Image source: Jason Michael, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.0 License

Most keys on a keyboard make intuitive sense, even to a novice computer user, since nearly all of them are labeled with either familiar symbols (such as letters or numbers) or with recognizable words (enter, delete, escape). The Apple key, however, has no familiar symbols beyond the company logo, a mark whose meaning on something that you press is unclear. Also on that key, the presence of a second, even less-meaningful mark — the so-called “propeller” — and the lack of a written label add to user confusion.

Try explaining basic user interface tasks to anyone new to the Mac, and you’ll see what I mean. You can refer to it as “the Apple key,” which is descriptive, but the apple symbol has no on-screen significance. The propeller mark does appear on-screen, but only the Mac-initiated know that propeller means command. As a result, the Apple key is now called the command key, but that wasn’t always the case.

Having wondered about this glaring usability flaw for years, I was excited to discover this interview with members of the Lisa development team from the February 1983 issue of Byte Magazine. The Lisa was Apple’s short-lived, yet groundbreaking predecessor to the Macintosh. In the interview, Larry Tesler, who was in charge of the Lisa’s applications software, explains how the Apple logo ended up on the keyboard:

[In a prototype version of the keyboard] you saw two keys that said Command on them. The new version has only one, and instead of saying Command it has a picture of an apple on it. The reason is that the key’s used as a shortcut to choose a menu command. If you look at a menu, on the right you’ll see this little apple symbol and a letter.

Image source: DigiBarn, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License

If you hold down the Apple key and the letter, you get the command. We couldn’t find any way to symbolize the Command key that would fit nicely in a menu and be recognizable to people. We tried and tried. Finally we decided that the apple looked nice and had a nice sound to it — “Apple X,” “Apple R” — and it keeps Apple in the mind of the user instead of “control” or something else. It’s a symbol that everybody using this machine will recognize instantly, so we decided to put it on the key as well as on the screen.

The Macintosh project “borrowed” many user interface concepts from the Lisa team (who, in turn, had borrowed from Xerox’s Star), including the innovation of associating key-combination shortcuts with graphical menu items. But the Macintosh abandoned the Apple symbol in its menu shortcuts in favor of a geometric, propeller-like shape that represented “command.” Although the new abstract symbol is even less meaningful to the uninitiated, it makes more sense as visual shorthand than the company’s logo. For almost the entire history of the Macintosh, though, this key has been marked with both symbols, even though the Mac’s on-screen UI always referred to it as “command” and never “Apple.”

Only in the last year or so has Apple dropped the vestigial logo from the command key, starting with the new aluminum keyboard (below) as well as on the MacBook. The word “command” or at least “cmd” has been added, too — something that should have been done 24 years ago.

Image source: Declan Jewell, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License

I finally made it out to Mass MoCA, and I have to say, my favorite piece, far and away, was, of course, text-based. Jenny Holzer’s “Projections” features two enormous projectors set at either end of a blacked-out warehouse space, pointed at each other, and throwing text across every surface in the room. I was so hypnotized by the visual effect that I forgot to read any of the actual words. I initially scoffed at the museum’s description of this as an “interactive” installation, since the piece itself doesn’t do anything differently as a result of your presence, but as I strolled around the room, I observed how my viewpoint changed, affecting the perspective in which the text was shown to me, which in turn defined its legibility. Standing here, I can read the words on that wall, but not the other. The piece becomes interactive as soon as the viewer-participant realizes that s/he must physically move around the space in order to take it all in. And when you’re tired of moving, there are several giant, 15-foot diameter beanbags set on the floor, so you can stumble over to one and sit or lie down comfortably to take in the text. One moment in particular stands out for me: the excitement, mixed with some fear, of watching a 20-foot long capital “R” approach menacingly before “spearing” me with its edges and blinding me with the projector’s light.

You can watch a live video stream of the installation, but it doesn’t do justice to the physical experience of moving around and through the letters.

Also at the museum was a projected, rotating, writhing, computer-generated tree by Jennifer Steinkamp — which I expected to be interactive, and was disappointed when I discovered it would go on writhing with or without me — and also a most striking, yet subtle installation by Mary Temple — apparently sunlight casting shadows of tree branches on a gallery wall, until you realize that you are standing in a windowless room.

Now that I’m looking for innovative uses of SMS, I see them everywhere — even on yogurt containers. This recent Stonyfield Farm lid suggested I send a text message to get climate-related information on a company, so I did:

SENT TO 30644: cc stonyfield farm

RECEIVED REPLY: Climate Counts has ranked STONYFIELD FARM 2nd out of 11 Food Products companies. UNILEVER leads this sector. Learn how to change the world at http://climatecounts.org. To get action alerts & let companies know climate change matters to you (up to 6 msg/month), reply ACTION

Getting a minimal readout on a company’s environmental behavior via SMS is a novelty, but not that useful. For that reason, I don’t think we’ll suddenly see shoppers texting as they stroll the aisles. The power of branding is too strong and our ecological sensitivity is too weak. An SMS will not help anyone decide between Coke and Pepsi, and I’m not buying a Toshiba laptop over an Apple, despite Apple’s relatively poor environmental record (sorry), because there are too many other factors at play.

This is the first time I’ve ever seen an SMS-based service promoted on a yogurt container. Can you imagine seeing that only a few years ago? I wouldn’t have known what to make of it.

You have to read this fascinating report from The New York Times on how new billboards with cameras are “watching” passersby and collecting data on who really looks at the billboard and who does not.