So history is Command+Y in chrome by default, though yes if you activated the apple menu and key over I agree thats annoying. Command+H is universally hide window, but you could change it if you were annoyed enough.

Its not just "turn on tabbing onto controls and to hotkey onto the Apple menu". Though I admit, I don't use the menubar from the keyboard as most of the time I just use the shortcuts that activate the menu item.

Don't believe me? You are partially right with the eventually remark however, not all applications allow or even try to have shortcuts for every menu option. Lets add a shortcut to something that doesn't have it in Chrome. I'll choose the extensions menu under Window in Chrome just to be fair as you mentioned the app.

System Preferences->Keyboard & Mouse->Keyboard Shortcuts tab, then Clicky the + button. Choose your Google Chrome.app dir. Then "Extensions" and since I'm trying to not collide with things, I'm using Commmand+Shift+E, and click back and then voila, command shift e gives me the ability to activate what I couldn't before. Works for me and now I never have to click on a menubar either. Or am I just missing a use case in windows where normally the first letter allows you to activate the menu? I admit i've never used that even in windows.

More work than windows by default? Sure. But I'd call that good. As for apps that don't allow tab navigation or other such things, the only one's that seem to be the biggest offenders are browsers. Firefox need a few about:config changes to adjust its retarded on osx default focus behavior and everything is peachy. I've not hit anything I can't do in chrome, Ctrl+tab/etc... cycles tabs etc... Is there something specific you can't do in chrome? Are you referring to the wrench menu perhaps?

On OS X, I can get directly to any menu item by pressing cmd+? and then using the search. This is better if you have a vague idea of what you want, although admittedly, Windows has a better implementation for keyboard browsing of menu items. I vastly prefer the former, though.

The former is preferable for complex applications such as photoshop, but the latter is absolutely indispensable for frequently-used applications, as it's much faster.

Actually in Windows the application specific shortcuts often start with Ctrl. In this case Ctrl+H takes you to the history tab. Doesn't something like that work on OS X?

No, and that was my complaint. The post by pdhborges below enlightened me that one can use letters after pressing Ctrl-F2, but it is still quite awkward and I believe it is disruptive to flow.

Chrome in Windows doesn't have a menu :P You're right for all other applications, however.

It does if one taps the Alt key, IIRC. Same for Firefox 4 (onward).

I just tried it, nope. I thought so too, but that seems to not be the case.

type Ctrl-F2 and then "hi". Problem solved.

Three keystrokes, the first of which is awkward and the rest of which are menu-dependent. In other OSes it's just alt+accelerator, for anything you want.

I had no idea. Thank you for this!

Turns out, it works for the newly expanded submenu also. Still more typing, but a vast improvement.