I've been using macOS for about 10 years after 20 on the nameless platform.
1. Get KeyCue or something like it that tells you (almost) every keyboard shortcut within any application by using the accessibility API.
2. Turn on that accessibility mode option where it makes it possible to cursor through multiple-choice modal dialogs.
3. What I find maddening is AppleScript. It's incredibly powerful except for three deficiencies a) an inability to introspect applications to find their nouns and verbs b) the lack of complete AppleScript documentation c) they fired the AppleScript guy. You could do a lot in it if you only knew the syntax and how to call things. AppleScript needs a minor UI overall to show what possible keywords, operators, nouns or verbs could be used during contextual code-completion.
4. macOS (and iOS/iPadOS) support most *NIX Ctrl- shortcuts within text fields. Ctrl-k to kill to EOL, Ctrl-a go to beginning, Ctrl-e go to EOL, etc.
5. Assign keyboard shortcuts to speed-up common actions (both system-wide and within particular apps) that don't have hotkeys by default, like Command-Shift-, to open Settings.
6. Get BlueToggle & AirToggle to bounce BT and WiFi.
Bonus for iPad/iOS: use the triple-click accessibility feature set to only the Magnifier (with no zooming) with the darkening filter to get a darker display at night.
Dude got sacked because he was WORSE than useless. I mean, they gave him JavaScriptCore to turn into a full user product, right at the time Node.js was gaining desktop JavaScript a million-plus users, and he ran it straight into the ground.
Never mind AppleScript; Mac Automation should’ve had MILLIONS of new Python, Ruby, ObjC, JavaScript, and Swift users by now. The problems were solved, the pieces were there—all Soghoian had to do was put them together in Mac OS X and take all the credit. (I know this: I was the one that solved it.) And App Developers would be falling over themselves to provide great scripting interfaces, because they’d all be huge Automation fans too. All that idiot did was UNsolve it again; and then—to slap insult on injury—immediately abandoned his half-baked products and hapless users to fail all by themselves.
“AppleScript needs a minor UI overall”
Oh bless. Look, AppleScript’s dead already. Any future Mac Automation has lies in [Conversational] Shortcuts… assuming Apple bother to put in the mass marketing and support resources it so urgently now needs. Though given their curret quality of management, I’m not making bets.
That’s static documentation, aka “AppleScript dictionaries”, which isn’t quite the same thing as true introspection. In combination with Script Debugger’s live object model browser it’s pretty powerful, but also all the more frustrating as you run into common limitations: missing or incompete details, ambiguous definitions, incorrect information, and so on.
Unfortunately the original designers left Apple before the whole system was adequately specced and documented or thoroughly field-trialed, leaving both app developers and users to make blind guesses as to how things should work, and duct-tape over the shortcomings as best they can.
1. Get KeyCue or something like it that tells you (almost) every keyboard shortcut within any application by using the accessibility API.
2. Turn on that accessibility mode option where it makes it possible to cursor through multiple-choice modal dialogs.
3. What I find maddening is AppleScript. It's incredibly powerful except for three deficiencies a) an inability to introspect applications to find their nouns and verbs b) the lack of complete AppleScript documentation c) they fired the AppleScript guy. You could do a lot in it if you only knew the syntax and how to call things. AppleScript needs a minor UI overall to show what possible keywords, operators, nouns or verbs could be used during contextual code-completion.
4. macOS (and iOS/iPadOS) support most *NIX Ctrl- shortcuts within text fields. Ctrl-k to kill to EOL, Ctrl-a go to beginning, Ctrl-e go to EOL, etc.
5. Assign keyboard shortcuts to speed-up common actions (both system-wide and within particular apps) that don't have hotkeys by default, like Command-Shift-, to open Settings.
6. Get BlueToggle & AirToggle to bounce BT and WiFi.
Bonus for iPad/iOS: use the triple-click accessibility feature set to only the Magnifier (with no zooming) with the darkening filter to get a darker display at night.