The reason I use Mac OS X is because it is several levels of magnitude less frustrating than using Windows. I could take or leave Aqua (actually, thanks to ShapeShifter, I’ve pretty much left it), and I don’t frequent sketchy sites so viruses probably wouldn’t be that big a deal for me. I just find Mac OS X much easier to understand and use. I think a large part of this is because Apple decided that “competition” means making a better product with the user in mind instead of pulling illicit corporate shenanigans and bullying everyone else out of the market. The main reason I think Mac OS X is a better product is because of the user interface, which is highly standardized across the many diverse programs that run on Mac OS X. I can download a Cocoa program from a new developer and be pretty much certain that the keyboard shortcuts I’m used to will just work (among other things). It makes picking up new software extremely easy.

Unless I want to switch between tabs, that is. If I want to switch between tabs, then I have to think carefully about which program I’m using, try one shortcut, curse when it does something unexpected, and then use the actual shortcut. Just take a gander at the variation across some of my favorite programs:

OmniWeb: cmd-↑ and cmd-↓ (command + up arrow / down arrow)
CSSEdit: cmd-{ and cmd-} (command + shift + left bracket / right bracket)
Transmit: cmd-shift-← and cmd-shift-→ (command + shift + left arrow / right arrow)
TextMate: cmd-opt-← and cmd-opt-→ (command + option + left arrow / right arrow)

And then there’s Adium, which lets you choose. Two of the options are shared with a program above; two are not. Thanks to my youthful foolishness, the shortcut I got used to in Adium was not shared: cmd-[ and cmd-] (command + right bracket / left bracket).

So here I am with five different programs, each with a different shortcut for switching between tabs. And I’m left with a single question:

What the fuck?