[degauss]

"... keyboard shortcuts ..." is a common response to defend Mac design choices.

The single shared menu is also something that made sense on the original 9" 512x384 Mac screen to save but it really is nonsensical in the days of 32" 6k displays, so much mousing to get up to that menu but of course "... keyboard shortcuts ..." comes the refrain.

[chongli]

The single shared menu bar has one huge advantage over per-window menu bars: infinite mouse target size along the vertical axis. When moving the mouse to a narrow strip menu bar at the top of a window you need to accelerate the mouse towards the target and then decelerate in time to stop on the target without overshoot. With a menu bar at the top of the screen you can skip the decelerate part and just slam the mouse to the top of the screen without worrying about overshoot.

You’re right about giant displays though. The best menu system for those is pie menus [1]. Although I would still dispute the advantages of the second mouse button for activating those. The F1-F12 function keys would be much better since you could have instant access to 12 different pie menus instead of a single one with right click.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pie_menu