Midnight Commander is not covered by the "nostalgia clause" :-)

Midnight Commander is nowhere near where Norton Commander was in terms of usability. Some of that is because of platform restrictions (terminal and keyboard access limitations) and some because of a difference in philosophy.

Norton Commander was simple, but it got the simple things right.

I don’t understand what you’re talking about — my terminal accesses as much from my keyboard as I’ve ever wanted it to, and everything I can imagine it wanting to short of flashing my (Num|Caps|Scroll) lock lights or something (and other terminals support more features than I even use, eg. image previews in ranger et. al.) Could you give an even more specific and concrete example?

While I don't like Midnight Commander's keybindings, do note that it can do quite a bit that Norton couldn't (e.g. ssh - incredibly handy).

If you want a closer clone to Norton Commander, try FAR Manager: https://www.farmanager.com/ (Windows only)

What exactly was so useable about norton commander? I tried a split fm and I just found it cumbersome.

When I still used Windows as my primary desktop, I found Total Commander to be very usable.