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Comment by goatforce5 | Hacker News Reader

I bought a MacBook in the UK and some time later when I was in the US they keyboard became faulty.

I walked in to a US Apple store and explained the problem. The Genius person agreed there was a fault and then started tapping away at their computer. He umm'ed and ahh'ed and called over a manager.

At this point I was thinking they were going to reject the warranty repair for some reason, but the manager ended up apologizing that they didn't have any UK-style MacBook replacement keyboards in stock, and they couldn't work out how to order the part in on their US system.

As it happens I had moved to the US, so getting a US keyboard was actually a bonus. I told them I was happy with a US keyboard, and 10 minutes later I was leaving the store with it installed in my MacBook.

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> I walked in to a US Apple store

Also, only about 20 countries have Apple stores, so that's also limited.

Pardon my ignorance but what is the difference in the UK style keyboard vs the US style keyboard? Is the 4/$ replaced with the 4/£ key? Wouldn't this be problematic when programming (for example variable substitution on the shell etc.)?

There are two separate issues that need to be distinguished:

1. Physical keyboard layout (how keys are placed). There are two primary standards: ANSI (mostly US) and ISO (most of Europe). The most notable difference is the shape of the Enter key (L-shaped on an ISO keyboard and straight on an ANSI one). ISO keyboards also have one extra key and a shorter left Shift to make space for it.

2. Logical keyboard layout (how key presses are interpreted). This is what is printed on key caps, but it doesn't have any relation to the actual scan codes being sent. Many languages use their own accented characters (e.g. ąęćłóńżź for Polish) and historical preferences (e.g. QWERTY/QWERTZ/AZERTY), but this is implemented in software.

Logical layout can be easily configured in the operating system, and for touch typists it doesn't really matter what is printed on the keys, but differences in physical layout can take some time to get used to.

PS. I'm Polish, I live in the UK, and I type on a US mechanical keyboard with ANSI layout :)

https://deskthority.net/wiki/ANSI_vs_ISO

The ISO layout is pretty superior in many small ways for non-english speakers but that's a really nice description of it in that link there.

As a UK->US transplant I really miss the Enter key shape. :(

I miss this even as an American. The old 8088 computers I grew up with had reverse-L enter keys.

Nope. ~` key is next to Z, Enter is vertical. \| is next to "'.

The labeling is actually cooler, with images instead of "Shift", "Tab" etc.

http://www.thebookyard.com/images/mbutcuk_notp.jpg

I'm sitting here staring at my US keyboard and scratching my head. All of the Menu shortcuts align perfectly with the UK keyboard's iconography but not the US keyboard which opts for labels. And why do we have a key labeled both enter and return?

Historically the Macintosh distinguished between Enter and Return. IIRC on the Lisa the Return key was on the main part of the keyboard and the Enter key was on the numeric keypad. In many apps they did the same thing, but I think in LisaCalc the Enter key would enter the contents of the selected cell and leave it selected. Return would do the same and then select the cell below. IIRC the Mac version of Microsoft Multiplan did the same.

On the MBP I'm typing this on, the key is labeled enter in small type and below that return in larger type. I think holding down the fn key and pressing that key does the enter action, while without fn it does the return action. I am pretty sure my full-size Mac keyboard has return on the main keyboard and enter on the numeric keypad. I think the Lisa was the same.

IIRC there was no Enter key on the original (128K) Mac keyboard, but the optional numeric keyboard had the Enter key.

Apple have an old user interface guideline that basically said that the main keyboard was for primarily typing text, while traditional data entry was secondary. Hence the function of the Return key was strictly to insert a carriage return into some text. And so no Enter or Control key on the original keyboard. As a kind of substitute Apple introduced the Command (Swedish campground) key, but it wasn't a direct mapping of Control. And IBM further muddied the waters by introducing CUA. By the time of the Mac II the default keyboard was much more compatible with common computers. It was a time of rapid change.

I noticed that in the US almost all signage uses text instead of symbols. For example, writing "No smoking" on a sign, where in Europe you would have a crossed-out cigarette.

I don't really understand why this is done, since well-made symbols are also understandable for illiterate people or those not speaking the language.

In Europe you have a lot of languages and nations mixed. People who design signs know and care about that. In US you have a huge country where everyone speaks the same language. People who design signs don't even know it's a problem that needs to be solved.

Many signs are written both in English and Spanish all over. Even in rural-ish North Carolina.

Explain to me the difference between these three signs: 1. a bicycle on a blue circle, 2. a bicycle on a white circle outlined in red, and 3. a bicycle on a blue square.

On the other hand having to read all that in text while you're riding by isn't very reasonable either. Complex signage is only as good as your knowledge of it, which maybe is why passing a driving test in Europe is so much harder; it requires knowledge we just get from being able to read in the US.

>1. a bicycle on a blue circle

Only bicycles

>2. a bicycle on a white circle outlined in red

No bicycles.

>3. a bicycle on a blue [rectangle]

Recommended route for bicycles.

You're missing the point -- that's very non-obvious if you haven't studied the signs.

It was a comment for Americans who might not know the signs; not really an argument.

But really, if you're driving then you should have done a driving exam and test in your home country. Then you're ready to drive from Romania to Ireland (with the help of some tunnels and ferries) and be able to manage reading the road signs the whole way. This is possible because of a (mostly) shared iconography. Of course, on a bike you don't need to pass a test but you should do a little bit of studying to make sure you don't get a fine.

The US doesn't need this because it uses English.

This is also completely distinct from keyboards which aren't even QWERTY across Europe. There are also AZERTY (France) and QWERTZ (Germany) and some countries like Belgium have all three in the same office as people have different preferences. And pair programming is as painful as you can imagine.

I agree, some signs need to be learned, and traffic signs are a prime example of that. On the other hand, many signs with fewer fine distinctions can be made with pictograms that require no prior knowledge of conventions.

That being said, traffic signage is a mixture of both, where some meaning is given by convention (e.g., white background and red border means "not allowed"), and then extrapolated by pictograms (bicycles not allowed, trucks not allowed, pedestrians not allowed).

Edit: A certain cultural context is of course always required, to know for example that a crossed out cigarette applies to smoking in general and doesn't mean that you can smoke pipes, cigars, or bongs. Such 'misunderstandings' only happen with QA engineers though. ;)

blue circle: something you MUST do (in this case, indicates a path that can only be taken by bycicles)

white circle with red outline: something that is forbidden (the road is forbidden for bycicles)

the last one indicates a bycicle-only path crossing the road, 150 meters before it you should see a white triangle outlined in red ("danger") with a bycicle inside it

By the way, the Mac I'm using now was bought in Australia and the keyboard has a rectangular Return key and the modifiers labeled using text rather than icons.

Non-mac layout is different again. Here's a pic of a Dell laptop I have knocking around: http://imgur.com/a/w5GVC [ could do with a clean! ]

> [ could do with a clean! ]

It's a disgusting view, I'll give you that

Yep, didn't come out pretty with the camera flash :)

The UK keyboard layout still has $ above 4, but it has £ above 3. In order to get #, you have to hit ⌥3. You can also hit ⌥2 to get €. I think a couple of keys like backslash and backtick are moved around as well.

> I think a couple of keys like backslash and backtick are moved around as well.

Yes. US ISO layout is superior if you need to do any programming (or even just to write some Markdown), too bad it's not used more.

Inclined to disagree - depends on your keymap and software you use. If I were to add keyboard shortcuts to my program I'm sure as hell not gonna use a key that I can't get to on my keyboard.

On German keyboards it's even 'worse' though. Because ;, [ and ] are used for ä, ö and ü, [ and ] are Strg + ⇧ + 8 and Strg + ⇧ + 9. Same for { and }.

(Strg = Ctrl)

So any keyboard shortcut involving those and ⇧ or Ctrl is pretty much impossible.

Having recently (5 months) switched from UK to US layout, I find `/~ location to be more convenient on UK layout.

First, it's somehow easier to type ~ on UK layout (no weird finger twists) - helps quicker to get to your home directory when navigating terminal.

Second, I use cmd+1/2/3 to switch tabs a lot. Cmd + ` rotates windows. You can imagine it's very easy to mix up 1 with ` and instead of having the tab you want, end up with completely different window. Really breaks my flow often.

I do not mind enter key that much. In fact I think US one is better.

> helps quicker to get to your home directory when navigating terminal.

Protip: "cd" with no arguments normally takes you to your home directory. Though if you need to reference something in your homedir using a global path without changing directories, ~ is probably still the fastest way to do it.

There are quite a few differences. You can see what they are by looking at the Keyboard prefs in MacOS and loading different localisations.

4/$ still works, but some of the other symbols are in different places.

counter example.

I had to take my MacBook in three times durnig its life, for the same issue (wifi/bt issues because of aircard connection to VM)

Every single time I was told to make an appointment. Which take about 3 days to get. They took the laptop and spend a week fixing it (every time!) My experience at Multiple Apple stores in Southren Ontario.

I believe after the third repair, they'll replace the entire machine with a new model.

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