From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
Newsgroups: fj.mail-lists.x-window
Subject: Re: GUIs Considered Harmful
Date: 3 Sep 92 22:04:10 GMT
Distribution: fj
Organization: Integrated Systems Laboratory, ETH, Zurich

Date: 3 Sep 92 16:53:45 GMT
Message-Id: <NEERI.92Sep3175345@iis.ethz.ch>
Newsgroups: alt.religion.computers,comp.windows.misc,comp.windows.news,comp.windows.x,comp.human-factors

In article <YANDROS.92Sep1204936@fredric-brown.MIT.EDU> yandros@Athena.MIT.EDU (Chad Phillip Brown) writes:
>>>  (Does anyone know why there isn't a
>>>  magic key sequence to get to the menubar, for instance?)
>
>  From: neeri@iis.ethz.ch (Matthias Neeracher)
>> There is one. It is not very difficult to write an extension for the
>> Mac to do this; I wrote one myself a few years ago. If you have normal
>> command of your hands, however, you will be hopelessly slower that by
>> using the mouse.
>> 
>> There are also extensions to assign menu selections and mouse clicks
>> to any desired key combination (QuicKeys, for example).
>
>Yes, I understand that these kinds of things exist as extensions, but
>I'm baffled as to why they need to be added on later, when it would be
>such a simple thing to have built into the design of the original
>system.

Simple but mostly useless and contrary to the user interface (it puts you in a
"menu mode" that you can't get trivially out of).

>Having umpteen-jillion extensions makes 'Standard User
>Interface' pretty difficult...  As for me being 'hopelessly slower'
>than the mouse, I don't understand how you could really think it's
>slower to move my hand from the keyboard to the mouse and then back
>again as opposed to staying on the keyboard???

Maybe I misinterpreted your expression "key sequence to get to menubar". What I
thought of is you press a key, the first menu falls down, and you maneuver your
way to the desired menu entry using the cursor keys.

If you were advocating assigning a keyboard shortcut to every menu entry, I'll
offer the following. You are of course free to discount it as Apple research
done to justify Apple machines, but here goes:

From Bruce Tognazzini, _Tog on Interface_:
  We've done a cool $50 million of R&D on the Apple Human Interface. We
  discovered, among other things, two pertinent facts:

  - Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
  - The stopwatch consistently proves that mousing is faster than keyboarding.

  This contradiction between user-experience and reality apparently forms the
  basis for many user/developers' belief that the keyboard is faster.

  People new to the mouse find the process of reaching for it every time they
  want to do anything other than type to be incredibly time-wasting. And
  therein lies the very advantage of the mouse: It is boring to find it
  because the two-second search does not require high-level cognitive
  engagement.

  It takes two seconds to decide upon which special-function key to press.
  Deciding among abstract symbols is a high-level cognitive function. Not only
  is this decision not boring, the user actually experiences amnesia! *Real*
  amnesia! The time-slice spent making the decision simply ceases to exist.

  While the keyboard users in this case feel as though they have gained two
  seconds over the mouse users, the opposite is actually the case. Because
  while the keyboard users have been engaged in a process so fascinating that
  they have experienced amnesia, teh mouse users have been so disengaged that
  they have been able to continue thinking about the task they are trying to
  accomplish. They have not had to set their task aside to think about or
  remember abstract symbols.

  Hence, users acheive a significant productivity increase with the mouse in
  spite of their subjective experience.

>>> I guess my
>>> main complaint is that Apple sems to have sacrificed the
>>> medium-to-high level user in favor of the the 'casual user', without
>>> (IMHO) real justification.
>
>Saying 'The experienced user will usually know what the problem is'
>will win you the hearts of many fans of U*NIX 'ed'

I said that the experienced user will now how to fix it or whom to ask.

>, but not many
>others. :-)  My point is that the macintosh abandons the 'power user'
>to a maze of extensions that make the Macintosh as nonstandardized and
>setup-dependant as any U*NIX box, for no reason I can find.

Every computer used by a high end user will have a customized setup (else it
wouldn't be a high end user :-) The idea that every single computer should look
exactly the same, run one version of the system software, and come with all
applications bundled, is Jobsian heresy.

Matthias

-----
Matthias Neeracher                                   neeri@iis.ethz.ch
   "There once was an Age of Reason, but we've progressed beyond it."
                                   -- Ayn Rand, _Atlas Shrugged_