winthrowe 16y agoPerhaps you're not old enough to recall, but that colour coding was indroduced with the PC97 standard[1], in 1997. While 'plague' is over the top, it was a great annoyance for a decade. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_System_Design_Guide http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_System_Design_Guide
- gojomo 16y agoHow far back do you remember? The color-coding wasn't part of a standard until a decade later; I suppose some vendors might have started doing it sooner, but for many years you usually had to read a tiny icon, often simply plastic-embossed rather than using any ink contrast at all, on a dark and hard-to-reach part of the computer.
- there 16y agoMost Windows PC users are unaware of the use of either the Windows key or the contextual menu key, and some PC hardware makers refused to add the keys to their keyboards, the most notable being IBM. i seem to recall ibm refusing to do this because of the old windows/os/2 warp battle. as soon as lenovo bought ibm's thinkpad line, they started putting windows keys on the keyboards.
- Kadin 16y agoThat doesn't make a ton of sense; late-model IBM (consumer) computers were clearly designed to run Windows. While there may be people still bitter about the OS/2 thing, I think the company as a whole has moved on. I think that IBM's engineers just thought that the Windows key was dumb, something that users were unlikely to care about or miss, and not worth redesigning their keyboards for. So they didn't. Given that the keyboards on some IBM products (esp. Thinkpads) were one of their defining features, I can't blame them for not wanting to mess around with it. Personally I'm in favor of more modifier keys on keyboards, just generally; although the Windows key is lame in the sense that it's underutilized and gauche (putting the Windows logo on it), it's nice to have 3 modifiers on a keyboard in addition to shift. (Plus any hardware modifiers that you need to simulate a full 101 keys on a laptop.)
- glhaynes 16y agoThe Windows key came into being around Windows 95, right when Windows and OS/2 were at the height of competition. IBM didn't implement it then (while most of the rest of the industry did) and then, even once OS/2 was dead, just never got around to making the change.
- m0nastic 16y agoI doubt that's why they didn't put a Windows key on their keyboards. Maybe it was a licensing issue (as Microsoft required keyboard manufacturers to license the key), or maybe it was something else, but I'd be surprised if they held out that long over OS2. For me, the Windows key was always known more colloquially as the "crash CounterStrike" key.
- contextfree 16y agoThe Windows key has become a lot more useful in 7 (and to some extent Vista), where you have * win + [left/right arrow] = resize to left/right half of screen * win + [up arrow] = maximize * win + shift + [up arrow] = maximize vertically * win + [down arrow] = minimize * win + [#N] = invoke Nth-from-left application on taskbar * win + shift + [#N] = start new instance of Nth-from-left app on taskbar plus the ability to open the Windows/Start menu and start typing to search.
- lurkinggrue 16y ago* Win + P = Change multi monitor setup.
- Timothee 16y ago"the combination of Microsoft’s overwhelmingly powerful monopoly marketing muscle and its weak and flawed technical contributions. Microsoft has delayed the progress of new technology into mainstream in far more significant ways" Isn't that a bit over the top?
- teilo 16y agoRegarding the overloading of Ctrl-C on Windows - The story is actually a bit more complex. In DOS, Ctrl-C command was not originally overloaded. Ctrl-Ins was Copy. Shift-Del was Cut, Shift-Ins was Paste. Both Ctrl-C and Ctrl-Break were abort. Macs, however, did not originally have the Ins or Del keys, and thus needed different shortcuts. Besides, Jobs would never have copied DOS. He didn't even want arrow keys on the original Mac 128K, but finally acquiesced. As Windows began to mimick the "look and feel" of the Mac OS, they adopted the use of the Ctrl key as a substitute for the Cmd key. In other words, it was because Microsoft was copying pre-existing commands from Apple, but transposing them to Ctrl, that they ended up with ambiguous commands. Ctrl-Ins and Shift-Ins continued to work for several versions of Windows. At the same time, newer versions of Word and other Microsoft DOS applications began to support the newer Windows shortcuts. Since I was thoroughly used to those shortcuts from my use of QuickBasic and Word for DOS, I continued to use the original shortcuts in Windows until they no longer worked, and only then did I switch to Ctrl-X, Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V.
- glhaynes 16y agoGood post. The original Mac actually did ship without arrow keys and no current Apple keyboards have Ins. Not sure how long that's been the case...