If there is one thing I've learned through my experience with Apple products, especially the iPhone, it's that no button goes wasted. If it doesn't need to be there, then it's not -- maybe not even if it does need to be there. So why are these four buttons, which are on every new Mac wired keyboard and many different models from different makes for the last thirty years, going largely unused under OSX?As it stands their only function is to move the viewport of a window, and they don't even do that very well. Want to go to the very top of a long document? Hit the home key. Bottom? Hit end. Move up one viewport length? Page up. Down? Page down. Brilliant, we all get it.
But, the functionality of these keys is much more useful to the majority of the computing world, and even Mac users who fuss with their keybindings and install apps to bridge to non-cocoa-based apps. I'm talking about moving the cursor. The time I least want to fumble over to the mouse is when I'm typing, and that's exactly what I would have to do on a stock OSX build if I want to go to the beginning of a line of text, or select a section of text easily. If you want to move up to your last paragraph, get ready to hold the up arrow key, or grab your mouse, because Page Up is only going to confuse you when your window's viewport shift unexpectedly, instead of moving your cursor up, rather intelligently, to the previous body of text.
Apple's design principals have taught me a good deal about purposeful utilization of every feature of an object, but this discrepancy, that almost feels like a judgment for wanting something all-knowing Apple has wisely excluded, has me rethinking some of that. Maybe their version of utility isn't quite what mine is.
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