by For the last few weeks I’ve casually thrown around phrases like “hover your cursor over,” “press the Command key,” and “swipe to the side on your trackpad.” And while I’m fairly confident that such suggestions are well within your powers to understand, it’s possible (likely, even) that you, your keyboard, mouse, and trackpad are not on entirely intimate terms. Let’s do something about that now.
Very broadly, we term any device you manipulate that causes letters to be typed, the cursor to move, external sounds recorded, or lines drawn an input device. The most common are the Mac’s keyboard, mouse, and trackpad. But a digital drawing tablet with stylus, trackball, or even a microphone could be considered input devices. We’ll concentrate on the most common devices, starting with the keyboard.
Key notes
A Mac keyboard—whether it’s built into a laptop or ships with a desktop Mac such as an iMac—uses the traditional QWERTY typewriter layout in the United States. Above the letters are the numbers 1 to 0. Above that row are Function keys or F keys. These are keys that, when pressed, cause the Mac to perform one trick or another—make your Mac’s screen brighter or increase the Mac’s sound volume, for example.
At the bottom of the keyboard you’ll find not only the space bar but a few keys to either side. All of these except the Arrow keys (the ones with the triangle symbols) are termed Modifier keys. They’re called that because, when pressed, they modify the behavior of other keys you press at the same time. When you press keys to make the Mac do something other than type a letter, number, or hunk of punctuation, you’re said to be invoking a keyboard shortcut or keyboard command. You can use one modifier key with a “regular” key to invoke one of these shortcuts or commands or use multiple modifier keys along with another key.
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