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Another alternative that I think is a bit less rough around the edges: http://www.alfredapp.com/

If you use Spotlight to launch programs, you'll love Alfred, or Quicksilver, or any of the other launchers:

http://www.alfredapp.com/

I use Alfred for OS X. Alt-Space, start typing the name of the app you want. Much faster and easier than mousing over to the Dock or using a menu.

My GUI doesn't require me to type in an app name to run it, it just makes it easier to do so. Point-and-click isn't always faster.

Yes, I agree that ejecting a volume by dragging it to the trash was a weird idea. It makes a little more sense on OS X because when you start dragging the item the trash morphs into an Eject icon. Even if that particular operation is maybe an odd one, I definitely like Mac's emphasis on drag and drop operations in general. You cannot image how much time you save when everything accepts drag and drop. If I have a file I want to read on the desktop, I drag it to the application and a second later I'm reading it. If you try the same thing on Linux or Windows it often will not work or won't work consistently with every application. That extra 15 seconds navigating File-->Open-->Directories is annoying and grandma is going to understand the drag and drop operation much better because it is more intuitive.

As per your launching apps via keyboard shortcuts, I totally agree with you. In fact, I do the same thing on Mac with a little program called Alfred.

http://cocoatech.com/pathfinder/

Just replace finder with something more advanced. I personally use http://www.alfredapp.com/ which has wonderful path related commands

Launchy on Windows and Linux. Alfred on OS X. No mouse needed to launch stuff. I couldn't imagine going back (and hate having to use a computer with out them installed).