WHY is the US keyboard different from the UK one?

[nateo200]

About a quarter of the world drives on the left, and the countries that do are mostly old British colonies.
This strange quirk perplexes the rest of the world; however, there is a perfectly good reason.
Up to the late 1700's, everybody travelled on the left side of the road because it's the sensible option for feudal, violent societies of mostly right-handed people.
Jousting knights with their lances under their right arm naturally passed on each other's right, and if you passed a stranger on the road you walked on the left to ensure that your protective sword arm was between yourself and him.
Revolutionary France, however, overturned this practice as part of its sweeping social rethink. A change was carried out all over continental Europe by Napoleon.The reason it changed under Napoleon was because he was left handed his armies had to march on the right so he could keep his sword arm between him and any opponent.
From then on, any part of the world which was at some time part of the British Empire was thus left hand and any part colonised by the French was right hand.
In America, the French colonised the southern states (Louisiana for instance) and the Canadian east coast (Quebec). The Dutch colonised New York (or New Amsterdam). The Spanish and Portugese colonised the southern Americas. So The British were a minority in shaping the 'traffic'.
The drive-on-the-right policy was adopted by the USA, which was anxious to cast off all remaining links with its British colonial past

So there you have it! 😀

Car manufactures probably waste thousands of euro's and time selling left and right sided vehicles. I guess us Americans can't criticize though seeing as we don't use metric (you better believe I hate US standard with a passion).

 

[Nermal]

I was very surprised to find drinks etc sold in oz in the US, until you hit a litre, at which point they become metric... 😕

 

[snberk103]

....
Is it? Why oh why apple?

It's the neighbourly and honourable thing to do. All of these differences make for a colourful world, eh?

 

[Love]

Plus, though not apparent unless you take the keyboards apart, the "U" key is beefier on the UK keyboard. 😉

Oh, that was clever. 😀

 

[MacHamster68]

its because the Americans are used to simple things , so they need a very simple keyboard layout,
nobody wants to confuse them more then necessary 😀
i live in the UK but as i am German
i use a Swiss German keyboard as i sometimes need to write in french too very rarely (no serious its nearly the German layout , and i got it for 1p @ebay)and a UK keyboard



for all who have never seen a Swiss German Keyboard layout

 

[iSayuSay]

Seeing from your picture, I like UK keyboard layout better. It has one extra (~ and `) button between Z and shift .. "Enter" button shape is nice too 😀

If only I live in UK, I'd exchange my US keyboard with yours .. for free 😀

 

[peskaa]

The Americans need the keys written out, whereas Brits can cope with symbols 😱

Actually, I don't know why there's a difference on things like the size of the enter key. I much prefer the larger UK one, I had a US MacBook for several years that drove me insane.

 

[YanniDepp]

I like our big Enter key. The taller target makes it easier to hit without looking.

As you can see from our keyboard layout, typing Cmd + ~ to switch windows is really easy. We have to reach less far than others 🙂

 

[Lankyman]

Car manufactures probably waste thousands of euro's and time selling left and right sided vehicles. I guess us Americans can't criticize though seeing as we don't use metric (you better believe I hate US standard with a passion).

Neither do I use metric, it's one of my pet hates. When I went to school it was good old imperial measurements. When someone tells me x widget is 25 cm it means absolutely nothing as I have no visual memory of metric. I refuse to deal with people in shops etc. when they quote metric.

 

[snberk103]

Oh, that was clever. 😀

T'anks!

 

[Scepticalscribe]

About a quarter of the world drives on the left, and the countries that do are mostly old British colonies.
This strange quirk perplexes the rest of the world; however, there is a perfectly good reason.
Up to the late 1700's, everybody travelled on the left side of the road because it's the sensible option for feudal, violent societies of mostly right-handed people.
Jousting knights with their lances under their right arm naturally passed on each other's right, and if you passed a stranger on the road you walked on the left to ensure that your protective sword arm was between yourself and him.
Revolutionary France, however, overturned this practice as part of its sweeping social rethink. A change was carried out all over continental Europe by Napoleon.The reason it changed under Napoleon was because he was left handed his armies had to march on the right so he could keep his sword arm between him and any opponent.
From then on, any part of the world which was at some time part of the British Empire was thus left hand and any part colonised by the French was right hand.
In America, the French colonised the southern states (Louisiana for instance) and the Canadian east coast (Quebec). The Dutch colonised New York (or New Amsterdam). The Spanish and Portugese colonised the southern Americas. So The British were a minority in shaping the 'traffic'.
The drive-on-the-right policy was adopted by the USA, which was anxious to cast off all remaining links with its British colonial past

So there you have it! 😀

I like this post, very nicely explained; I'm an historian, and I love this sort of thing (knew a lot of it, but you've put it together very well).

Viewing the keyboards on the original post, it seems that even though I live in western Europe, the keyboard of my MBA seems to be of US origin. Very, very strange. Prior to reading this thread, that fact had never occurred to me.

And, yes, actually, the need for a Euro symbol (mine) is catered for, though not, all too obviously; so, there is a € symbol on it also - press "alt" (left hand) and '2' at the same time...

 

[buoyantpuppy]

Legacy

Ex-translator and layout designer here. I've had to get used to and work with about a dozen or more different keyboard layouts in that many or more languages, in a few different countries.
Here's my experience:
- the differences are simply legacy, and rarely have real practical justification (like $ vs £).
- almost everyone is nevertheless super-defensive about the layout they are used to.
- yet, anyone can get used to any new keyboard in a week or so (trust me, I've been through it a bunch of times).
- to top this off, most keyboards are full of silly, pointless designs. Often keys that are very frequently used are behind a modifier, while keys nobody uses have a super prominent position, even enlarged, like the friggin CAPS LOCK (my biggest pet peeve). That, if any, could just be a "both shifts at once" or option-shift or whatever.

I like the US Keyboard best (with some small customizations). Not because it's the one I'm most used to, but it's because the one I chose as my favorite after being used to about a dozen others when I stopped working in translation/layout. FWIW I'm not a native english speaker and live in a francophone country (yes, the HORRID azerty). The US keyboard has the least keys, and thus is the least cramped. All those rarely used symbols etc are perfectly easy to place behind modifiers and you just get used to it, and they do not slow you down in the least.
Non-US keyboards are (usually) the US plus they've just added buttons for their special keys like ä ö å ç etc instead of replacing keys. So they are typically more cramped. What's worse, they often have totally idiotic keys that maybe 0.1% of anyone uses yet are prominently featured (not one of my UK colleagues can explain to me what the second pipe symbol (unbroken vs broken) is for, or the Not sign (¬).
The Mac compact variant of UK keyboard is a noticeable improvement over the standard PC keyboard, and is only down to two sillinesses (the top left key under esc, anyone really use that? and the caps lock, of course).

In short, all keyboards have a pile of modifiers: shift/ctrl/alt/apple/fn/option and sometimes the left vs right are different (like alt vs altgr). Ideally I like all the most common keys available and shove the rest behind modifiers. Modifying a keyboard to your personal preference is easy enough, anyway.

Is it a problem? No of course not really, not normally... but on a 12" or smaller laptop it can really bug the crap out of you, because most manufacturers seem adamant to keep all those nigh-useless keys on board, coming up with cramped monstrosities.
Everyone loves to copy Apple on all their designs EXCEPT this one, lol....

Rant over...