Apple was the first company to demand that programs were consistent in the way a user would execute commands. Their book, Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Interface, which was published in 1987, defined commands and keyboard shortcuts for common activities such as cut, copy, and paste. Before these guidelines, programs could use different terms to describe the save activity. For instance, some programs used Write instead of Save or Read instead of Open. As a result, keyboard shortcuts were also different. Windows copied most of the commands and keyboard shortcuts established by Apple but used a different key (CTRL) to invoke the command.
I have been surprised to find that many of my students use menu items instead of these common keyboard shortcuts that would speed up their work.
Apple Macintosh OS
- Cut = command-x
- Copy = command-c
- Paste = command-v
- Select All = command-a
- Save = command-s
- Print = command-p
- Undo = command-z
Windows OS
- Cut = CTRL-x
- Copy = CTRL-c
- Paste = CTRL-v
- Select All = CTRL-a
- Save = CTRL-s
- Print = CTRL-p
- Undo = CTRL-z