Swedish Campground (2004)

It's actually interesting, because Job's complaint about "wearing out" the Apple logo with over-exposure is a well known problem in design… and, well, propaganda, too.

The Nazis had a similar problem towards the end of the war: absolutely everything they produced was adorned with a swastika. They called that phenomenon "Hakenkreutzkitsch" (swastika kitsch)

Just to be correct, because fanbois are easily upset: I'm in no way comparing Apple's marketing to 3rd Reich propaganda, instead I'm trying to show that Jobs made a very good call here: it's a well-known problem, an old one at that. You lose the power of your symbol, its special meaning, and recognizability.

This is not just used in Northern Europe it is sometimes used on American maps to indicate places of interests when there is already a heavy amount of key symbols used. This is a great read and its no surprise Susan Kare referenced a international symbol dictionary, a mark of a true designer using a recognizable and readable symbol for a very important command, a true genius. If you swap out historic with place of interest to "copy" it makes a lot more sense. I wish people would take this care in designing symbols today, I've seen some freakish ones as of late on mobile phones, and especially touch devices. Have we forgotten a touch button is still a command button?

I can see how you would connect it to a campground, but actually, in danish and swedish, its the sign for a Historic site.

Thats also the reason why ppl find it very very wierd in scandinavia.. why to copy a file, do i press "historic site" + c???

evidence http://www.kulturarv.dk/fileadmin/user_upload/kulturarv/fort...

Now in Unicode: ⌘ 'PLACE OF INTEREST SIGN' (U+2318)

http://www.fileformat.info/info/unicode/char/2318/index.htm

We had these symbols in our coins before which to EURO

http://www.treasurerealm.com/coinpapers/countrycoins/coins/F...

Interesting history!

Although I question whether a special symbol is even needed. The key in question already has the word "Command" written on it. Adding the symbol seems redundant and confusing, especially since it is not a universally known symbol. And the drop down menus could easily use an abbreviation, for example, "Cmd+Q" instead of ⌘Q.

Especially when used in combinations, I certainly find it a lot easier to read something like "Cmd+Alt+C" instead of all the little symbols jammed together.

This story also explains something else for me:

I use the same keyboard, monitor and mouse with my Mac and my Windows machine. To make it easy to switch between them, I have a KVM switch. My keyboard is a Windows keyboard. Until now, I had wondered why my KVM switch maps the Windows key to the Mac's command key. Now I know: The Mac commmand key used to be an apple... the Microsoft logo maps to the Apple logo (historically).

Kinda neat to realise that the Mac is part-Swedish. :D

Exactly what I thought before reading :)

I guess this means we actually have three ways to describe a keyboard shortcut: Command + C, Open-Apple + C, Campground + C.