Great Moments by Design - OS X Special Keys
This great moment by design is brought to you by my poor typing skills. True.
When designing the new Macbook keyboard layouts, somebody at Apple decided it would be a good idea to place the Eject key directly above the delete key. When you type like I do, the delete key is in frequent usage. I’ve thought many times what a poor design it was for Apple to place the Eject key right above, because I’m constantly hitting that key rather than delete.
But rather than a poor moment by design, this turns out okay. Why? Because of another example of good design. The key placement doesn’t cause any issues because the operating system knows that that unless you click and hold down the Eject button, nothing is to be done. That means that in the normal actions of typing text, even if the user hits the eject key, they are clicking too fast for the Eject action to initiate. Only when you hold the key down for a full second does the optical drive eject it’s contents.
This design does not apply to the keyboard shortcuts for restarting or shutting down the computer (ctrl+command+eject and ctrl+alt+command+eject). Invoke these keyboard shortcuts and the normal key response time takes effect.
Try it for yourself. This is another example of how Apple really sweats the small details.
