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72deluxeyesterday at 8:53 AM1 replyview on HN

I had been using Windows my entire life and using a Mac in 2009? was awful. How do I get to the menu bar? Ctrl-F2. They keep changing the behaviour of the menu so that cursor keys don't wrap at the bottom of a menu so you have to know which direction you want to go to get to a menu item - make your choice! Up or down!

How do I get to the dock so that I can open the Applications menu? Ctrl-F3. left left left left left up. Then the popup menu doesn't respond to any letters.

All of this contrasted with Windows which had Alt + key for the menu. I learned it from Windows 3.11 for incredible speed:

- Alt space - show the window menu

- Alt space x - maximize

- Alt space n - minimize

- Alt space r - restore

- Windows key - start menu

- Windows key > P > right cursor > N - notepad (the right cursor = accessories)

This was broken in later start menus. The modern start menu is absolutely useless and takes forever. Up until XP this worked fine.

- (with Quicklaunch): Windows + N (number) - launch that item. Eg. Windows + 3 will launch the third item across. No idea if they broke this in Windows 11.

Under Windows 98 all of these were lightning fast. Explorer behaved as you'd expect too.

None of this was possible on the Mac and using it was very very very slow with a mouse to wave around the screen.


Replies

9devyesterday at 10:03 AM

I mean, all of this is available in MacOS as well, and configurable even—your main complaint seems to be that it works differently from Windows?

MacOS is a different operating system with different paradigms; instead of a start menu, you'd use Spotlight search for the same effect, which can be invoked with CMD+Space.

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