why return not enter?

David Quandos wrote:

Hello, why does apple keyboards have "return" instead of enter?

Succinct? Because,

Mac != Win

Verbose? Because,

Mac is Mac and Win is Win and never the twain shall meet (except in a VM)

It's like asking, "Why do people in UK, HK, and Japan drive on the right side of the road, while everybody else drives on the wrong side of the road?"

In fact, 'extended' (or 'full-size', if you prefer) Apple keyboards have both Return and Enter keys. The reason for the 'return' key is both technical (it usually sends a 'carriage return' control character, or ASCII 13) and historical -- Macs go back to 1984 (the year, not the novel) and inherit some features from the Apple series, which is even older. You can start reading about here

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enter_key>

But there isn't much to be gained by repeating here stuff you can easily find by googling.

and why does some have both enter and return?

Do you mean, why on some keyboards, the Return key is also labelled "Enter"? For practical reasons -- such as using terminal emulators to access non-Mac servers or other hardware; it's also the reason why the ⌥ (option) key sometimes bears the label "Alt".

It actually goes back to typewriters, where the key was called a "return" key, which caused the the carriage to flip violently to the right, or the little Selectric Ball flipped to the right. Anyways, at my advanced years (since I wrote a whole Ph.D. dissertation on an IBM Selectric typewriter), I choose not to waste the few viable neurons on wondering why it's still named a "Return" key on a Mac.

😀