alt Hacker News> and Macs offer ⌘ Command, ⌥ Option, ⌃ Control, and ⇧ Shift
This is traumatizing for me. I tried to switch to a mac for home use and failed because of keyboard handling. Using Polish diacritics (made with right alt) wasn't obvious at first. I was able to switch keyboard settings to mimic Linux/Windows, but it's just not there. Control and Command confusion haunts me. I dropped the platform because of this and know a few people who stayed on iphones, but also dropped Macs because of keyboard.
I once tried to "find myself" on linkedin search bar on someone else's Mac. I though "I got this, I'm a mac user now!" and managed to close the browser tab and open some random programs...
I admire people who jump between those platforms. Even more for languages that don't have standardized alphabet mappings, like Bulgarian (it seems they don't have consensus there).
Replies
Back in the day when I was doing contract work and hopping around a lot, I often had to switch between windows and mac. One of the issues I always ran into was the not necessarily the keys, but where they were positioned.
Doing something basic on a mac like Copying (Ctrl + C) and Pasting (Ctrl + V) had to be done with ⌘ Command. So instead of using my pinky in natural resting by simply shifting my palm down which I was used to. Using the ⌘ Command, I had to use my thumb instead and it was always a weird shift. Having used Windows most of my life, I always had to look down to make sure I was on the right keys on a Mac.
I've tried a few times to go back, but its always been such an unnatural feeling that I just avoid it now like you do.
Same experience for me. I've ended up using Karabiner-Elements. With less than 10 rules (half of which are only for the browser), you can replicate the Windows layout on your Mac, it makes everything much easier.
Hate this. The Apple magic keyboard is my favourite keyboard (least amount of travel/force, for speed and to be easy on my hands/wrists), and I'm paying a yearly license for a software (magic utilities) to remap the keys properly on windows. On a Mac, forget about remapping them, it doesn't work.
I've programmed my work keyboard to swap the places of the left windows key and left ctrl. I'll never go back to pressing ctrl with my little finger instead of my thumb again!
I've even been rebellious enough to swap the left ctrl to a command button.
It's just a matter of practice in the end.
I had the same issue when I first started using a Mac decades ago (coming from being a Linux and Windows user), would get confused with Cmd and default to Ctrl, not understanding how to use diacritics, etc. A few weeks to a couple of months later and it was fine.
Nowadays I very much miss macOS diacritics shortcuts when using Windows, I only have a Windows PC for games with a Swedish/English keyboard but need to write in Portuguese sometimes, I have no idea how to use diacritics on Win11 while my keyboard is set to English, and much prefer the macOS way with Option + [N | E | I | C] (for ˜, ´, ˆ, ç) using any keyboard language, it just works. On Windows I need to change the whole keyboard language to be able to access diacritics easily, no shortcuts such as those.
In a similar boat. I quickly remapped the Mac keyboard to work as close as possible to a Win one, and it helped. But it's a leaky abstraction. And now, as some of the modifier keys are swapped, it's always confusing when I see a shortcut in a menu, never sure what to press. So I'm using fewer shortcuts than on a Win. So, for those who are 100% transitioning to Mac, my suggestion is to bite the bullet and adopt the Mac way. But for those who still live in both worlds (like me), I don't have a good answer, just that it's a constant struggle even after few years.
I have been using Mac since 2018 daily on my day job and I still get confused by the symbols. I wish there was some system option to always display them as words or abbreviations (CMD etc) instead.
But I did get used to the navigation and basic shortcuts after a while. Using the terminal/keyboard/IDE shortcuts (which I can set up myself) for most of the work helps a lot.
Finder is still terrible though.
It took me about 1 month of pain to convert. But now I find cmd far more logical than ctrl. Ctrl asks you to give up a pinky, a home key finger, to execute common chords - far more critical than a thumb, which is already designated for space and chord/modifier keys anyway, on both Windows or Mac. As a result, Windows requires two hands or awkward movement to hit something like ctrl-a, ctrl-z, ctrl-q, etc. The equivalent on Mac can all be one-handed.