June 19, 2004

A joke I eventually got.

In an endorsement of my "why blog" post from yesterday, Jeremy makes a joke based on my name that, as he recognized when he made it, is hard for a Mac user like me to get. I did eventually get it, but it got me wondering why the Apple people decided to call the key "option" instead of "alt." Is there something unfriendly sounding about "alt"? I can understand wanting to replace "control" with a nice little outline of an apple. (Note to Gwyneth Paltrow: Control could be a nickname for the baby.) Maybe once Apple started renaming computer keys they kept renaming things, trying to make Mac-using feel like a warm, enveloping environment. My favorite Apple ouster of an unfriendly term is the rejection of the verb "boot" to refer to turning on your computer.

No comments: