Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!umd5!uvaarpa!mcnc!thorin!unc!steele
From: steele@unc.cs.unc.edu (Oliver Steele)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: Pull down menus.
Message-ID: <1662@thorin.cs.unc.edu>
Date: 11 Mar 88 17:14:23 GMT
References: <4129@hoptoad.uucp> <283@rhesus.primate.wisc.edu> <1710@ssc-vax.UUCP> <14458@oddjob.UChicago.EDU> <1739@ssc-vax.UUCP> <1444@csib.csi.UUCP>
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Reply-To: steele@unc.UUCP (Oliver Steele)
Organization: University Of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Lines: 31

jwhitnel@csib.UUCP (Jerry Whitnell) writes:
>In article <1739@ssc-vax.UUCP> benoni@ssc-vax.UUCP (Charles L Ditzel) writes:
>|In article <14458@oddjob.UChicago.EDU>, mcb@oddjob.UChicago.EDU (Still amused by setenv NAME) writes:
>|> The reason the Macintosh has a 
>|> one-button mouse (in case anyone doesn't know) is that the average user 
>|> works > faster with a single button.  Apple tested this fairly 
>|> extensively, and it turns out that most people get confused when there's 
>|> more than one button on the mouse.
>|I take it you believe them?
>
>I don't believe faster, I would believe with less confusion for the naive
>and casual user.  Remember, the Mac's user interface was (and still is
>p[r]imarily) aimed at the casual user.

Keep in mind, too, that "casual user" doesn't necessarily mean computer
neophyte or non-programmer.  A casual user can be a computer jock/geek
who's using a program foo doesn't use very often.  I try out some
twenty new programs a month on the Mac and only have to struggle with
two or three (and there's more of a correlation with how poorly they're
written rather than with how powerful they are); I couldn't do this with
an Atari 800/Commodere 64/TRS-80/Apple II, and I can't do it with a UNIX
machine without reading a README and man.1 that I have to relearn every
time I want to use the program again.  You can't have a large number
of tools in your repertoire unless you can tell how they work without
digging out the manual.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oliver Steele					   ...!uunet!mcnc!unc!steele
							   steele@cs.unc.edu
"I worry about anyone under eighteen who isn't a cynic --
 and anyone over eighteen who is."     -- Spider Robinson