Comment by WorldWideWayne | Hacker News Reader

Comment by WorldWideWayne | Hacker News Reader

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I tried to use OS X as my main OS, but I just couldn't get past what I considered "illogical" and "inconsistent" keyboard acceleration, keyboard navigation and user interactions.

For instance, in Windows and Gnome I can hunt through menus with the keyboard by simply press ALT and then the underlined letter of a menu (then use the arrow keys to look around and press ENTER or SPACE to pick one). This is consistent throughout those environments but on OS X you can't navigate like that, you have to memorize 2,000 hot-key combinations. Microsoft kind of ruined that nice feature with the "Ribbon" but the new keyboard navigation system for the ribbon is still more logical and consistent than what I've seen with OS X.

That's why I like to just put my Unix dev environment in a VM on Windows. I get the best desktop experience (for me) and when I need it, I have Unix.

Most of us define 'better' as 'what I'm accustomed to', me included. Explains the longevity of weird old editors etc.

But to be truly objective, there'd have to be some argument about ease of learning a system, or even ease of adjusting as the system changes. By that measure, Windows' switch to the 'ribbon' has disrupted a large community accustomed to menu interation etc. I'd call it a big step backward.

The ribbon is definitely a step backwards for people like me. (It works great on a touch device though - yay! for all those people not using Windows on touch devices...)

I decided to advance my vim skills recently though and I'm certainly glad that it got evangelized so much around here because it's pretty awesome for people who like the keyboard.

FWIW - There's an app call CheatSheet[1] for OS-X that will display the foreground app's shortcut keys if you hold down Option for a few seconds.

[1] http://www.cheatsheetapp.com/CheatSheet/

With my Mac in repairs, the most painful thing about using anything else (currently Ubuntu) is the mess of keyboard shortcuts.

On Mac, everything starts with Cmd. And it's like the Windows key, in that it doesn't conflict with anything in your terminal or elsewhere. (On that note, the Windows key is the most underused key ever.)

You're right - the only Windows key shortcuts I really use are Win+E (opens file explorer), Win+P (switch 2ndary display on/off/make-primary) and Win+Arrow-Key (snap window to edge or maximize/minimize.)

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