Interesting article. Jobs didn't want the Apple keys on the Mac, yet he hasn't called for their removal yet, probably for the reason I theorized above. Still, they aren't entirely necessary, as the last officially supported Apple II card was discontinued 12 years ago, can't be used on any USB Mac, and no USB keyboard works on a IIGS (unless someone hacked a USB card for one, if they did I'd love to see it).

Foreign keyboards all seem to have more symbols than the American counterparts. I remember reading an IBM PS/1 manual 14 years ago that had international keyboard layouts in it and all of the foreign ones had these symbols.