Command key

The Command key, ⌘, formerly also known as the Apple key or open Apple key, is a modifier key present on Apple keyboards. The Command key's purpose is to allow the user to enter keyboard commands in applications and in the system. An "extended" Macintosh keyboard—the most common type—has two command keys, one on each side of the space bar; some compact keyboards have one only on the left.

The ⌘ symbol (the "looped square") was chosen by Susan Kare after Steve Jobs decided that the use of the Apple logo in the menu system (where the keyboard shortcuts are displayed) would be an over-use of the logo. Apple's adaptation of the symbol—encoded in Unicode at U+2318—was derived in part from its use in Nordic countries as an indicator of cultural locations and places of interest.^[1] The symbol is known by various other names, including "Saint John's Arms" and "Bowen knot".

History[]

Apple's computers up through the 1979 Apple II Plus did not have a command key. The first model on which it appeared was the 1980 Apple III, where there are two monochrome Apple keys, both to the left of the space bar on the lowest row of the keyboard. Two other early Apple computers, the 1982 Apple IIe and the 1984 Apple IIc, also had two such keys, one to the left and one to the right of the space bar; in these models, they mapped to the first two fire buttons of an attached joystick. This allowed for flexible combinations of a modifier key and base key (such as Open-Apple with C for Copy) with just a few extra wires and no ROM changes, since the Apple II could only register one key press at a time (Shift and Control keys were handled in the keyboard encoding hardware which generated ASCII codes). In all these cases, the left Apple key had an outlined "open" Apple logo, and the one on the right had an opaque, "closed" or "solid" Apple logo key. The Apple Lisa had only the closed Apple logo.

When the Macintosh was introduced in 1984, the keyboard had a single command key with a looped square symbol (⌘, U+2318), because Steve Jobs said that showing the Apple logo throughout the menus as a keyboard shortcut was "taking [it] in vain".^[2] Thus, the ⌘ symbol appears in the Macintosh menus as the primary modifier key symbol. The original Macintosh also had an Option key which was used primarily for entering extended characters.

In 1986, the Apple IIGS was introduced. Like the newer Macintosh computers to come, such as the Macintosh SE, it used the Apple Desktop Bus for its keyboard and mouse. However, it was still an Apple II. Apple changed the keys on the IIGS's keyboard to Command and Option, as on Mac keyboards, but added an open-Apple to the Command key, for consistency with applications for previous Apple II generations. (The Option key did not have a closed-Apple, probably because Apple II applications used the closed-Apple key much more rarely than the open-Apple key; thus there was less need to keep it around.) Because any ADB keyboard could be used with the IIGS, all of Apple's ADB keyboards—even those intended for the Mac—also required the open-Apple, and it stuck for more than twenty years, causing confusion long after the Apple II series went out of production.

The Apple symbol was removed in the keyboard's 2007 redesign,^{[citation needed]} making room for the key's name to appear—the word "command" is now printed on the key.

NeXT[]

NeXT keyboard command key

On the keyboard of the NeXT Computer that key was marked command in green. The menus were not marked with a symbol denoting the command key.

Besides being used as a modifier key for keyboard shortcuts it was also used to alter the function of some keys. Command+⇧ Shift toggles alpha lock, command+return sends Enter and command+F11