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Comment by helveticabold48 | Hacker News Reader

pressing enter to edit a name is exactly how it should be. Enter is for text entry, you type something and press enter to ENTER the text. Why should enter open a program? Reserving Cmd-O for Open is precisely a consistent thing to do, if you're not thinking from Windows' mindset

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Well, if I have a directory highlighted ENTER could mean ENTER THE DIRECTORY. Or you hit enter to open the file so you can ENTER its contents. But I'm arguing linguistics, which is stupid.

What is the primary purpose of a file explorer? To find and view a file. It's called 'Finder' not 'Renamer'.

Please tell me a graphical file explorer (and there is probably 100 of them since the dawn of windowed OSs) where ENTER does not open the file that is not Finder. Please tell me one example. Maybe a dedicated file-rename-utility?

If you have a tree of files in an IDE on a sidebar, and you're navigating the tree with arrow keys, and you press Enter. Should it prompt to rename the file or display the source code file you selected?

If you have a image viewer that is showing a grid of image thumbnails and you are navigating them by arrows. You press enter with a thumbnail highlighted. Does it open the image, or prompt you to rename it?

You have selected "Open a file" from practically any GUI app and it displays a File Picker, which is basically what Finder is. As you navigate the grid/listing/whatever, and highlight a choice and hit ENTER, what do you expect to happen?

If you interact with listing or grids or displays of files or objects and have one of them highlighted, and hit ENTER in 99.99% of programs (number made up on the spot by me), does it open/activate/display/expand/select the item, or rename it?

Finder's behavior in this instance doesn't just go against other operating systems' file pickers/navigators, it goes against practically any navigate-items and select-by-pressing-Enter GUI paradigm in virtually every GUI program in existence.

The rename operation is so rare compared to select/open/activate that it is reduced to a hotkey or function key in virtually every other app, OS, and dialog.

Look, when you’ve got to furiously rename thousands of files manually you’ll be glad the enter key lets you do so with 1 click!

You have to think in the context of what a GUI represents at the time. Your assumption was based on the command line ethos, where Enter key plays an important role. It was true on Apple II command line too, but the original Mac interface was designed to do away this keyboard centric mindset. "Use your mouse" was the philosophy behind it. The original Mac keyboard didn't even have arrow keys, it encouraged a novel way of interacting with a machine that is so different to anything before it.

Also, the Enter key that represent so much importance to you, on an Apple machines it's always "Return", which is nothing more than a carriage return, strongly linked to text inputs. A Return key does not "enter" anything. Return and Enter are two completely different keys to the OS. Based on the design choice, Return key deals with text entry, rename is probably the only reasonable text entry function to a file explorer at the time (or even today). This Return vs Enter design choice has been consistently applied on all Apple machine ever since Apple II, which predates any windowed OS you care to mention.

> If you have a tree of files in an IDE on a sidebar, and you're navigating the tree with arrow keys, and you press Enter. Should it prompt to rename the file or display the source code file you selected?

In VSCode for Macintosh, the Enter key in the file panel is for renaming the selected file. This behavior is coherent with the Finder.

Why does Enter open a file in Spotlight but not in Finder?

Do you perform any file management operations from Spotlight’s search UI outside of the Finder?

Return has a different function in different apps with different paradigms, but the Finder has the longer lineage with the longest set of principles baked into it, treaded upon somewhat with the Mac OS X transition but at least consistent with the compromises that were made in that transition so when you hit Return in the Finder you get a file management function (renaming) because you’re working within a File Manager. Command-O/Double click has always been the way you opened files.

Utilizing unintuitive patterns due entirely to tradition does not justify the practice. “Enter” both logically and functionally has an intuitive context of “run” or “enter into this object highlighted on screen” within the confines of a file explorer. It is among the largest buttons on the keyboard and its function should be associated with such a presence.

“Rename” is not a rational function bind in any sense — so it is understandable that tradition is the reasoning.

Given how “brave” Apple is to redefine things, like removing a headphone jack or not including chargers, I find it surprising that bravery doesn’t translate to intuitive OS controls contrary to long-held tradition.

What you find is intuitive is only what you learned, and it’s fine to hold that opinion, but it is contrary to what I have learned. For all the criticisms I can and do levy against Apple, not arbitrarily redefining the control scheme that their customers have used for almost 40 years is a mark of respect. Every single keyboard shortcut can be easily redefined to be whatever you want it to be as well, including those of the Finder, through the Keyboard pane in System Preferences. People who find that they can’t get used to hitting Command instead of Control can even just flip the modifier key bindings with ease there on a per Keyboard basis.

Lastly, it’s not “Enter”, that’s actually a separate key binding in some circumstances, but “Return”. Return is a text entry action that typically enters a new line, and by default, begins (and ends) a file rename operation in the Finder; one of the very few functions in which text entry is involved at all in the Finder.

LOL! I love the arbitrary definitions and usage example you give so passionately as if that settles the argument definitively.

Enter could mean, "Begin entering text", sure. But it doesn't. It means "release the block on input", usually passing the text being queued in the input buffer or a pointer to it. Escape has traditionally been the "mode change" button for literally my entire life.

It's wonderful to see Mac fan boys still going though!

it's no more arbitrary than the article's arguments, or your own "Enter could mean, "Begin entering text", sure. But it doesn't. "

Mac fan boys or not, that's just how a Mac works. Calling it inferior just because it's different and then name calling ppl fan boys is just the way to go.

Why did we have to go to Start menu to search for "shutdown" in Windows? To a new user the start menu would be the LAST place she would look for the shutdown command. Start could mean "start the shutdown procedure" sure, but it doesn't.

Idk, having file names be editable like this strikes me as supremely weird, especially coming from a Linux background where we all understand that leaking(well, I suppose implementing here) such functionality isn’t what the user would expect. But again OS X isn’t designed for people like me, so maybe I am just projecting preferences.

If by OS X you meant the GUI, then no OS X wasn't designed for people like you, the original Mac was designed for people who don't want to deal with MS DOS command lines and the GUI design choice have largely been kept intact for almost 40 years. So no you're probably not their target audience. But thank you for allowing for the possibility of preference projection, instead of insisting one way of doing things is inherently superior to another like the others. We don't want everything work the same way otherwise what's the point. To a unix newbie, using mv as a rename function is also extremely strange but to the OG this could well be the most beautiful and efficient implementation.

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