I changed the command character for screen from Control-a to Control-b recently, after switching to a wireless Mac keyboard. On this small, portable keyboard—which is the same layout as most Mac laptops—there’s only one Control key, and it’s on the left side of the keyboard.
The weird angle to hit Control-a was hurting my hand. Gone now is the left-side contortion I was forced to make to strike with my pinky and ring finger.
It’s pretty easy to change the command key mapping, just add escape ^Bb to your screen config file (usually located in your home directory). Here’s what my .shellrc looks like:
# Make the shell in every window as your login shell shell -$SHELL # Instead of Control-a, make the escape/command character be Control-b escape ^Bb # Autodetach session on hangup instead of terminating screen completely autodetach on # Turn off the splash screen startup_message off # Use a 100000-line scrollback buffer defscrollback 100000
The Sensible Leader 
so, ‘screen’ vs. a multi-window terminal application (or tabbed terminal interface)?
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I use screen in remote shells a lot, because it maintains my session even if I get disconnected. I use it locally, too, to keep my tabs/windows to a minimum.
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One of the 1st things I do no setting up a mac, is switch Control and Command. I have no idea how people can press Command+c.
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It’s an easy keystroke combination in Dvorak. 🙂
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That can’t be it, that accounts for 0.0000000000000000000001% of Mac users 😉
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Naturally, though, 15.3% of Automattic.
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I should also note: switching to Ctrl-b allows using emacs Ctrl-a binding for moving to the beginning of a line.
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A reminder of more Mac insanity with Esc to Option not on by default in Terminal.
It contributed to me becoming more comfortable with
set -o vi.LikeLike