[chadv]

I think that cmd actually was designed so that it wouldn't collide with ctrl. If you look at the keyboard for the Apple II, it had a ctrl key, and I believe it was used for control characters. On later keyboards, they introduced the open apple key (ancestor of command) while retaining the ctrl key. Apple manufactured their own keyboards, so it was relatively easy for them to have separate keys for control characters and keyboard shortcuts. Microsoft on the other hand, did not have this luxury. They were inclined to base their software around existing keyboards, and so they co-opted the ctrl key for shortcuts.

One cool thing I learned while researching this is that Emacs-style keybindings work in TextEdit or any native OS X text area.

^A go to beginning of line ^E end of line ^L center line vertically ^K kut (cuts text till end of the line and stores it in a separate buffer from the clipboard) ^Y yank (pastes from the kut buffer) ^D forward delete (^ = Ctrl)

http://www.vintage-computer.com/images/apple2keyboard.jpg

http://www.oldapplestuff.com/Images/Apple2Computers/Apple2eS...

[pyre]

  One cool thing I learned while researching this is that
  Emacs-style keybindings work in TextEdit or any native
  OS X text area.

This is from OSX's NeXT legacy. This was not the case prior to OSX.