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I find using macOS with a keyboard near impossible. One of the issues is how hard it is to discover what the right keybindings are. Second issue is that all t

I find using macOS with a keyboard near impossible. One of the issues is how hard it is to discover what the right keybindings are. Second issue is that all the keymappings are different to Windows/Linux/BSD/AnythingElse. Like, in the setup wizard when you open a new mac, hitting "return" won't move you to the next step, you have to hit tab, and then space. However, near the end of the setup process, there's a screen where tab doesn't work, and you actually DO have to use return. I'd had carpal tunnel (and it's kind of a chronic thing), so using a touchpad to point-and-click is literally painful for me. A mouse is okay, but it seems to be impossible to connect bluetooth devices on macOS without using the touchpad.

acdha 5y ago
> One of the issues is how hard it is to discover what the right keybindings are. In addition the display in the menus, you can use the keyboard settings' shortcuts section to see the global keybindings and add new ones either globally or within a particular app. There's also a pretty comprehensive version here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 > Second issue is that all the keymappings are different to Windows/Linux/BSD/AnythingElse. There's a bit of early GUI history which explains most of this – MacOS was the earliest mainstream GUI and they had guidelines pretty early on which most Mac applications use. A decade or so later IBM decided they needed to create their own standard (Common User Access) which they pushed to get implemented on OS/2, Windows, and other operating systems. Mac users continued to want what they were familiar with, and applications which were business-focused in the late 80s-90s got CUA, and a whole lot of other software got some agglomeration of whatever the developers were familiar with and/or the toolkit they were using provided by default. > I'd had carpal tunnel (and it's kind of a chronic thing), so using a touchpad to point-and-click is literally painful for me. A mouse is okay, but it seems to be impossible to connect bluetooth devices on macOS without using the touchpad. Two ways: 1. If it's an Apple mouse with a lightning port, plug it in once with the cable. 2. It sounds like you might not have activated the accessibility setting which toggles tab navigation from only navigating between text fields to all controls. Use Control-F7 to toggle that and then: 1. Open settings – you can use Spotlight via Command-Space or Option + either the sound or display adjustment keys to open Settings without using a pointing device 2. Either navigate the icons or use search to select Bluetooth 3. Hit tab, the default focus ring will be on the “Turn Bluetooth Off” button if full control navigation mode is enabled. 4. Hit tab, focus will now be on the devices list 5. If your mouse is pairable, it'll show up with a connect button. Use the arrow keys to select that line and hit enter.
- WhyNotHugo 5y ago
  Interesting bit of history, I was unaware of the details here. A page with a list of shortcuts is terrible for discovery though. I can't open a browser all the time to try and fine if something is there (not to mention apps not listed there). I think the solution used by others of always including it in menus and tool-tips is a lot better for discoverability. My biggest gripe continues to be consistency though. Apps may use Cmd, Ctrl or Alt for shortcuts, with no clear pattern. This has the added problem that it's super hard to create global shortcuts that don't overlap with any app. For example, on Linux, no apps use Cmd (Super), so you're free to bind Super+Anything for your own global shortcuts, and you'll never shadow any app. If I try using Super+w (or Ctrl+w), I'll quickly come across some app where I'm shadowing a shortcut.
  - acdha 5y ago
    This is very confusing to me: the shortcut keys are listed in the menu bar for every application. Is that somehow disabled on your system? (I'm not even sure that's possible off-hand — it's been the default going back to the 80s) Similarly, consistency is the opposite of what I see. Every app I use uses the standard Command shortcuts. Control/Option/Shift are modifiers in some cases (e.g. Command-V pastes, Shift-Option-Command V pastes preserving style, etc.) but the only time I've seen other keys in use has been a few stragglers with deeply-engrained conventions like Emacs.
userbinator 5y ago
The most perplexing one that stands out in recent memory is in the file explorer, where pressing Enter doesn't open the selected item, but begins a rename operation.
- zapzupnz 5y ago
  Remember, on a Mac it's not an Enter key, it's a Return key. It's not used to enter a file. On Windows, you use Ctrl-O to open a file from within an open program. On a Mac, you use Cmd-O to open everything from everywhere; it's a universal (within Apple) convention applied consistently.

acdha 5y ago

> One of the issues is how hard it is to discover what the right keybindings are. In addition the display in the menus, you can use the keyboard settings' shortcuts section to see the global keybindings and add new ones either globally or within a particular app. There's also a pretty comprehensive version here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201236 > Second issue is that all the keymappings are different to Windows/Linux/BSD/AnythingElse. There's a bit of early GUI history which explains most of this – MacOS was the earliest mainstream GUI and they had guidelines pretty early on which most Mac applications use. A decade or so later IBM decided they needed to create their own standard (Common User Access) which they pushed to get implemented on OS/2, Windows, and other operating systems. Mac users continued to want what they were familiar with, and applications which were business-focused in the late 80s-90s got CUA, and a whole lot of other software got some agglomeration of whatever the developers were familiar with and/or the toolkit they were using provided by default. > I'd had carpal tunnel (and it's kind of a chronic thing), so using a touchpad to point-and-click is literally painful for me. A mouse is okay, but it seems to be impossible to connect bluetooth devices on macOS without using the touchpad. Two ways: 1. If it's an Apple mouse with a lightning port, plug it in once with the cable. 2. It sounds like you might not have activated the accessibility setting which toggles tab navigation from only navigating between text fields to all controls. Use Control-F7 to toggle that and then: 1. Open settings – you can use Spotlight via Command-Space or Option + either the sound or display adjustment keys to open Settings without using a pointing device 2. Either navigate the icons or use search to select Bluetooth 3. Hit tab, the default focus ring will be on the “Turn Bluetooth Off” button if full control navigation mode is enabled. 4. Hit tab, focus will now be on the devices list 5. If your mouse is pairable, it'll show up with a connect button. Use the arrow keys to select that line and hit enter.

WhyNotHugo 5y ago
Interesting bit of history, I was unaware of the details here. A page with a list of shortcuts is terrible for discovery though. I can't open a browser all the time to try and fine if something is there (not to mention apps not listed there). I think the solution used by others of always including it in menus and tool-tips is a lot better for discoverability. My biggest gripe continues to be consistency though. Apps may use Cmd, Ctrl or Alt for shortcuts, with no clear pattern. This has the added problem that it's super hard to create global shortcuts that don't overlap with any app. For example, on Linux, no apps use Cmd (Super), so you're free to bind Super+Anything for your own global shortcuts, and you'll never shadow any app. If I try using Super+w (or Ctrl+w), I'll quickly come across some app where I'm shadowing a shortcut.
- acdha 5y ago
  This is very confusing to me: the shortcut keys are listed in the menu bar for every application. Is that somehow disabled on your system? (I'm not even sure that's possible off-hand — it's been the default going back to the 80s) Similarly, consistency is the opposite of what I see. Every app I use uses the standard Command shortcuts. Control/Option/Shift are modifiers in some cases (e.g. Command-V pastes, Shift-Option-Command V pastes preserving style, etc.) but the only time I've seen other keys in use has been a few stragglers with deeply-engrained conventions like Emacs.

userbinator 5y ago

The most perplexing one that stands out in recent memory is in the file explorer, where pressing Enter doesn't open the selected item, but begins a rename operation.

zapzupnz 5y ago
Remember, on a Mac it's not an Enter key, it's a Return key. It's not used to enter a file. On Windows, you use Ctrl-O to open a file from within an open program. On a Mac, you use Cmd-O to open everything from everywhere; it's a universal (within Apple) convention applied consistently.