I just got a new iMac and couldn’t find the # key. I googled it and see its alt + 3. That seems a bit silly. Why not write it on the 3 button.
Is there a reason for this?

Americans don’t have a £ sign on their keyboards, of course, but we do have $ because it’s needed when writing code. They have # (which they also call ‘pound’ for some reason) where we have £. But we also need # so we stick it on another key near the enter key. If you are trying to shrink a keyboard by taking out some keys, an American finds it easy to remove the one that # is on on our keyboard, and then simply put £ on shift-3 instead of #. But then this leaves us without a #.

Or in other words, this is Apple. You’ll get what we give you and like it.

It’s probably been only in the last three or four years that the average Mac user has noticed that there wasn’t a hash key on the keyboard.
I don’t see the issue really, it’s the same number of keypresses.

# is fairly universally used as pound when talking about pipe weight per foot molgrips, it probably orginated as an americanism but its widely used in industry now.

Just read the wikipedia article. It suggests that it was a stylised version of lb, similar to the & sign for ‘et’, but it also says that it’s only called ‘pound’ in the US and it’s usually only used to mean number in the US too.

How about Chromebooks (or my Toshiba at least) having a slightly annoying search button where the CapsLock should be? I think you can lock the shift button though.

Why not write it on the 3 button.

?

Because Apple aren’t Enduro enough

#worstIjustgotanewmacthreadever

#LOL

Newer Mac keyboard do have it on the 3. Certainly the one I’m typing on does.

#imsadbutnotthatsad 🙂

And on a chromebook you can change the settings so that the search button becomes the caps lock.

I think that the chromebook use of the caps key is excellent. On all of my Windows machines I now have caps and windows keys assigned to load a little searcher called launchy.

Which Mac do you have bensales?

As a maybe-interesting aside… if you go into System Preferences > Keyboard and check the ‘Show Keyboard & Character viewers’ box, it’ll give you the symbol seen next to the wi-fi symbol in the menu bar:

Click that, then Show Character Viewer and you’ll have easy access to a whole load of fancy shit you’ll never use.

#############Yep works on my macbook air##############