4 ms·

The biggest keyboard ability that macOS gives me is built-in combining characters. alt + a bunch of different characters gives you the ability to write seamless

The biggest keyboard ability that macOS gives me is built-in combining characters. alt + a bunch of different characters gives you the ability to write seamlessly in multiple languages (in my case English, French, German and Swedish) without having to memorise altgr character codes or pop up an input panel.

steve_adams_86 6y ago
This is one of the features I miss most when using other systems. Text navigation and generation are incredibly easy on a Mac (comparatively, for me). It’s a joy to come back to.
spanhandler 6y ago
You need a lot of those to write fluently in English, too, thanks to all the loan words and phrases we have. Particularly French, but quite a bit of German, too. Having some common currency symbols available is nice. Enough punctuation to write the occasional quotation or passage in French or (especially in the US) Spanish. Even m-dash and a variety of other useful English punctuation and symbols are easier to comfortably type on macOS than anywhere else. I’d buy Apple machines if I wrote for a living for that reason. Which is silly. You’d think every default English layout would be fairly good for writing English, but I’ve not seen one nearly as good as Apple’s. You can use AltGr or US International, but they’re both much worse for general-purpose English writing. Why other operating systems have’s stolen their alt/option-based typing layout is a mystery, to me. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close for composing English-language text. Certainly no other default layout. [EDIT] to wit (I don't know how HN will handle some of these, I'll remove it if it's a disaster...): • Bullets. — m-dashes. 90° Divers mots français, n'est pas difficile. « Avez-vous un résumé? » (sorry, my French is garbage). Would you like your change in $, ¢, £, or €, or ¥? ¿Donde esta el baño? (my Spanish is even worse than my French, again, sorry) ∑ π ≤ ≥ and so on. Straßburg And on and on. Most of these I remembered despite rarely using them because the layout is semi-intuitive, and the couple I had to hunt for made some sense once I found them and if I had to use them more than a couple times a year, I'd remember. No modifier + 1234 garbage, no common keys used as deadkeys screwing with normal typing, and none of it gets in the way of programming. Every other OS, please just copy this layout for your default English keyboard.
- robin_reala 6y ago
  Yep, I was leaving aside instant access to em-dashes, ellipses, proper curly quotes, dipthongs, etc. I contribute books to https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/ as a hobby, so those are things I use daily as well.
  - spanhandler 6y ago
    I wasn't joking about how I'd buy Macs if all I did with computers was write & compose English text. I mean I'd get used and fairly low-end ones, but still. The keyboard's that good. Well, not the keyboard keyboard, but the layout in software. Which, again, is a weird thing to still be a significant advantage to one brand or OS over another when they're all using very nearly the same physical key layout.
- chinigo 6y ago
  Agree. Dashes alone are worth the price of a MacBook Pro: <minus> for a hyphen, <option-minus> for an en-dash, <shift-option-minus> for an em-dash. Trivial to remember. Just as good is the way Apple handles diacritics. You type a prefix keystroke for the diacritic, then follow it with the letter that's being modified: ö is <option-u, o>, ï is <option-u, i>, è is <option-grave, e>. Most of the prefixes have easy-to-remember mnemonics: umlaut is <option-u>, grave is <option-grave>, tilde is <option-n> (for eñe, I suppose), but even hunting down these prefixes is fairly discoverable. After typing the prefix, a placeholder character is displayed in the text box showing the mark you've just entered, something like: ̲̈. Then: - <escape> or moving the cursor with an arrow key enters the diacritic as standalone character (e.g. ¨ is <option-u, escape>). - <backspace> deletes the diacritic. - A character that takes the diacritic enters the modified character. - A character that does not usually take the diacritic enters the diacritic and the unmodified character (e.g. <option-n, 5> yields ˜5).
  - Hackbraten 6y ago
    Another way to enter a diacritic as a standalone character: control-option-u for ¨.
ufo 6y ago
On Linux you can use the Compose key for this. It is also possible to define custom sequences.
sgt 6y ago
Correct, Mac's are brilliant for writing in multiple languages for that reason. Whether I quickly need an ø or ü or é or û, it's so quick to type these that I cannot imagine it's even worth having a non-US layout keyboard regardless what language you primarily type in.
hota_mazi 6y ago
Just install the Windows International keyboard and you can use diacritics just as easily on Windows: 'e -> é. You turn it on and off with "Windows key-space".
- pseudalopex 6y ago
  That makes it harder to type the characters on the dead keys.

steve_adams_86 6y ago

This is one of the features I miss most when using other systems. Text navigation and generation are incredibly easy on a Mac (comparatively, for me). It’s a joy to come back to.

spanhandler 6y ago

You need a lot of those to write fluently in English, too, thanks to all the loan words and phrases we have. Particularly French, but quite a bit of German, too. Having some common currency symbols available is nice. Enough punctuation to write the occasional quotation or passage in French or (especially in the US) Spanish. Even m-dash and a variety of other useful English punctuation and symbols are easier to comfortably type on macOS than anywhere else. I’d buy Apple machines if I wrote for a living for that reason. Which is silly. You’d think every default English layout would be fairly good for writing English, but I’ve not seen one nearly as good as Apple’s. You can use AltGr or US International, but they’re both much worse for general-purpose English writing. Why other operating systems have’s stolen their alt/option-based typing layout is a mystery, to me. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close for composing English-language text. Certainly no other default layout. [EDIT] to wit (I don't know how HN will handle some of these, I'll remove it if it's a disaster...): • Bullets. — m-dashes. 90° Divers mots français, n'est pas difficile. « Avez-vous un résumé? » (sorry, my French is garbage). Would you like your change in $, ¢, £, or €, or ¥? ¿Donde esta el baño? (my Spanish is even worse than my French, again, sorry) ∑ π ≤ ≥ and so on. Straßburg And on and on. Most of these I remembered despite rarely using them because the layout is semi-intuitive, and the couple I had to hunt for made some sense once I found them and if I had to use them more than a couple times a year, I'd remember. No modifier + 1234 garbage, no common keys used as deadkeys screwing with normal typing, and none of it gets in the way of programming. Every other OS, please just copy this layout for your default English keyboard.

robin_reala 6y ago
Yep, I was leaving aside instant access to em-dashes, ellipses, proper curly quotes, dipthongs, etc. I contribute books to https://standardebooks.org/ https://standardebooks.org/ as a hobby, so those are things I use daily as well.
- spanhandler 6y ago
  I wasn't joking about how I'd buy Macs if all I did with computers was write & compose English text. I mean I'd get used and fairly low-end ones, but still. The keyboard's that good. Well, not the keyboard keyboard, but the layout in software. Which, again, is a weird thing to still be a significant advantage to one brand or OS over another when they're all using very nearly the same physical key layout.
chinigo 6y ago
Agree. Dashes alone are worth the price of a MacBook Pro: <minus> for a hyphen, <option-minus> for an en-dash, <shift-option-minus> for an em-dash. Trivial to remember. Just as good is the way Apple handles diacritics. You type a prefix keystroke for the diacritic, then follow it with the letter that's being modified: ö is <option-u, o>, ï is <option-u, i>, è is <option-grave, e>. Most of the prefixes have easy-to-remember mnemonics: umlaut is <option-u>, grave is <option-grave>, tilde is <option-n> (for eñe, I suppose), but even hunting down these prefixes is fairly discoverable. After typing the prefix, a placeholder character is displayed in the text box showing the mark you've just entered, something like: ̲̈. Then: - <escape> or moving the cursor with an arrow key enters the diacritic as standalone character (e.g. ¨ is <option-u, escape>). - <backspace> deletes the diacritic. - A character that takes the diacritic enters the modified character. - A character that does not usually take the diacritic enters the diacritic and the unmodified character (e.g. <option-n, 5> yields ˜5).
- Hackbraten 6y ago
  Another way to enter a diacritic as a standalone character: control-option-u for ¨.

ufo 6y ago

On Linux you can use the Compose key for this. It is also possible to define custom sequences.

sgt 6y ago

Correct, Mac's are brilliant for writing in multiple languages for that reason. Whether I quickly need an ø or ü or é or û, it's so quick to type these that I cannot imagine it's even worth having a non-US layout keyboard regardless what language you primarily type in.

hota_mazi 6y ago

Just install the Windows International keyboard and you can use diacritics just as easily on Windows: 'e -> é. You turn it on and off with "Windows key-space".

pseudalopex 6y ago
That makes it harder to type the characters on the dead keys.