#Remap pc keyboard for mac windows#

Macintosh's keyboards kept evolving well after PC keyboards reached their final form, aside from the addition of the windows key in 1994 (that was microsoft, not surprisingly).Įdit: Just for giggles, here's the 1982 Commodore 64's keyboard:Īnd the 1984 Commodore Amiga 1000's keyboard:Įvery platform has had it's own ideas about what keyboards should look like. Control was located above, and option was missing. The 'open apple' and 'closed apple' (two different modifiers) were all that was on the bottom row, similar to left and right command. The Apple IIe also came out in 1983 but had a very different layout from what Apple uses today. (Note: IBM is responsible for this, not Microsoft) It's more a case of parallel and somewhat divergent evolution.Ĭurrent PC keyboards, minus the Windows key, are nearly identical to The IBM model F that came with the IBM 3270 in 1983 (the arrow keys are quite different). I've recently discovered VSCode's remote functionality (more specifically, how incredibly well it works), so I've set up an SSH box and can now seamlessly work from anywhere (side note, having tools that only serve you is incredibly fast if you're used to things like GitHub or managed CI). Overall, though, Windows is garbage for developers (yes, yes, if you're using Microsoft technologies or oblivious to what happens outside of your IDE you will probably be happy enough) - and I have tried WSL2, Cygwin, working from a VM (yuck), and many other similar options. It does certain small things right, like Win-Shift-S copying to clipboard by default (you need to hold Ctrl while releasing the capture to get the same behaviour on macOS), and overall is much snappier due to macOS being a bloated mess. That being said, in terms of productivity, ergonomics, and things generally being well thought-out, Windows is nowhere near macOS.

I have a significant insight into how they work and their shortcuts not only that, but I use Sublime Text and VSCode in both, and am familiar with the differences between macOS/Windows for those shortcuts. I work roughly 60/40 from my office (Windows workstation) and home (macOS laptop).

#Remap pc keyboard for mac mac#

Let’s not make the Mac worse just to make things consistent. No reaching for the “insert” key, which is a recipe for typos. Hands stay in center of keyboard where they belong. Linux at least has the half-sane Control+Shift+C and Control+Shift+V but there’s multiple clipboards, and different applications may only use a subset of those.

For some reason, Windows, which was supposed to have “right-click brings up a contextual menu everywhere” decides to make right-click do some weird almost X11-like copy-pasting in the terminal. Shift+Insert, Control+Shift+V, right-click, middle-click… what a goddamn mess. Linux and Windows both have really fucked up copy/paste. The Mac is the only one with a usable, consistent terminal.

I switch between Mac, Linux, and Windows. As the one oddball computer manufacturer that uses their own layout, perhaps it's time for Apple to offer PC keyboard layouts as an option on their machines out of consideration for people who have to use multiple platforms. The PC and Linux worlds are not going to adopt Mac keyboard layouts.