no 2 is not an error its the way it should be; spacebar brings up the search box shift + a is where the add menu is. if you don’t like this you can change you shortcut keys in the user preference menu.
If you want your alt function back, you’ll have to enable emulate 3 button Mouse in the file tab in the user preferences. Then it works again.
And this probably is not really nice, but is so hard to scroll down and post stuff like this in the support forums, I don’t see how this is discussion and it sure isn’t news.