Open & Run Everything Commands?

Well ... I hadn't been aware that there was such a command, but there appears to be. Or, if not a command, then a set of keystrokes that you can make that leaves you there.

Background: I was busy, getting a phone call and looking up something on the web and timing some flan in the oven and trying to figure out why some sites were loading slowly and .. in the midst of all that, while searching Applications and Utilities folders for a speed test to use, I did it.

All of a sudden, multiple Finder pages, one for each line/app/whatever in the Applications folder, began to appear and cascade across the screen in their ordered stacks. I figured I could just wait it out and then do the standard "Close All' keystrokes but, as soon as the last page appeared, all of the apps commended to open. I mean, each and every single one of them, one on top of the other, one after the other.

Quite a few weren't currently in use, some don't even work on the current OS but are still residing in the folder, some need setup or configuration runs and each one of those in order would be popping up their various little splash menus about what you needed to do.

I tried to use Apple Menu to either shut down or restart but, despite on a few occasions being able to do what appeared to be the starting of the process (" .. are you sure ..?" and etc.) it just never took. More and more just kept popping up on the screen, including some which completely blanked the screen for a while, which was even more irritating.

I tried shutting down by pressing and holding the Power button on the back and, for some really odd reason, even that wouildn't work. No matter how long I held it down I couldn't make it shut down but, instead, it just kept going to sleep. And, on awakening, I could no longer access the Apple Menu at all. At this point the Dock was really funny looking, dozens and dozens of tiny icons all jammed in down there with many, many of them bouncing in the "Hey I've got a message ... " manner.

I tried the Force Quit keyboard shortcut and it did, indeed, pop the menu box up onto the screen. I started at the first thing, an app starting with A obviously, and was able to Force Quit it. And then the next, and the next, all the way through the list, all the way down until only Finder was left there and, at that point, I did close all of the Finder windows, do a Restart, and am now back in action.

The question is: What the heck did I do to cause this?