There are two types of people: (1) the shortcut whizz and (2) the methodical menu manipulator. In between we have the average Joe who probably uses a combination of the help search bar and the limited range of shortcut keys they know almost as much as the menu system.
Shortcuts accelerate productivity, but shortcut keys are not consistent across apps. This makes sense, since there are only a limited number of keys, and combinations placed conveniently near each other, that are logical enough for the purpose.
For example cmd + R can do the following:
OpenOffice - align text right
Pages/Numbers - show/hide ruler(s)
Adobe Acrobat/Illustrator/InDesign/Photoshop - show/hide rulers
Safari/iTunes/Mac App Store - refresh page
Pixelmator - show/hide rulers
Preview - rotate current page
Mail - reply to message
Twitter - reply to selected message (if no message selected do nothing)
Kindle - sync to furthest page read
iPhoto - rotate selected image
Calculator - enter RPN mode
iCal - refresh calendars
FontBook - show selected font file in Finder
These shortcuts make sense in most instances, because an app that is mainly used for viewing files quite often needs to refresh and has no day-to-day need for rulers, whereas in a design-based program we need to measure things frequently and to set guides, but there is no refreshing to be done (except for links) and so the shortcut is used to display rulers instead. The use of cmd + R is also logical in Twitter and Mail where it is used to reply.
The right decision blurs with word processing, however, where OpenOffice opts for align right to be the product of the shortcut cmd + R but Pages sticks with rulers. Things get even more inconsistent when we consider cmd + R in Preview vs Adobe Acrobat. Both these apps can be used to view PDFs but whereas the shortcut in question displays rulers in Acrobat, in Preview it rotates the current page, echoing how iPhoto handles the shortcut in relation to images.
The question of whether this is good or bad design, and whether things should be made more consistent across apps (without user intervention) really comes down to how many apps you switch between and how well your brain handles the contextual nature of shortcuts. Beyond this, particularly given the ubiquitous influence of the touchscreen device, the question should perhaps be refocused on the menu systems we use, where an ever greater number of features leads to increasingly difficult to find options. More and more it is easier to use that search box that pops up under Help rather than to figure out where a menu item has been newly buried. This being the case shift + cmd + ? becomes the most useful shortcut and the rest of the menu system feels quite often like it could sometimes be disappeared.
For more OS X system shortcuts see here.
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