Defaults are a very powerful thing.

Particularly with the caps-lock key I don't see why it takes up so much real estate.

> Change it under System Preferences > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Keyboard: Move focus to next window

It is not like Apple doesn't know my locale. Why isn't it set up for easy use on it?

On the other hand, I do wonder what went into designing local keyboard variants. Many are quite hostile towards common programming characters, to the point where I actually use a US keyboard, despite it missing 3 letters from my native language's alphabet!

> Particularly with the caps-lock key I don't see why it takes up so much real estate.

History, removing it outright would likely have caused more consternation than the escape key change.

Blame this one on defaults all you want, but keyboards actually have defined layouts for keys, the touchbar is probably the best way of easing into changing that. But you can't boil the ocean and all that.

> On the other hand, I do wonder what went into designing local keyboard variants. Many are quite hostile towards common programming characters, to the point where I actually use a US keyboard, despite it missing 3 letters from my native language's alphabet!

Also history, in the English case, the keyboard variants were designed will before computers and programming languages. Starting in 1870 for most typewriters in English, and moving from there. I highly doubt any design went into any local variants and computer programming simplicity.

> Defaults are a very powerful thing.

So true. That's why companies make so many user-hostile settings as opt-out.

> They did. Under System Preferences > Keyboard > Modifier Keys… you can now map Caps Lock to Escape which you couldn’t before.

You've been able to do that for at least a couple of years now.

Before Sierra, you could only map to Control but not Escape.

There was software such as PCKeyboardHack/Karabiner and something else before that that let you do remappings not available through Keyboard Preferences. Every Mac OS X release breaks keyboard internals and things like PCKeyboardHack stop working (Sierra was out for almost a year before Karabiner Elements was fully functional). Mac OS X support for custom keyboard layouts is atrocious, and IMO Macbook keyboards are garbage compared to shaped (models up to x220/t420) Thinkpad keyboards. If you look around at some of the different keyboard layouts and try some remappings out what you will probably find is that remapping Caps Lock to Backspace is the best for general typing (this started with the MIT AI Lab's "Knight TV" terminals designed by Tom Knight). I haven't tried it but this should be possible with Karabiner Elements in Sierra now.

Huh ok, I only ever map it to Control so I didn't pay too much attention. Good to know.