That makes sense. Back before multitasking when you could have many applications open at the same time the Apple menu was really convenient for small applications like calculators.

Much later once they had a multi-user operating system and a user menu, it would make more sense to have the user's name, shutdown, logout, and switch user in one menu.

It sounds like you were just trying to get work done. I suppose if you'd wasted an hour a day for a week or so exploring, that the operating system might have revealed some advantages.