6 ms·

Sorry, but this is laughable. Keyboard shortcuts are far more useful and consistent across applications in OS X. I'm failing to understand how you could form

Sorry, but this is laughable. Keyboard shortcuts are far more useful and consistent across applications in OS X. I'm failing to understand how you could form this opinion...which shortcuts / programs don't meet your expectations? I guess I can sum this up by saying OS X has an additional modifier key than Windows, so you basically have 33% more power right out of the gate. The "Windows Key" is nearly useless.

kps 13y ago
And OS X doesn't steal Control for menu shortcuts. Control-V (literal) is not the same as Command-V (paste), Control-Z (suspend) is not the same as Command-Z (undo), and so on. X Window software used to get this right, too; Unix workstations generally had another modifier (e.g. Meta, diamond on Suns) since they knew better than to hijack keys people would type in a terminal. It's only the this-is-finally-the-year-of-Linux-on-the-desktop crowd slavishly imitating Microsoft's mistakes that screwed it up.
- philsnow 13y ago
  "X Window software" hasn't really changed very much in the last couple decades. I use distinct Control, Shift, Meta/Alt, and Hyper keys. The blame lies with "desktop environments", not X. X has plenty of its own problems without getting Gnome's problems heaped on top. Edit: > It's only the this-is-finally-the-year-of-Linux-on-the-desktop crowd slavishly imitating Microsoft's mistakes that screwed it up. Most of the recent garbage they've cargo-culted from Apple (and common software for OS X), not Microsoft. Witness the really shitty reimplementation of Growl, the really shitty (and shamefully unmandated) window menu bar -> system menu bar consolidation.
  - kps 13y ago
    Oh, I agree with you — I perhaps should have written something like “*nix workstation software” rather than “X Window software”. I do use a separate Meta as well, and try to avoid programs that can't be configured to use it (GNOME-aligned ones being the most common). And hey, as far as ‘really shitty reimplementations of Growl’ go, even Apple has one now.
    - philsnow 13y ago
      Ah, with that edit I agree, with the caveat that I was never exposed very much to ye olde-school Xe applicationse.
randomsearch 13y ago
> Sorry, but this is laughable. Keyboard shortcuts are far more useful and consistent across applications in OS X. I don't agree with this at all. I find it baffling that a company of great designers made such bad decisions about keyboard shortcuts. Perhaps they are consistent, but they are consistently bad. Paste and match style (incredibly useful) is "alt-shift-command-v" i.e. four keys. There are plenty of other shortcuts that also require four keys. Four is too many. Three is too many for such an important function. This is absurd. Using shortcuts in IDEs is a nightmare on most apple keyboard. e.g. Intellij, to run your program: alt-shift-f10. This is daft in itself, but it actually translates to function-alt-shift-f10 on many keyboards. Yes, you can change your settings, but then you could remap all your keys in any O/S. Miss the function key and you've just muted your volume. I have no interest in slagging Apple off; I use their products almost exclusively, but this is obviously an area where they messed up. I'd love to see this fixed, although I understand why they probably won't.
- comex 13y ago
  > Using shortcuts in IDEs is a nightmare on most apple keyboard. e.g. Intellij, to run your program: alt-shift-f10. This is daft in itself, but it actually translates to function-alt-shift-f10 on many keyboards. Yes, you can change your settings, but then you could remap all your keys in any O/S. Miss the function key and you've just muted your volume. I really find that hard to see as anything but the IDE's fault, probably due to cross platform shortcuts not rethought for OS X - but even then, something like 40 base non-function keys times at least four combinations of modifiers, and something as important as running the program gets relegated to alt-shift-F10?
  - randomsearch 13y ago
    > I really find that hard to see as anything but the IDE's fault, That's fine, but the IDE is an application running on the OS X platform. OS X has these problems just as much as any platform, but the situation is made worse by their use of the function keys and by poor choices for other shortcuts.
  - electrum 13y ago
drewblay 13y ago
I couldn't agree with you more! I used to be (a long time ago) a avid Windows user, and scoffed at Mac's. I then got into the publishing world where everything is Mac. The keyboard shortcuts are by far much more consistent and easier on OS X. I am scratching my head wondering how anyone could ever come up with a different conclusion, the difference is night and day.
- pacaro 13y ago
  It all depends on what you are doing. The WindowsKey is often overlooked, for example, there are great key combinations for manipulating application windows. WindowsKey+Arrow moves the current window around in a logical way (up maximizes, left docks to left edge of screen, etc), WindowsKey+Shift+Arrow moves the current window to another monitor in a sensible fashion. Out of the box OS X doesn't seem to have equivalents.
  - 72deluxe 13y ago
    You are right. This behaviour only appeared in Windows 7 +, and didn't exist on older OSes, unless you used a utility such as WinSplit Revolution. On OSX, you can install something like ShiftIt, but if ANYONE discovers such a utility for Linux that is DE agnostic, I would cry with joy because I am using tile -m at the moment...
krrrh 13y ago
Not to mention that the Mac community also pioneered keyboard driven launchers and Linguistic user interfaces like launchbar -> quicksilver -> Alfred. Even though I put a lot of effort into learning windows keyboard shortcuts it always frustrated me how difficult it was to use windows in situations where I didn't have a mouse, while I'd barely notice the same situation with a Mac.
- fineline 13y ago
  OK here's one. I press command-option esc to Force Quit an app. But how do I then close the Force Quit window (which stays on top of all other windows) without the mouse? Thanks to anyone who's figured this out.
  - quiesce 13y ago
    Command-W
    - colinramsay 13y ago
      Which is the same way you close any other document...
    - seandougall 13y ago
      Or Esc.
  - arrrg 13y ago
    As was already said, Command-W. This will always close the active window. What’s not as obvious is how to close this window without the mouse when you have switched to some application and Force Quit is no longer the active window. Command-Tab won’t allow you to switch to the Force Quit window since it’s not treated as an app by OS X. However, you can switch to the window by simply using the command for Force Quit again, i.e. pressing Command-Option-Esc, then closing the now active force quit menu with Command-W.
  - TheSoftwareGuy 13y ago
    >I press command-option esc to Force Quit an app why? command-Tab (switch between and show running apps) and command-Q (force quit) also you can use command w to close a window if really really want to go that route
frandroid 13y ago
I mostly agree with you, with the exception of Final Cut Pro... Its keyboard layout to OSX's is like Finnish to Samoan.
72deluxe 13y ago
However, the way to access the menu is dumb. Ctrl-F2? Why not Alt-<letter> like Windows? And such dumb commands within the menus! eg. Xcode show debug area: cmd-shift-y, continue: ctrl-cmd-y; these seem stupid to me, but probably because they have repurposed the Fn keys (F1-F19) to show expose etc. instead of having real function key behaviour, and probably because some function keys are missing from the tiny wireless keyboards... To be fair, I am perfectly used to both of them but moving from OS to OS was a horrible learning curve to begin with! I would say that keyboard shortcuts are consistently bad across OSX but I am perfectly used to them :-)

kps 13y ago

And OS X doesn't steal Control for menu shortcuts. Control-V (literal) is not the same as Command-V (paste), Control-Z (suspend) is not the same as Command-Z (undo), and so on. X Window software used to get this right, too; Unix workstations generally had another modifier (e.g. Meta, diamond on Suns) since they knew better than to hijack keys people would type in a terminal. It's only the this-is-finally-the-year-of-Linux-on-the-desktop crowd slavishly imitating Microsoft's mistakes that screwed it up.

philsnow 13y ago
"X Window software" hasn't really changed very much in the last couple decades. I use distinct Control, Shift, Meta/Alt, and Hyper keys. The blame lies with "desktop environments", not X. X has plenty of its own problems without getting Gnome's problems heaped on top. Edit: > It's only the this-is-finally-the-year-of-Linux-on-the-desktop crowd slavishly imitating Microsoft's mistakes that screwed it up. Most of the recent garbage they've cargo-culted from Apple (and common software for OS X), not Microsoft. Witness the really shitty reimplementation of Growl, the really shitty (and shamefully unmandated) window menu bar -> system menu bar consolidation.
- kps 13y ago
  Oh, I agree with you — I perhaps should have written something like “*nix workstation software” rather than “X Window software”. I do use a separate Meta as well, and try to avoid programs that can't be configured to use it (GNOME-aligned ones being the most common). And hey, as far as ‘really shitty reimplementations of Growl’ go, even Apple has one now.
  - philsnow 13y ago
    Ah, with that edit I agree, with the caveat that I was never exposed very much to ye olde-school Xe applicationse.

randomsearch 13y ago

> Sorry, but this is laughable. Keyboard shortcuts are far more useful and consistent across applications in OS X. I don't agree with this at all. I find it baffling that a company of great designers made such bad decisions about keyboard shortcuts. Perhaps they are consistent, but they are consistently bad. Paste and match style (incredibly useful) is "alt-shift-command-v" i.e. four keys. There are plenty of other shortcuts that also require four keys. Four is too many. Three is too many for such an important function. This is absurd. Using shortcuts in IDEs is a nightmare on most apple keyboard. e.g. Intellij, to run your program: alt-shift-f10. This is daft in itself, but it actually translates to function-alt-shift-f10 on many keyboards. Yes, you can change your settings, but then you could remap all your keys in any O/S. Miss the function key and you've just muted your volume. I have no interest in slagging Apple off; I use their products almost exclusively, but this is obviously an area where they messed up. I'd love to see this fixed, although I understand why they probably won't.

comex 13y ago
> Using shortcuts in IDEs is a nightmare on most apple keyboard. e.g. Intellij, to run your program: alt-shift-f10. This is daft in itself, but it actually translates to function-alt-shift-f10 on many keyboards. Yes, you can change your settings, but then you could remap all your keys in any O/S. Miss the function key and you've just muted your volume. I really find that hard to see as anything but the IDE's fault, probably due to cross platform shortcuts not rethought for OS X - but even then, something like 40 base non-function keys times at least four combinations of modifiers, and something as important as running the program gets relegated to alt-shift-F10?
- randomsearch 13y ago
  > I really find that hard to see as anything but the IDE's fault, That's fine, but the IDE is an application running on the OS X platform. OS X has these problems just as much as any platform, but the situation is made worse by their use of the function keys and by poor choices for other shortcuts.
- electrum 13y ago

drewblay 13y ago

I couldn't agree with you more! I used to be (a long time ago) a avid Windows user, and scoffed at Mac's. I then got into the publishing world where everything is Mac. The keyboard shortcuts are by far much more consistent and easier on OS X. I am scratching my head wondering how anyone could ever come up with a different conclusion, the difference is night and day.

pacaro 13y ago
It all depends on what you are doing. The WindowsKey is often overlooked, for example, there are great key combinations for manipulating application windows. WindowsKey+Arrow moves the current window around in a logical way (up maximizes, left docks to left edge of screen, etc), WindowsKey+Shift+Arrow moves the current window to another monitor in a sensible fashion. Out of the box OS X doesn't seem to have equivalents.
- 72deluxe 13y ago
  You are right. This behaviour only appeared in Windows 7 +, and didn't exist on older OSes, unless you used a utility such as WinSplit Revolution. On OSX, you can install something like ShiftIt, but if ANYONE discovers such a utility for Linux that is DE agnostic, I would cry with joy because I am using tile -m at the moment...

krrrh 13y ago

Not to mention that the Mac community also pioneered keyboard driven launchers and Linguistic user interfaces like launchbar -> quicksilver -> Alfred. Even though I put a lot of effort into learning windows keyboard shortcuts it always frustrated me how difficult it was to use windows in situations where I didn't have a mouse, while I'd barely notice the same situation with a Mac.

fineline 13y ago
OK here's one. I press command-option esc to Force Quit an app. But how do I then close the Force Quit window (which stays on top of all other windows) without the mouse? Thanks to anyone who's figured this out.
- quiesce 13y ago
  Command-W
  - colinramsay 13y ago
    Which is the same way you close any other document...
  - seandougall 13y ago
    Or Esc.
- arrrg 13y ago
  As was already said, Command-W. This will always close the active window. What’s not as obvious is how to close this window without the mouse when you have switched to some application and Force Quit is no longer the active window. Command-Tab won’t allow you to switch to the Force Quit window since it’s not treated as an app by OS X. However, you can switch to the window by simply using the command for Force Quit again, i.e. pressing Command-Option-Esc, then closing the now active force quit menu with Command-W.
- TheSoftwareGuy 13y ago
  >I press command-option esc to Force Quit an app why? command-Tab (switch between and show running apps) and command-Q (force quit) also you can use command w to close a window if really really want to go that route

frandroid 13y ago

I mostly agree with you, with the exception of Final Cut Pro... Its keyboard layout to OSX's is like Finnish to Samoan.

72deluxe 13y ago

However, the way to access the menu is dumb. Ctrl-F2? Why not Alt-<letter> like Windows? And such dumb commands within the menus! eg. Xcode show debug area: cmd-shift-y, continue: ctrl-cmd-y; these seem stupid to me, but probably because they have repurposed the Fn keys (F1-F19) to show expose etc. instead of having real function key behaviour, and probably because some function keys are missing from the tiny wireless keyboards... To be fair, I am perfectly used to both of them but moving from OS to OS was a horrible learning curve to begin with! I would say that keyboard shortcuts are consistently bad across OSX but I am perfectly used to them :-)