What is that this strange symbol on Apple keyboards?

Anyone who has ever used a pc keyboard is conversant in the Control key, but Mac users will know that along with Control, there’s a button that claims Command with this weird-looking symbol that appears like a drone, or possibly a four-leaf clover. So why does Apple have this extra key? What is that this little thing anyway?

That is why Apple computers have long had Control keys on them, which themselves date back to the era of teleprinters, which allowed users to interact with large, old mainframe computers. And because it is now, the thought was that holding down one key and pressing one other would activate some special function that couldn’t be achieved by pressing a single key. Specifically, they’d allow users to regulate the pc using a keyboard, hence the name, relatively than simply typing in printable characters.

But that wasn’t enough for the perfectionists at Apple, because these Control key functions were mainly only useful in the event you were using one among those super old-school terminals that only displayed a limited variety of text characters, no graphics, and had no mouse support. Due to this fact, Apple wanted to provide its users the flexibility to quickly issue more useful commands. So within the early Nineteen Eighties they put some special keys of their keyboards. Many Apple machines of this era had an open Apple key and a closed Apple key, also called the solid Apple key, which allowed for more shortcuts. For instance, opening Apple + A will select every thing within the window, unlike Control + A which can move the cursor to the start of the road.

The final idea was to permit users to access menu items more quickly without having to open the menu. An concept that became much more vital when the unique Macintosh computer and its famous graphical user interface were introduced in 1984.

But why did they modify Open Apple to Command? By the point the Mac was being developed, Steve Jobs was fed up with seeing the Apple logo on the entire company’s products. It is not minimalist in any respect. Along with the 2 Apple keys on the keyboard, the Apple logo was also present in the operating system menus themselves. As you may see on this screenshot of the Apple Lisa, the Mac’s predecessor, Jobs believed this cheapened the corporate logo and accepted it in vain. I believe very highly of myself. So Apple introduced this looping square symbol to make use of as an alternative of the open Apple one, and the fashionable Command key was born.

To today, the square-loop Command key remains to be the first modifier key on Mac computers and functions similarly to the Control key on Windows computers. Macs retained the Control key not only to enable much more keyboard shortcuts, but in addition to retain a number of the original terminal features that folks programming on Macs often use.

As we mentioned earlier, Control + A on a PC and Control + A on a Mac do completely various things. These aren’t even similar things, I’d send your photos to anyone.

As for the closed Apple key, it really works more just like the Alt key on a PC. It wasn’t used as often as Command, however it stuck around and eventually evolved into the important thing labeled Option on modern Macs. But how exactly did the Command key get this funny symbol? It seems that it happened mainly by accident. When Jobs decided he needed a brand new symbol, an artist working for Apple stumbled upon a loop within the manual. This symbol was and still is utilized in the Nordic countries on road signs to point tourist attractions and cultural places of interest. The remainder of the Mac development team found this symbol attractive. It has been featured on Apple keyboards ever since.