Essentially, I wanted to switch to a layout that was less jarring than the default ErgoDox EZ layout, and did not require finger gymnastics to perform common OS X shortcuts (most of which involve the CMD (LGui) key).
This layout more closely resembles that of the Mac keyboard, and has some other goodness baked in. Here is a rundown of what that means:
### Mac-like changes
- **The key to the left of "1" is "~" instead of "=".**
- **The key to the right of "0" is Backspace instead of "-"** (misleadingly labeled "delete" on the Mac's keyboard). There was no room to fit in "-" and "=" between "0" and Backspace, unfortunately.
- **The key to the left of "Q" is Tab instead of Delete.**
- **The rightmost big key on the left thumb is CMD (LGui) instead of Backspace.**
- **The button to the left of "A" is Ctrl/Esc instead of Backspace.** This is actually how I have the keyboard on my Macbook set up to be, since it's loads more convenient than a CAPS LOCK key. This is the Ctrl key I find myself using most.
- **Mouse uses Vim-style navigation**. This allows you to move the mouse around with hjkl just like in Vim. Additionally, right and left click are the conveniently placed 'i' and 'o' keys.
- **The key to the right of "5" and the key to left of "6" are "[" and "]", respectively, instead of Left and Right.** There is a more convenient set of Left and Right already present. Truth be told, I don't really use these keys, as they are a stretch to reach.
- **The Toggle L1 keys in the center of the keyboard have been replaced by the otherwise displaced "-" and "=".** They are laid out, left-to-right, in the same order as on the Mac keyboard. Honestly, they are not terribly conveniently placed, and their placement might change in a later version. I found that the ~L1 would be better situated elsewhere.
- **The "~" key in the extreme bottom-left is now just momentary L1.** The "~" key was moved to the top-left as mentioned before, and I like to keep my multi-use keys to a minimum due to the latency for them to switch from "press" to "hold."
- **The Home and End buttons have been shifted up on the left thumb, and ~L2 inserted below them.** Nearly all of my media layer changes are on the right side, so the ~L2 key is on the left side.
- **The Page Up and Page Down buttons have been shifted up on the right thumb, and ~L1 inserted below them.** I don't use either of the "Page" keys often, and use this ~L1 more than any other.
- **Traditional numpad layout.** The base of most numpads is a double-wide "0" key to the left of a "." key. This is reflected in my layout by having two "0" keys to the left of a "." key.
- **The function keys (F1-F12) have been moved to L2.** They were in the way in L1.
- **⏯ lives on ',' in the media layer, between ⏪ on 'm' and ⏩ on '.'.** This is the way they are laid out on the mac keyboard, and makes the most sense to me.
- **The keys on the bottom-right that were formerly "[" and "]" are now Alt-Shift and Alt, respectively.** This enables me to do those `C-M-<key>` bindings in emacs. I use L1 for "[" and "]".
