What purpose did the lower-right Enter key serve on original Mac 128k keyboard?

Mathematica might be one of the few remaining holdouts of this convention: Return starts a new line, while Enter submits the command to the REPL. Enter is aliased to Shift+Return, though, which I'm pretty sure is what most people use nowadays.

I miss this so much in chats, even right now when typing this comment. It's too bad that return and enter ended up being the same thing in most applications.

>Somewhat famous for not including arrow keys because Steve Jobs wanted to encourage developers to use the mouse instead

You know, with Jobs, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.

I'd love this in modern UIs, I've got several apps where return is submitting a multiline textbox with shift-return adding a line, but then a few more that flip it the opposite way around... It's tough to recall which is which and therefore you end up submitting prematurely far too often!

Newline vs Submit, instead of one key doing either depending on whether you're in a multiline text field.

Another I miss (that Apple didn't have either) making the same distinction is Next/Previous instead of overloading Tab.

What's interesting is "Enter", at the time, wasn't really a standard key at all. The key was called "return" on most keyboards, including seminal ones like the Apple II and VT-100. The IBM Model F that shipped with the original PC just had a "down and right" L-shaped arrow[1] on the key. A quick search pulled up the later F that shipped with the PC/AT, which had both the arrow and "Enter" printed on it. I think this is the first point where the industry shifted.

Now everyone but Apple uses "Enter".

[1] Chromebooks today have revived this tradition and have arrow-only enter keys.

People are not used to the classic old meaning of "Enter key", because people are more used to PC keyboards and there is a common misconception of what "Enter" means.

On IBM PC keyboards, the key had got overloaded with two functions: Return and Enter. From the IBM Model F AT forwards, the key typically carried a legend for each function: an angled arrow that means "Return", and the textual legend "Enter".

IBM keyboards for non-PC platforms, such as Model M keyboards for terminals had separate Return and Enter keys. The Return key had only the arrow. The "Enter" key was a small key on the bottom row.

BTW. There is also a similar common misconception for the Tab and Back-Tab symbols, which IBM terminal keyboards sometimes also had separate keys for.

Modern full-sized Apple keyboards still have separate Return and Enter keys. The key above right-shift is labeled Return, and the one in the numpad is labeled Enter. Unfortunately, the number of applications that still understand the distinction is ever dwindling.

This is a distinction that mattered quite a bit more in the 80s, and still matters today in limited application. While the comment in that is correct (return for multiline, and enter for selecting default option) a key feature for the macintosh, and any computer of the era, would have been being used as a terminal emulator (console for a mainframe or server of some sort).

On line based serial consoles, like interacting with a PDP or VAX (common in the era), you would be emulating a teletype. Return is short for "carriage return", physically moving the cursor to the head of the next line. In use cases such as that, enter doesn't matter as much.

However, on many IBM computers, where the UI is form based (not line by line serial as many expect): return is for new lines only or moving to the next form field, and enter is for submitting the whole form as is.

You still see return vs enter on modern keyboards, usually in the numpad area.

TLDR: it was probably considered a necessary function key for interacting with non-macintosh computers, a substantial use-case in the 80s

Upon seeing the picture, "one for 0D, the other for the 0A" was what came to mind, and then I remembered old Macs had what may be the rarest of the common newline representations - a single 0D.

Love the "well acktshually" snark in the answer. Keep it real stackexchange

I recall it was used to execute a command line of text in MPW Shell.

You could triple click a line or select a range of text containing shell commands and hit the key to run.

I do miss that as I had a scrapbook page of useful scripts.

I grew up with a 6128 keyboard (the keyboard was ackshually the computer) which had separate Enter and Return keys. It also had a "Copy" key. The keyboard I use today has a key to change the colour of the LEDs. If I press it accidentally I have to press it 7 more times to cycle around to match the mouse which has its own button and the same 8 colours.

Even if we've lost the separate enter key, at least we still have separate Meta and Control keys (Meta/CMD for keyboard shortcuts, CTRL for terminal control codes)...

In Excel, the enter key meant "End editing the cell, don't move the cursor."