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I feel your pain here; I remember my transition from Debian to MacOS. I’ve used DOS, Windows, Linux, and MacOS — each full-time for more than a decade. The switching pain is real, and some things still feel wrong to me after I got to love them on a prior OS.

E.g., in Windows apps, menu items are keyboard-addressable by default. This is brilliant for accessibility, and for accustomed power users. MacOS has no _by default_ equivalent.

E.g., managing virtual desktops in Linux are exactly as flexible and powerful as you want them to be. MacOS does it One Way (more or less), and you’d better like it.

I still love MacOS the most. Some of the things you list are real misses (#1). Some of them, I believe, are things you haven’t found yet (#11, #15, #16). Some are MacOS-specific metaphors which I’ve come to love compared with the alternatives (#4). Some I don’t understand but would be happy to discuss with you (#17).



> E.g., in Windows apps, menu items are keyboard-addressable by default. This is brilliant for accessibility, and for accustomed power users. MacOS has no _by default_ equivalent.

Cmd-Shift-? (really, Cmd-?)

You can begin using arrow keys from there, or start typing to search the menu items of the foreground app

You can also assign arbitrary hotkeys to any application's menu items in the OS system preferences


Yeah, I know about this; it’s not the same. In Windows apps following the standard (which all good ones do) _every menu item_ is keyboard addressable. Something several submenus in is trivially accessible by muscle memory: ALT-I-R-C to resize an image without constraints, e.g.

MacOS allows easy navigation of the menu, but does not guarantee that each item is hotkey-addressable.




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