I occasionally move older writing that still feels interesting to my new site, and today I republished the 2015 story about a strange bug that brought back an old pixel font from beyond the grave:

Some of the technical details inside are obsolete, but the story might still be fun. (Plus, it seems like at every job I have, I eventually stumble upon a bug that brings back something from the annals of history. Here’s one from 2019.)

I just published a new photoessay about the history of the Fn key, and particularly what Apple has been doing with it recently.

Do we need yet another person crashing out about Apple’s design decisions? Am I doing it only because it’s fashionable to be on Apple Design Hate Train these days? I’ll be honest: I don’t know.

But I have been bothered by Apple’s approach to this aspect of its keyboard design for a while, because it starts breaking what I think is really important in using a computer well: keyboard shortcuts.

I hope it’s also a fun visual history of the most tricky of modern modifier keys.

(And if you like it, I linked to a few of my other keyboard essays in the footer.)

Just kidding. But it’s a happy 20th annivesary to the little interactive explainer I made of Fitts’ Law back in 2005!

It’s charming in a sort of early-web kinda way, but still holds up – at least on bigger screens. I even ran it on my iPad and it worked.