up vote 2 down vote favorite

I often give keyboard shortcuts in my answers. Usually, this is for Mac software, so I can just say "Use ⌘ (cmd) A to select all," but when I'm giving instructions for iTunes shortcuts, I have no way of knowing the OS the asker is running unless they explicitly state it. When they don't, what should I use? "⌘ (cmd, or ctrl if you're running Windows)"?

(Also, please don't tell me to just give the menu path. I usually give shortcuts in conjunction with those.)

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2 Answers

up vote 3 down vote accepted

I think it's OK to assume the asker is using Mac OS unless they explicitly specify otherwise in the title, body, or tags of their question (best to check all 3).

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Perhaps we could add something to the FAQ about that -- "Questions about Apple software running on Microsoft Windows are on topic, but please specify that in your question, as answerers here are otherwise apt to assume you are using a Mac." – Daniel Lawson♦ Feb 9 at 1:56
@Daniel unfortunately we can only edit the top section of the FAQ ("what kinds of questions can I ask here?"). maybe tag wiki edits world work? – Kyle Cronin♦ Feb 9 at 1:58
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up vote 1 down vote

I would just use the Apple shortcuts. The assumption if nothing is stated has to be that the user is on a Mac. Doing a tag search yields the following stats for results this year to date:

[itunes] [windows] - 2 hits

[itunes] [os x] - 2 hits

[itunes] [mac] - 4 hits

[itunes] - 100+ hits

So by some very basic maths (with the obvious problem that some of the [itunes] only search results were also for [ios]/[ipad]/[iphone]/[ipod] etc etc where shortcuts are not appropriate anyway) would suggest less than 2% of questions explicitly state Windows.

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Thanks, though on questions that do state "windows", it isn't really an issue. It's only on the ones that don't say either way that it comes up. – timothymh Feb 8 at 23:16
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