Comments on: Grab your Mac OS X keyboard shortcuts here

By: YT

YT — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 06:06:57 +0000

Windows really only uses one modifier key: CTRL. (ALT is for menu items and Windows key is seldomly used except for bringing up start menu). This makes shortcut keys very easy to remember. e.g. C-right moves a word to the right.

Mac uses all sorts of combinations of 4 modifier keys: CMD, ALT, CTRL and SHIFT. e.g. in Safari, CMD-L = address bar but CMD-ALT-F = search bar. Not only do you need to remember the actual letter you also need to remember which modifier combinations to use.

Contrary to the popular belief, Mac’s shortcut keys are not as intuitive as Windows. Fair enough Mac may have had a consistent set of shortcut keys when it first came out, but the industry had evolved so much (who’d think you’ll need a URL address bar and search box) and Windows seems to be more capable of coping with the evolution, certainly in this case.

By: Coleman

Coleman — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 17:40:41 +0000

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By: LarryG1978

LarryG1978 — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 04:34:29 +0000

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Diets do not help, nothing helps.
Who íèáóäü can advise me as me to grow thin?

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:29:25 +0000

I guess I could probably learn a lot by searching Apple’s “support”. lol ;)

By: Jay

Jay — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 20:25:25 +0000

Thanks so much for this list!

As horrible as it may sound, I rarely used keyboard shortcuts during all the years on PC. I have recently switched to Mac, and trying to learn as many as I can (as fast as I can).

This will definitely help!

By: jangelo

jangelo — Tue, 10 Oct 2006 19:10:47 +0000

That’s one problem with using a Mac when you’re originally coming from the PC camp, the keyboard shortcuts might seem a bit confusing.

For instance, ctrl will almost always translate to the COMMAND or Apple button, but not across all apps.

Examples: Control-C (copy), Control-V (paste) and Control-X (cut) will be equivalent to CMD-C, CMD-V and CMD-X, respectively.

However, in the OS X Terminal, the Windows control-C is still control-C and not CMD-C. And Windows’ Alt-Tab is almost equivalent to OS X’s CMD-Tab, so in this case it becomes the Alt key. On Firefox, Control-Tab is still Control-tab.

Thing is, Macs also have Control and Alt keys, which could make it all the more confusing.

But keyboard shortcuts aside, I still believe the Mac interface is the more intuitive and less intimidating one.