alt Hacker NewsWhile this is a problem for the default user experience, I think if you're an enthusiast there's less of a problem because you can get an external keyboard you like.
Laptop keyboards will always be disliked by someone: the standard keyboard layout is awful, and dealing with this either involves trying to stick to the conventional design (wherein different people will dislike different changes); whereas a good keyboard design is going to be so far from the standard keyboard that laptops aren't going to do that.
(People will quibble about where to put the arrow keys or however many modifier keys there are or that caps lock is badly placed.. but the most glaring issue is that the spacebar doesn't need to be over 6x the size of other keys).
It's a problem if the OS is inconsistent/unclear about what scan codes are required to do things.
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My Mac has no keyboard, it's just a metal box that sits on your desk - so an external keyboard is the only option. Nobody told me I had to get any specific type in particular!
It looks like you can still use hidutil to remap some other key. This invocation seems to remap the Application key to the fn key:
sudo hidutil property --set '{"UserKeyMapping":[{"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingSrc":0x700000065,"HIDKeyboardModifierMappingDst":0xFF00000003}]}'
I have an external keyboard and I keep accidentally hitting the fn key when I mean to hit backspace. And that toggles the keyboard layout if you have more than one.
> the OS is inconsistent/unclear about what scan codes are required to do things.
Both that, and there's an internal list that allows only Apple's (plus a few makers' like Logitech and Keychron) keyboard to _send_ the modifier keycode. Others are simply ignored. Sorry enthusiasts, Apple don't want to favor you.
https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/issues/2179