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Comment by userbinator | Hacker News Reader

I find the philosophy behind keyboard shortcuts in Mac OS vs Windows interesting; the former appears to be designed with a much heavier emphasis on mouse use, with keyboard shortcuts added later, while the latter feels somewhat more balanced and the shortcuts easier to discover. E.g. menubars can be navigated in Windows via Alt, the arrow keys, and Enter, with the underlined items also accessible by pressing the corresponding key; in Mac OS the corresponding shortcut is Ctrl+F2, is only available after enabling it with Ctrl+F1. and there's no underlined letters to guide you. Things like moving/resizing windows can be accomplished pretty easily with the keyboard in Windows (Alt- -M/Alt- -S), there's no equivalent by default on a Mac.

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I feel the same way. When I moved from Windows to Mac, I nearly burst into tears due to lack of simple keyboard shortcuts. And it was surprising to me given how geeks prefer Mac over Windows. I expected Mac to be more keyboard friendly and was disappointed.

OSX doesn't have a lot of shortcuts for working with the GUI like Windows does. On the other hand, OSX has some fantastic and consistent shortcuts for actually working with data. (For example, Cmd-G, Cmd-Shift-G, Cmd-E, and Cmd-J for text search.) OSX is also incredibly powerful in that it allows you to assign shortcuts to Services, which in turn can be created using simple Automator workflows. This opens up so many possibilities system-wide. Finally, and most importantly, OSX adheres to the same sort of natural language philosophy that we're so used to with Google: if I want to find a specific menu action, why would I navigate the menu graphically when I can just type in the name? Cmd-Space and Cmd-? are the shortcuts I miss most of all whenever I switch back to Windows.

Thank you for pointing out cmd+?, I had no idea it would search through menu items. That will relieve the frustrations that I have with OSX menus a little.

Could you provide an example of what you use services and Automator for? I've seen the services menu and I think I read somewhere that it works with the clipboard, but I have no idea what I can use it for.

I think the one I use most of all is "New Terminal At Folder", since it means I don't have to type in my current Finder directory in cd.

Here's another example. I recently wrote an Automator Service to copy selected file/folder paths to my clipboard. Super useful for programming and it only took me half an hour without knowing any AppleScript. http://cl.ly/1a3s3g1u2Q2w

By the way, the contents of the Services menu changes depending on the type of data you've selected. If you want to see a full list, go to System Preferences — Keyboard — Shortcuts — Services. Lots of stuff to choose from!

Just wanted to throw out a mouse alternative: you can drag any folder into the terminal and get the path and then you go back to the head of line and cd into it

I have a suspicion that 90% of platform/editor/etc nerd-rage is really motivated by occasionally being 'forced' to use one that you don't know the keyboard shortcuts for.

I'd say it's even more than that usually: you're forced to use a paradigm that you're not familiar with.

For example, while I do have a desire occasionally to full-screen a window (for which I currently use Divvy), I usually don't see a need to, because I picked up on the multi-window paradigm where it's quite convenient to be able to see parts of other windows (for drag and drop, for example).

When I first switched to OSX though, I hated the inability to full-screen.

Not the best example perhaps, as I do find it a bit lacking to not natively be able to do so, but my point is that rage is often a result of trying to cram one paradigm into another.

I understand this, but I feel the opposite. I'm a heavy user of both platforms and find the lack of depth in Windows shortcuts maddening. On a Mac, almost every individual operation can be accomplished with a direct shortcut while on Windows, you are often invoking a menu and navigating to the option you want.

I think Mac shortcuts take longer to memorise as they are often a combination of command, shift, option, etc. (although they are helpfully spelled out in each menu) but once you have learned them there is little that can't be done directly from the keyboard with a single invocation.

Cmd-? is so much better than arrow keys. It’s like having M-x everywhere. You can also use that instead of Ctrl-F2.

It's different and great especially for actions that you don't use too frequently, but I still miss the Windows menus. I have a lot of "secondary" hotkeys memorized this way. In Photoshop for instance, there is no hotkey for crop but on Windows, pressing "alt+i, p" activates it which is very close to the same thing.

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