Anyone who's ever used a computer keyboard is familiar with the control key,
but Mac users will know that in addition to control, you get a button that says Command,
with this weird-looking symbol that kind of looks like a drone, or maybe a four-leaf clover.
So why does Apple have this extra key, and what is that little thingy anyway?
So Apple computers have long had control keys on them, which themselves date back to the age of
teletype machines, which allowed users to interact with big old mainframes, and just as it is now,
the idea was that holding the key down while pressing another one would activate some kind of
special function you couldn't get just by pressing a single key. Specifically, they'd make it possible
for the users to control the computer through the keyboard, hence the name, instead of just typing
in printable characters. But that wasn't quite enough for the perfectionists at Apple, as these
control key functions were mostly only useful when you were using one of those super old school
terminals that only displayed a limited number of text characters, no graphics, and didn't
feature mouse support. So Apple wanted to give their users a way to issue more useful commands
quickly, so they put a couple of special keys on their keyboards starting in the early 1980s.
Many Apple machines of this era had an open Apple and a closed Apple key, also called a solid Apple
key, which would allow for more shortcuts. For example, open Apple plus A would select
everything in a window, as opposed to control A, which would move the cursor to the beginning of
the line. The general idea was to allow users to more quickly access menu items without having to
actually open a menu, an idea that became even more important when the original Macintosh and
its famous GUI were introduced in 1984. So by the time the Mac was being developed, Steve Jobs was
tired of seeing the Apple logo all over the company's products. It's not minimalistic at all.
In addition to the two Apple keys on the keyboard, the Apple logo was also on the
OS menus themselves, as you can see in this screenshot from the Apple Lisa, the Mac's predecessor.
Jobs believed this cheapened the company's logo and took it in vain. I'm thinking very highly of
himself, clearly. So Apple introduced this loopy square looking symbol to use instead of the open
Apple and the modern command key was born. To this day, the looped square command key is still the
main modifier key on Macs, functioning similarly to the control key on Windows machines.
Macs retain the control key not only for enabling even more keyboard shortcuts,
but also to preserve some of those original terminal functions, which are often used by
folks who program on Macs. So as we mentioned earlier, control A on a PC and control A on a Mac
do totally different things. It's not even remotely similar. I'm gonna send your pictures
to everyone. As for the closed Apple key, that functions more like the alt key on a PC. It wasn't
used as much as command, but it stuck around and ultimately evolved into the key that's labeled
option on modern Macs. But how exactly did the command key get that funny symbol? Turns out it
happened basically by chance. After Jobs decided he wanted a new symbol, an artist that worked for
Apple happened upon the looped square in a reference book. The symbol was, and still is,
used in the Nordic countries on road signs to indicate tourist attractions and cultural places
of interest. The rest of the Mac dev team found the symbol appealing. And it's been on Apple
keyboards ever since. Maybe in the future, Apple will release its own meal delivery app with an
icon that looks like a big Swedish meatball. I think we'd all like that. Delicious. Wow,
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