Choosing move/rotate deselects current tool

That's useful, but not exactly it. When I select a transform directly or with WER, I usually want to make a minor adjustment then return to the tool I was using. The tutorial I'm watching (http://learnmesilly.com/index.php?currentPage=unity_lesson1¤tPart=unity1_1) seems to assume that functionality. On the upside, I did find two workarounds that should help me: using the arrow keys to pan, and Shift+QWERTY to select tools.

I think I know what is your problem, Do you have a two button magic mouse ? magic mouse doesn't have a middle click. Your workaround is the way in that case. In a three button mouse you have alt - left click to rotate view, alt- middle click to pan and alt- right click to zoom. I work with Wacom Intuos4 A4 3 button tablet, and a white simple blue-tooth logitech 3 button mouse with a scroll wheel ( which is a bit prettier than the average mouse ). I find them very good for any 3d task, texture painting , sculpting or simply navigating in 3d space.