After reading your message, it just clicked to me that the option symbol could be a fork in the road.
Re:Apple announces iOS 10
by cookiemonsta on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @06:14AM
(#11900926)
It is meant to be like a switch (schematic symbol for a SPDT switch), i thought?
https://qph.is.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-6f64cb39bfdaae2f7e097f...
Had exactly the same thought. Was never aware - and now I'll recognize the symbol going forwards!
Re:Apple announces iOS 10
by RotsiserMho on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @01:51AM
(#11900061)
The low road at that. Nice catch.
Re:Apple announces iOS 10
by mynameislegion on Monday June 13, 2016 @09:23PM
(#11899124)
I use option and control all the time for muscle memory keybindings, but every time I see "⌥" or "^" as a shortcut in a menu, I need to check which is which. After all the time I've spent on cli, you'd think I'd have "^" memorized by now, but for some reason it doesn't stick.
Re:Apple announces iOS 10
by selectodude on Monday June 13, 2016 @08:28PM
(#11898911)
The key has had the word option on it for several years now.
Aye, but on newer mac keyboards it lacks the symbol. So you have that funny symbol in the menus, and you're supposed to divine (you're a new user, remember) that it means "option" with no visual similarity.
> on newer mac keyboards it lacks the symbol.
Only on American keyboards, apparently.
How odd! But I believe you are right [1], all two dozen Apple keyboards have the option (aka "alt") key, including the "British" one, but not the "English" one... (Who's the imperialist now ;-)) Perhaps the idea is that the average user only needs the option key for non-ascii characters like £, so Americans won't need it.
Oh wow! I stand corrected, mostly. I was not aware that was an American thing. How very strange.
It's in flux. International English keyboards (a bit different layout from US and not the UK one either) used to have the symbols. The most recent iteration has the command symbol, but not the others, it says "control" and "alt option" on them. Still has a symbol on the return, delete and tab keys instead of US-style labels.
Re:Apple announces iOS 10
by erikpukinskis on Tuesday June 14, 2016 @03:01PM
(#11904436)
> how does it take (more than) a decade to learn these correspondences?
Because it only comes up maybe once every two months and by the time I need the knowledge it has fallen back out of my brain.
It's for "⌥".
Yes, that's not ideal, and it's a striking UX failure on Apple's part that the keycap says "option" while the menu says ⌥ - all the more striking given Apple's generally well deserved reputation for getting that kind of thing right.
Same goes for control and ^ - granted, Unices have represented Control as ^ since forever, but part of the appeal of a Mac is supposed to be that you don't have to be a grizzled hacker to understand it.
That said, how does it take (more than) a decade to learn these correspondences? Not that I don't understand your complaint here, and I agree it should be fixed, but...I mean, this stuff doesn't seem all that hard.