Key symbols we lost to time, pt. 2: The Mac side

The relationship between keyboard manufacturers and standards bodies in various countries is so complex I barely understand a snippet of it. The most famous example must be the 1990s PowerBooks, which had a beige variant for Germany and Germany only, to conform with local laws that prescribed and enforced specific color and contrast combinations for keyboards, in order to avoid glare and attendant ergonomic problems for terminal operators in the decades before. (It wasn’t just Apple. ThinkPads did the same.) (I know. Jump scare!) But you’ll understand that what caught more of my attention was an obscure variant of keyboards for (parts of?) Canada in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The white 2003 keyboard might be my favourite of Apple’s keyboard design, instantly recognizable in either the American version (more words), or the European one (more symbols): There was also the Japanese JIS standard keyboard, which famously kept Control where older terminals had it – to, no doubt, delight…