You need a lot of those to write fluently in English, too, thanks to all the loan words and phrases we have. Particularly French, but quite a bit of German, too. Having some common currency symbols available is nice. Enough punctuation to write the occasional quotation or passage in French or (especially in the US) Spanish. Even m-dash and a variety of other useful English punctuation and symbols are easier to comfortably type on macOS than anywhere else.
I’d buy Apple machines if I wrote for a living for that reason. Which is silly. You’d think every default English layout would be fairly good for writing English, but I’ve not seen one nearly as good as Apple’s. You can use AltGr or US International, but they’re both much worse for general-purpose English writing.
Why other operating systems have’s stolen their alt/option-based typing layout is a mystery, to me. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close for composing English-language text. Certainly no other default layout.
[EDIT] to wit (I don't know how HN will handle some of these, I'll remove it if it's a disaster...):
• Bullets.
— m-dashes.
90°
Divers mots français, n'est pas difficile. « Avez-vous un résumé? » (sorry, my French is garbage).
Would you like your change in $, ¢, £, or €, or ¥?
¿Donde esta el baño? (my Spanish is even worse than my French, again, sorry)
∑ π ≤ ≥ and so on.
Straßburg
And on and on. Most of these I remembered despite rarely using them because the layout is semi-intuitive, and the couple I had to hunt for made some sense once I found them and if I had to use them more than a couple times a year, I'd remember. No modifier + 1234 garbage, no common keys used as deadkeys screwing with normal typing, and none of it gets in the way of programming. Every other OS, please just copy this layout for your default English keyboard.
I’d buy Apple machines if I wrote for a living for that reason. Which is silly. You’d think every default English layout would be fairly good for writing English, but I’ve not seen one nearly as good as Apple’s. You can use AltGr or US International, but they’re both much worse for general-purpose English writing.
Why other operating systems have’s stolen their alt/option-based typing layout is a mystery, to me. Nothing else I’ve seen comes close for composing English-language text. Certainly no other default layout.
[EDIT] to wit (I don't know how HN will handle some of these, I'll remove it if it's a disaster...):
• Bullets.
— m-dashes.
90°
Divers mots français, n'est pas difficile. « Avez-vous un résumé? » (sorry, my French is garbage).
Would you like your change in $, ¢, £, or €, or ¥?
¿Donde esta el baño? (my Spanish is even worse than my French, again, sorry)
∑ π ≤ ≥ and so on.
Straßburg
And on and on. Most of these I remembered despite rarely using them because the layout is semi-intuitive, and the couple I had to hunt for made some sense once I found them and if I had to use them more than a couple times a year, I'd remember. No modifier + 1234 garbage, no common keys used as deadkeys screwing with normal typing, and none of it gets in the way of programming. Every other OS, please just copy this layout for your default English keyboard.