In the Finder, when I do something the Finder has a problem with -- such as copying a file to a directory where a file of the same name exists, or perhaps trying to empty the Trash when a file in it is in use -- I get a little dialog that says Stop or Continue. Good. But unlike Mac OS, I can't hit escape or cmd-. to Stop, or return or enter to Continue.
(BTW, this is still Mac OS X 10.1.5, of course; I am hoping many of my gripes are fixed in 10.2, and I will surely report back. :-)
Update: In the case above, there is no glowing/plusing button, so at least I have a visual clue that I can't hit return or enter. But in some cases -- such as saving a file here in Mozilla -- there is a pulsing button ("Save") and no amount of hitting return or enter will cause the button to be "clicked." That's just Bad.
In my (currently limited, but hopefully soon to be expanded) experience with OS X I've been frustrated by the fact that one often cannot tab or arrow between buttons in dialogs. That may have been a local problem but it certainly made me reproduceably frown when it occured. After a few hours of desperatly trying that, I noticed that typing the first letter of a button's label would activate it.
If that is the case, then I'm of two minds about it. On the one mind, it seem as if it is bad UI design because you have to actually read the button even though you probably know which one you want already, given a sufficiently consistent UI. On the other mind, I've always bitched about how painful it is that when a popup appears while you're typing under kde or windows the chances are high that you'll have hit space or return before you notice it came up...
Lately I've decided to try to have a more flexible mind about that kind of detail. I know it's part of the OS or shell vernacular that makes one happy and productive, but at the same time I've noticed that if you decide to simply live with it using multiple environments becomes a lot less frustratingfr-alt-shift-command-ctrl-apple-7_to_get_a_curly_brace keyboard layout
