I bought this very nice iMac. The first time I ever use a Apple product. Can someone please tell me where the delete key is on the keyboard. I cannot think for one moment that Apple did not provide for such a key. Please help.

Question

I bought this very nice iMac. The first time I ever use a Apple product. Can someone please tell me where the delete key is on the keyboard. I cannot think for one moment that Apple did not provide for such a key. Please help.

Answer 1

The delete key does a backward delete because it is the natural way to delete while typing. May not be to you and the millions of youngsters who grew up with windows computers. When you are typing and want to delete that which you just typed you are already at the end and you delete back to where you want to re-type. When you go back to a document and want to delete a selection, you have to go to the end of the selection instead of the beginning. it's just the way its always been done on macs. it takes some getting use to.
If you select text to be deleted with your mouse then the delete key deletes the selected text. same for either delete key method.
It is not convenient when you tab to fields in a form. That why fn-delete does a forward delete.
Macs have a couple of keyboards. The small "wireless keyboard" only has the (backward) delete (fn-delete forward). The larger "Apple Keyboard with Numeric Keypad" has both a Delete (backwards) key beside the = abd it has the "delete >" key in the groups with fn, home, end, Pg up and Pg dn. This keyboard is best for users who have switched from windows or are familiar with the windows forward delete.