From: rreiner@netxcom.UUCP (Ron Reiner)
Newsgroups: rec.humor.funny
Subject: Apple Announcement
Keywords: funny, original, computers
Date: 7 Jan 93 09:30:03 GMT

Source is original for this:


NEW TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCEMENT FROM APPLE 

In a surprise announcment, yesterday, Apple Computer said that it is 
finally doing away with the keyboard.  Apple stated that the 
microcomputer user has suffered too long with this awkward and 
inefficient input device.  According to an Apple spokesperson, the 
technology for replacing the keyboard with only a mouse is here and 
the computer user is ready for it.  The spokesperson said that Apple 
has received a steady stream of complaints  over the years about the 
need to constantly move the hands between the Mac keyboard and 
mouse.   "The solution was obvious - do away with the keyboard 
completely."

Acknowledging that there are still a few Mac applications that depend 
on textual input in addition to graphical manipulation, Apple said the 
poor people stuck with such outdated technology have not been 
forgotten.  They are introducing the Spinning Alphabet Wheel (SAW) 
to replace the keyboard.   The SAW is a screen display object 
consisting of concentric circular strips showing all of the characters 
which normally appear on the keyboard.  The wheel rotates 
continuously under character selector windows.  The user selects a 
character by placing the mouse pointer in the appropriate window at 
the same time as the desired character is about the appear.  "...and, 
ta-da, the selected character appears on the screen just as though it 
had been typed on an old fashioned keyboard."

"This is a marvelous new technology with plenty of room for 
growth." said the spokesperson.  For example, the user can configure 
separate wheels for vowels vs. the consonants.  Or, digits can be 
placed on their own special low speed wheel.  "We have 
conceptualized the keyboard as a big, bulky menu selection device 
and replaced it with dynamic display menus instead.  Apple will 
eventually replace all menus with their new Rotating Wheel 
Technology (RWT)."  

When asked why the wheels have to rotate, the spokesperson said 
that Apple's engineers had considered using conventional "point-and-
click" technology for the wheel.  "However," the Apple spokesperson 
said, "we feel that this type of operation is too complicated for the 
typical Mac user.   So, we have done away with the mouse button 
too.  It is still hard for us to believe that the IBM world has stepped 
backwards in technology by providing two or more buttons to 
confuse the user.  The IBM compatible sector, apparently,  has not 
yet recognized that 95% of computer usage is devoted to 
experimenting with different fonts and character styles in documents"

Asked if this new technology would reduce the price of the typical 
Mac computer, the spokesperson countered that it would probably 
increase the price of the Mac.  "After all,  display space is already 
scarce on the current screen.  We will now deliver Macs with two 
screens - one for the normal display and a larger one for the multitude 
of rotating wheels the user needs to access."  Apple said that the user 
who is confused by complicated devices such as keyboards and 
mouse buttons will gladly pay a premium to avoid them.  "In fact, the 
easily-confused user is our best customer"  replied the spokesperson.   
"Not only are we doing away with the pesky keyboard, but we are 
also giving them something they have demanded for a long time - 
more screen space.  This is definitely a win-win situation."

Beta testers of the new technology were impressed by its ease of use, 
but said there are still some minor problems to work out.  For 
example, one tester left his machine unattended with the uppercase 
character wheel spinning at medium speed.  While he was away 
somebody must have jarred his desk, moving the mouse pointer into 
the selector window.  When he got back he found that his Word 
document now had one huge paragraph consisting of all of the 
characters of the uppercase alphabet repeated 2,539,987 times.  "At 
first glance, this appeared to be a big problem.  But,  I formatted the 
new paragraph with 33 different fonts and 11 different type styles and 
it looked great.  I hope that Apple fixes this problem before they 
release it, because these accidents can greatly increase the time spent 
formatting documents."

--
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