Curious about the history of Apple's different keyboard layout and shortcuts

[MimbleWimble]

I use MacOS on the daily and I have a few issues with the keyboard layout and shortcuts that cause a lot of annoyance. I'm curious why Apple does this differently from other OS's and companies and wondering if anyone knows the history behind all of this.

*1. Lack of proper delete key*

Macbooks have a 'delete' key, however they're what is referred to as backspace in both ANSI and ISO standards. It also functions as a backspace, which is to remove the character to the left of the cursor. A proper delete key removes the character to the right of the cursor. Most other 60 keyboard layouts still contain a delete key (see 60/80/100 key layouts for more info) however macbooks dont - which is confusing to me as delete is a fairly common function.

*2. Scrolling by word is option (alt) instead of control*

On every other OS (Linux, Windows, Solaris) you can scroll word by word in a line by ctrl + arrow key. In MacOS, it's option (alt). While this is easy to learn if you exclusively use MacOS, this can get irksome quite quickly if you use external keyboards and switch between Linux, MacOS and Windows (like I do on the daily).

*3. Common modifiers for copy, paste, print, etc use command as the modifier rather than control*

This one is more minor, i'm guessing it's a holdover from the OS 8/9 days, but I wonder if there is is a different reason from this. This also includes other common keyboard commands like "delete" to move a file to trash and "shift+delete" to perma-delete a file. I guess my main gripe here is that you can't remap these shortcuts to more universally accepted key mappings like on Linux and Windows.

[rsingla]

Today I learned there are ISO standards for keyboards. Thanks, OP.

[MimbleWimble]

And in usual American fashion we do not use it. US layout is the ANSI (American National Standards Institute) one.