Why some PC keyboards have lowercase letters ?

© RoonzNL/Pixabay

Usually, letters on computer keyboards are capitalized. But there is a type of PC that stands out from the others, since instead of capital letters, this one has adopted lower case letters. These are PCs called Chromebooks, which use Google's Chrome OS operating system, instead of Windows or macOS.

In a blog post published this year, Google explains why Chromebook keyboards are different from those on other computers. Alexander Kuscher, senior director of the ChromeOS team, which helped design the first Chromebooks, explains that during this design phase, the Google team wanted to make computers more accessible.

“We're so used to the keyboard being in all caps, but if you go to a text field to start a document and you start to typing on a traditional keyboard, the keys don't match what's on the screen”, says Donny Reynolds, senior product manager on the Chromebook team . If a user presses the letter “D” on their keyboard, a “d” appears on the screen. With the design of Chromebooks, Google wanted to stand out: “If you press a key, that's what you'll get.”< /p>

© Google

An archaic system

For Google, printing capital letters on computer keyboards is a design inherited from very old typewriters, such as the Remington No. 1 from 1874 which only supported capital letters. To offer a more modern keyboard, Google not only opted for lowercase letters, it also decided to omit many keys, including the caps lock.

It is also important to remember that unlike Windows or macOS, Chrome OS is a young operating system. The first Chromebook prototype, the CR-48, was released in 2010. At the time, Google had already launched its Android operating system, which relies primarily on touchscreen keyboards and not physical keyboards. smartphones with physical keyboards are still released).

And in fact, from the first version of the keyboard on Android, Google adopted the display of lowercase letters by default. Below, a photo of the first Android smartphone: the G1 or HTC Dream.

© Google

• While Windows PC keyboards have uppercase letters, Chromebooks have lowercase letters
• In a post, Google explains why it made this choice
• In addition to having lowercase letters, Chromebook keyboards do not have a caps lock key

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