Opinion: Apple keyboards need better key labelling

By

post-3147-image-4480a13e25ed5c07e286ab40c7800a97-jpg

I got absurdly excited when the new Apple keyboard was demonstrated, and immediately put in my order blind. I’d been looking for a decent laptop-like keyboard, and this seemed to fit the bill. In use, I haven’t been disappointed with it.

However, my glee was initially two-fold, partly driven by what was actually printed on the keys, and this is the area that’s led to some disappointment. Find out why after the jump.

When you do a lot of writing for magazines, as I do, you tend to refer to key commands and shortcuts a lot. Different magazines have their own style guides, and while some use the symbols displayed in Mac OS X’s menus, others rely on the key names in full (‘Control’, ‘Command’, ‘Option’, and so on). Although Apple’s current keyboard line is an improvement on the keyboards of old (finally dropping the Apple logo from the Command key, which should—hopefully—stop people saying things like “Apple-S to save!”), there’s massive inconsistency across the range.

Taking two English-language keyboards as an example—the default US-English model and its British-English equivalent—problems become apparent with only a little investigation. Of the two, the US one is superior—the majority of the keys are labelled in plain English, which is a great start. However, although the Command key has its Swedish road-sign icon alongside the word ‘command’, such symbols are absent from Option, Shift and Control.

On the British model, things are far worse. ‘Command’ is truncated to the useless ‘cmd’; the word ‘Option’ is replaced by the symbol, rather than both appearing—although there’s still room for ‘alt’, which is fine for Windows switchers, but ‘alt’ is not actually the name of any Mac key; and while Shift has its icon, it’s devoid of text. (The less said about the hateful shortening of ‘Control’ to ‘ctrl’, the better, frankly.)

And why Apple insists on removing # from British keyboards entirely I don’t know—if I had a penny for every time someone’s told me you can’t do web design on a Mac, because there’s no # key, I wouldn’t be rich, but I could buy a couple of pints down the pub. (The key is mapped to Option-3 in the UK, fact fans. The Euro symbol is mapped similarly, to Option-2, but, inexplicably, Apple actually does print that on the key, next to @. Clearly, Apple hates British web designers and programmers.)

This post will undoubtedly strike many readers here as anal, not least because many of you are seasoned Mac users. However, in order to Apple to truly grow its marketshare, it has to snare switchers and newcomers, and neither of those demographics are catered for properly with the current keyboards. While I doubt anything’s likely to change in the remotely near future, here’s hoping Apple takes a long look at its keyboards at some point, and makes some handy tweaks for usability’s sake: a couple of extra symbols or words here and there might skew the aesthetics slightly, but it’d go a long way to making the current keyboard near-perfect.

Newsletters

Daily round-ups or a weekly refresher, straight from Cult of Mac to your inbox.

  • The Weekender

    The week's best Apple news, reviews and how-tos from Cult of Mac, every Saturday morning. Our readers say: "Thank you guys for always posting cool stuff" -- Vaughn Nevins. "Very informative" -- Kenly Xavier.

55 responses to “Opinion: Apple keyboards need better key labelling”

  1. Grant H says:

    Yes! The gripes I’ve had with my Macbook Pro and Wireless Keyboard since the start!

  2. Thom says:

    My only complaint about the new keyboards is the size of the label on the function keys.

    The large icons showing what is essentially the secondary use of the function keys (volume, dashboard etc) have taken over from the F7 and F4 – leaving them far too small.

    It is only the grubbiness of the F7 key (Quark user much?) which enables me to find it.

  3. Brendan West says:

    I’ve always wanted, actually, a keyboard with no names on the keys. Not the letters and numbers, but on tab, caps lock, shift, control, option, command, return, delete and forward delete.

    I imagine a keyboard able to be sold universally, because icons are where a language would have been.

    Isn’t that, after all, the point of an icon? To be so universal you don’t need an explanation of what it does. The caps lock, shift and return icons, I would argue, ARE universal enough. And the rest are familiar to anyone who has used a Mac for any length of time.

    Down with words! Up with symbols!

  4. bas says:

    function over form … with apple … not gonna happen.

  5. Speedmaster says:

    And true dedicated backspace and delete! ;-)

  6. Steve K says:

    Craig

    They need to come out with a LED back lit keyboard.

  7. Steve K says:

    Craig

    They need to come out with a LED back lit keyboard.

  8. JW. says:

    Yeah, I got a bit frustrated with the labeling and layout of the new keyboard.

    I love the functionality (form, feel, look, taste…), but I really dislike the fact that all the additional functional commands (brightness, desktop, dashboard, itunes controls and eject) have been bunched up amongst the beginning F keys. I now fumble around looking how to stop the damn song I’m listening to and where the hell has the eject key gone… oh there it is. Also a nuisance for Adobe app users who have to remap shortcuts that utilise the first five or so F keys. GRRRrrr….

    Wouldn’t swap this keyboard for any other though. Hate using my HP at work.

    And it will take forever to get me to say ‘command’ instead of ‘apple’.

  9. rodbert says:

    Actually, it is not a Swedish road sign but a camping ground sign:
    http://folklore.org/StoryView….
    About the text: you’re completely right. If I read something about the option-key I always have to think twice before I remember that it is the key with “alt” and some strange sign written on it. And when I instructed someone over the phone to use the command-key it took a few minutes before I realized he couldn’t find it because it has “cmd” written on it.

  10. mmnw says:

    I agree. Apple has a very bad history with keyboard labeling, especially with non-US layouts. I myself am an experienced, german apple user. While I do know most keys, even weird combinations, i.e. , it’s pretty hard to learn. Most german windows keyboards label the ALT-key combinations, apple only labels € and @. You can’t even find a {} or [] or even worse a \ on a german apple keyboard without looking it up! (they are on option 5,6,7,8 and 9). And you have to know where to look it up!
    My mom is a recent switcher, she’s an experienced typewriter, but it’s near impossible for her to find special characters on the mac.
    But it’s not only apple, several third party keyboard suppliers label their mac keyboards like apple (all the while selling near-identical windows keyboards with a complete labeling).

  11. MikaelBergman says:

    I absolutetly agree. It’s been about a year since I made the switch from PC to Mac as my primary work platform as an IT professional. A couple of months ago I also cleared my desk at home in favor of a brand new iMac.

    I still have no idea what so ever what several of the keys on my (swedish) MacBook Pro and my iMac at home are called and I’m always resort to trial and error when dealing with texts that instruct me to press certain key combinations.

  12. Craig Grannell says:

    @Brendan West: Your argument has some resonance with me. I think I’d find the symbols-only keyboard acceptable IF it were consistent. The British keyboard is very symbol-heavy, but it’s still very inconsistent.

    @Steve K: In your/our dreams – have you seen the price of the Optimus Maximus?

    @rodbert: Isn’t it a symbol used on Swedish road-signs to signify a campground or place of interest?

    @mmnw: Thanks for the info regarding the German layout. I wonder whether Apple should start adding more, rather than fewer, characters to its keyboards. There’s no real reason bar aesthetics why important third characters can’t be included on the keys, such as the ones you mentioned, and the likes of # on the British keyboard.

    (Funny to think that as I wrote this piece, I didn’t think it would get much of a response, but here are nine comments in under an hour! I guess I’m definitely not the only one narked by the key labels!)

  13. Jeff MacArthur says:

    I’m with you too, Craig. I always second guess myself when I see the option symbol typed out. Usability before beauty, I say!

    Jeff

  14. Peter says:

    yeah… the lack of labeling of the option key (as well as control) is pretty annoying when you’re trying to read a shortcut list anyway, unless you’ve already been doing it forever.

  15. Lovro says:

    On Apple keyboards for Croatia, Bosnia, Slovenia… (ex Yugoslavia market) there is no sign for @!! You need to press option-shit-2 to get it. Bizzar!

  16. Thibaut says:

    I strongly disagree with you regarding Apple dismissing the “Apple” key : I think it is a great loss for users, I always have been taught (since 1987 when I was 2 years old !) to use shortcuts with the “apple-key” combination (and did the same while teaching to 80+ years old people, or newbies).
    It gave an human, poetic, sensible computer experience : what ultimately differentiate Apple from the others.

    To a certain extent, same thing with the “happy Mac” icon at startup.

  17. Craig Grannell says:

    @Thibaut: The problem with the Apple key is that the key was never the Apple key – it was the Command key. While I agree that its name might have provided a “human, poetic” computer experience”, the fact is that the Apple icon didn’t appear on menus, nor did any official documentation or articles (at least properly edited ones) refer to the ‘Apple key’. Its retention on keyboards was an anomaly that ultimately hampered consistency and hindered overall usability.

  18. kirkgray says:

    The Apple II series had Apple and Open Apple keys.

    The Macintosh had a Command key (squirrelly Swedish road map symbol).

    Then Apple went and invented ADB (the Apple Desktop Bus, Apple’s very early, very kewl connector for keyboards, mice and things). Now Apple could use the same keyboards on Mac SEs and Apple IIgs’. They put the Apple and Command symbols on the same key so it could multitask (multitask wasn’t something people or things did back then, just computers, but we’ll use it here anyway).

    Since then the Apple symbol has been on some of Apple’s keyboard’s Command keys and not on others. I bought my first Mac in 1984 and it has always bothered me when people refer to the Apple key — to me that’s an Apple II thing. Macs have Command keys. I forget the Apple symbol is there until someone reminds me.

  19. kirkgray says:

    Oh…. and …. WAY kewl to see an actual Quark user in the wild. I’d thought they’d gone extinct! ;o)

  20. imajoebob says:

    I’m with you all the way on symbols AND text on the keys. I can never decipher those keyboard shortcuts on my menus. What the heck does ⌥⇧⌘ mean? Is that first symbol a fn, ctrl, or option? And I’m embarrassed to tell you how long it took me to figure out both what is and how to use the clear key on my notebook.

    When I moved from the States to the UK I switched from the US to (quasi) UK in preferences. All that really meant was that my dates were international (ddmmyy), I had 24 hour clocks, and the # became £ by default. Not having the Euro symbol was a bit of a pain – they should have moved it to the tilde – but keeping the US QWERTY keyboard was a lifesaver. It was a bit of a pain if I had to use true UK keyboards, especially the vertical enter key. I don’t know how many times I hit enter instead of \, and having the delete key directly over enter had me reaching for a Fn key too often.

    Next time I’ll regale you with trying to use a French keyboard.

  21. open0source says:

    I absolutely agree. I think that every key should have its symbol and its name printed on it.

  22. Ian Adams says:

    That’s one thing I’ve always liked about Matias’ keyboards: all the symbols are printed right on the keys — *all* the keys. If Apple started following that design standard, I don’t think I’d have anything to complain about with the new keyboards. (I love my TactilePro(s), but I’ve been thinking of upgrading to the new Apple keyboards.)

  23. Galact1c says:

    Honestly people…

    who friggin’ cares????? It’s a keyboard for crying out loud. Deal with it.

  24. Craig Grannell says:

    @Ibo Níall: You might as well argue that about everything Mac, then. It’s only an operating system! Who cares if it’s not as good as it could and should be? It’s only a laptop! Deal with it! But Apple’s in the business of providing generally significantly more usable products than the competition, and in that area the keyboard partly fails.

  25. Alan Christensen says:

    All I want is a bigger gap between the caps lock and the A key. Make the caps lock key the same width as the tab key. It’s easy, Apple. You’ve done it before. Pretty please?

  26. Galact1c says:

    All I’m saying Craig is that it’s only a keyboard. I mean, how bad can it actually be? I just can’t understand this post and all the negative fuss. It’s silly to complain about such a mundane piece of hardware, as beautiful as it may be. That’s all. Seriously.

  27. Craig Grannell says:

    Well, it’s an opinion that was quite personal, but with the feedback this piece got, I’m clearly not alone.

    For the record, I love the new Apple keyboard—it’s fantastic to type on, and pretty good value (surprisingly, considering it’s an Apple peripheral).

    However, just because it’s good, that doesn’t mean Apple shouldn’t strive to make it better, not least because we’re in a market where newcomers and switchers are arriving at the platform, reading documentation and guides, looking at their keyboards and wondering where the hell certain keys actually are.

    And, sure, it might be a mundane piece of hardware, but with the possible exception of your display, it’s the peripheral users engage with most.

  28. Galact1c says:

    Okay, you got me — all good points mate.