If we’re talking about hardware ergonomics the lack of a del key and placement of the fn key alone make me never buy a macbook again. I also hate the difference in cmd, alt and ctrl keys from other keyboards.
> I also hate the difference in cmd, alt and ctrl keys from other keyboards.
It's a matter of habit, and super easy to configure from the keyboard preferences in macOs. The trade-off is that ctrl is almost exclusively used for unix-y thing, and all the usual GUI-y things use Cmd. Using a shell is just painful for me in anything other than macOS for that reason alone.
Incidentally, because of the pervasive support for readline shortcuts in all text inputs, del is just ctrl-D.
> Using a shell is just painful for me in anything other than macOS for that reason alone.
On Linux at least you can use Ctrl-Shift-x, Ctrl-Shift-c and Ctrl-Shift-v for cut, copy and paste in the terminal. So again it's just a case of getting use to the shortcut differences.
On macOS Del can also be found on fn-Backspace and I often remap the right Alt key to Ctrl.
It's pretty easy to adapt to either with a little time.
The point is that it’s just annoying that the terminal is a special application that has its own shortcuts for everything. I could use shift-ins or ctrl-ins too — but I don’t want to. I want the terminal to behave like any other application.
I guess if you redefine every feature someone cares about to be a "soft feature" then you are right. Kind of a pointless distinction though. Listing features matters because everyone cares about different features.
Yes I understand that and I guess I’m a bit salty. But part of my point is that you can make really great hardware and software of great quality, but one or two unfortunate choices can soil the whole thing for someone.
And Apple especially can sometimes be too stubborn to acknowledge people’s personal differences or an established industry standard.
Macbooks and Apple keyboards in general lack a physical del key (in ibm keyboard terms). They only have a backspace, which they label delete.
Fn+backspace works as a shortcut, but they’re on completely different ends of the keyboard so you need 2 hands. Ctrl+D also sometimes works but is inconsistent across applications.
Also, unlike all other vendors, Apple places the fn key on the far end of the keyboard, instead of the much more used ctrl which is now in the middle. When typing I find it much easier to quickly hit the furthest key than the middle one so I often hit the wrong one.
- Portables in the Mac world do lack a delete key (the delete-forwards key, that is) on the built-in keyboard, but that's more of a space-constraint than anything else. Mac keyboards in general do not lack the delete key; he usual full-size keyboard certainly has a delete key.
- Keyboards are a personal thing, and it's very easy to plug in any normal USB keyboard, and then get all the benefits of the [delete] key as usual. There's nothing else to do, just plug in your favourite keyboard..
It's a matter of habit, and super easy to configure from the keyboard preferences in macOs. The trade-off is that ctrl is almost exclusively used for unix-y thing, and all the usual GUI-y things use Cmd. Using a shell is just painful for me in anything other than macOS for that reason alone.
Incidentally, because of the pervasive support for readline shortcuts in all text inputs, del is just ctrl-D.