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Comment by pathartl | Hacker News Reader

Funny that you bring macOS, because for _decades_ I've struggled with navigating it without a keyboard. Windows components however, especially old ones, are incredibly accessible

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To reinforce your point, by default on macOS you can't use Tab to select different options in a dialog box. You have to enable that in System Settings -> Keyboard -> "Keyboard navigation" which is off by default.

As a system macOS definitely has some holes in keyboard navigation, as well as a couple corners which are KB-navigable but the way to focus them is not immediately obvious.

On the app level, keyboard navigability depends on the developer. If they take the time to dot their I's and cross their T's it's between decent and great, but if they don't care it'll be bad.

MacOS has intentional holes in keyboard support. You have to go into settings and turn on a config for keyboard navigation to reach all elements. Apple intends for most users to navigate with a mouse.

It’s in the accessibility settings.

https://support.apple.com/en-za/guide/mac-help/mchlc06d1059/...

I cannot think of a single reason these would be disabled by default other than Apple stubbornness.

This is the company that popularized the mouse and GUIs, why are you shocked?

Because it's stupid. Why would accessibility features enabled by default on Windows and Linux be disabled by default in MacOS? There is literally zero advantage to disabling it, and it makes life harder on users.

Same thing with tap to click. Once everyone else enabled tap to click Apple disabled it. They just HAVE to be different, even if it's bad for users, and that stubbornness is frustrating.

If you expect your users to mostly work with both mouse and keyboard, it can make sense. Dropping stuff from the tabbing order means that the stuff left is is quicker to tab through. I find it mostly annoying.

Tap to click, though, that’s infuriating. I don’t know how people can stand it. I know people who insist they like it and then I see them accidentally “click” regularly and get annoyed by it.

No, keeping it disabled makes zero sense. There's no reason now to force people to enable it. Most people don't even know you can do it in windows so it's not like there's a huge problem for them. No reason not to leave it on here.

To a large extent, I believe it's a holdover from the earliest days of the Mac, when the mouse was brand-new, and many developers had to essentially be forced to even support it, let alone treat it as a first-class interface device.

I agree that it would be nice if Apple would have more keyboard navigation available by default now than they did then, but given that it is readily available for those who want it, I don't really see it as a huge issue.

"Some holes"? That's an understatement.

There's no option to bring up a context menu with the keyboard. And there are no keyboard accelerators _AT_ _ALL_. Windows will underline the shortcut characters when you hold "alt".

> There's no option to bring up a context menu with the keyboard.

That used to be the case but has changed. Since at least macOS 15 the context menu key on typical keyboards is recognized and functions, and on other keyboards it can be opened with Ctrl+Return.

> Since at least macOS 15 the context menu key on typical keyboards is recognized and functions

Apple's adding it to its own keyboards as well, at least on the third-generation Magic Keyboard with number pad (between F13 and forward delete).

The philosophy was that anything visible in a context menu should also be in the app-wide menu bar. Instead of bring up a context menu and click Copy, you would find the Copy menu item in the menu bar. Therefore such menu items can be assigned any keyboard shortcut by the user.

I quote from Apple https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guideline...:

> Always make context menu items available in the main interface, too. […] In macOS, an app’s menu bar menus list all the app’s commands, including those in various context menus.

Therefore one can rightly conclude that there is no need for a key to bring up a context menu.

In this case it's not a context menu, it's just a menu. User experience is degraded, see GP's case. There is an expectation and a common paradigm which is intentionally ignored because the OS developers thought they knew better than the users.

This reminds me of frequent conversations with other developers when presented with a bug report. "That's not a bug, it's working as intended." The intention is wrong, then -- the bug is in the design, not the code, but it's still a bug.

Not working for your particular preferences isn’t a bug; your preferences are just wrong for the vast majority of users.

The hubris of HN posters never fails to astound me. The most niche of workflows, then wonders why regular users don’t all learn esoteric keybindings and use TUIs.

I don't know if this is aimed at me or not. I don't use this workflow; in fact I'm pretty bog-standard in many of the ways I use my computers. In any case, I don't see how expecting to be able to bring up a context menu is in any way esoteric. We're in a thread about navigating GUIs using a keyboard. On many keyboards there's literally a key dedicated to opening a context menu, and on most OSs there's a pretty standard shortcut to do it as well, which is what GP was talking about and what sibling comments discuss being added more recently in MacOS. So, again, not very esoteric.

I also don't see how trying to emphasize empathy toward users translates to hubris. But sounds like you've got a bone to pick, so keep picking I guess.

My theory is that Mac was born with a mouse while Windows (and Windows apps) originally had to function on machines that might not have one. Thus, keyboard navigablity was prioritized, and that design sensibility stuck around longer.

I think it probably has more to do with Mac's lack of adoption by the US Government and large corporations.

Microsoft took accessibility of Windows and apps as a basic requirement. The fact that Windows is the daily driver desktop for the staff of the regulatory agencies that would bring complaints would not have gone unnoticed.

But really, why wouldn't you? You almost get it for free if you use the standard widgets, and smooth keyboard navigation is far faster for experienced users than having to repeatedly move one's hand between keyboard and mouse.

You would be baffled to know that after the creation of the mouse, Steve Jobs wanted to remove the arrow keys so developers would be forced to create mouse only interfaces.

Not baffling at all. Wasn't he against the two-button mouse?

> Windows components however, especially old ones, are incredibly accessible

Bing, Bing, Bing! I came here to vent how the new windows 10 and windows 11 interfaces (made by Mac enthusiasts, ughh) have omitted keyboard accessibility for a cleaner look. They also dropped drag and drop support (which I never knew about in windows 7) and I completely missed how useful it could be on Windows 10/11.

For whatever it's worth, the new W10/11 designs aren't in line with traditional Mac design philosophies either. They're more in line with those of iOS and Android with how they tend to bury and omit options entirely and prefer massive whitespace.

Somehow that is a bigger insult: reducing a desktop to act like an iPhone.

Tons of built in winui3 stuff is still very accessible by the keyboard, metro era though what pretty rough.

Yes the search feature plus using tabs and spaces bring about accessibility. Frequently it misses the underline letter , alt keyboard shortcut.

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