The shortcut for poke faces seems to be removed. There have been a few irritating removals, definitely.
By default A selects, double-A deselects. You can revert it to the original behavior in the preferences under the keymaps tab.
The specials menu is now essentially the context menus, they can be opened with right click in left-click mode, or W in right-click mode.
Shift-tab used to toggle snapping and it still does...