From: toma@romulus.cray.com (Thomas Arneberg)
Newsgroups: fj.mail-lists.x-window
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 31 Aug 92 18:31:15 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.

Date: 31 Aug 92 14:47:58 GMT
Message-Id: <1992Aug31.094759.11659@walter.cray.com>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.human-factors,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x

In article <1992Aug28.184236.7300@erg.sri.com> zwicky@erg.sri.com (Elizabeth Zwicky) writes:
>In article <1992Aug28.113502.24092@walter.cray.com> toma@romulus.cray.com (Thomas Arneberg) writes:
>>Another thing that long-time users forget is that many new users cannot 
>>type very well, but everyone can point and click. 
>
>This is false. Not everybody can point and click, and bad typing is a
>lot more effective than bad pointing and clicking. Trust me; I spent
>months getting to the point where I could consistently get any given
>effect on the Mac. Under UNIX, if I could do something once, I could
>do it again; on the Mac, it might have been blind luck. (Throwing
>things away requires getting the mouse itself, not just the icon
>you're dragging, onto the trash can. This is not true for putting
>things into folders.) Both typing and point-and-clicking are skills
>that have to be learned. Typing tends to have a better feedback. You
>type something, and you can go back and see what it is you typed; you
>move a mouse, and you don't see the track it left. Furthermore, typing
>is a skill many people have developed on typewriters; using a mouse is
>a completely new skill that has no non-computer application.
>
>	Elizabeth D. Zwicky
>	zwicky@erg.sri.com

Okay, you're right, I was exaggerating when I said EVERYONE can point and
click. But my point still stands -- let me change it to "MOST people can
successfully point and click within an hour or two."

You can argue about how it was FOR YOU, but all I have to go on is the
people I have worked with. I have helped dozens of people learn the Mac;
many of them had tried and failed to be productive with IBM clones. These
types of people included salesmen, general contractors, doctors, church
secretaries, moms, 4th grade girls, etc. 

These are not your typical power users, but people who would like to get a 
few simple things done with their computer -- write letters, simple 
spreadsheets or databases, church bulletins and calendars, etc.

Without exception, all the people I've worked with (only as a favor; I
don't do this for money) hated having to hunt-n-peck on the keyboard but
loved the Mac interface. They were all productive beyond their hopes within
a couple hours. There is a huge market for this type of casual user.

For ME, I'll stick to Unix/C on my SPARCstation. But still get a lot of use
out of my Mac Plus at home...

---------------------------------------------+------------------------------
;-) I'd rather be ____  Thomas R. Arneberg   | Inet: toma@cray.com
:-) singing in a |____| Senior IC Design Eng.| UUCP: ...!uunet!cray!toma
:-) Barbershop  _|   _| Cray Research, Inc.  | CLAIM TO FAME: Loni Anderson 
:-) Quartet!   (_)  (_) Chippewa Falls, Wisc.|   went to my high school 
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