Mastodawn

Do we need yet another person crashing out about Apple’s design decisions? Am I doing it only because it’s fashionable to be on Apple Design Hate Train these days? I’ll be honest: I don’t know. But I have been bothered by Apple’s approach to some of its keyboard design for a while.

Even if you don’t care about any of this, it might be a fun visual history of the most tricky of modern modifier keys: the [Fn] key. Hope you like it!

https://aresluna.org/fn

I don’t know what is Apple’s endgame for the Fn/Globe key, and I’m not sure Apple knows either

The origin and the evolution of the most confusing modifier key

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mathew Mar 9

@mwichary I wonder whether the Fn key on the PCjr was influenced by the f key which serves a similar purpose on HP calculators like the HP-41C (1979)?

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Marcin Wichary

@mathew Maybe! I don’t know what is the absolutely first key named “Fn” or “Function” – there was one in Wang processors in the 1970s, too – but those don’t have the “pretend you’re another key” component to it, afaik. It’s just a different name of a modifier key.