Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!percival!gary
From: gary@percival.UUCP (Gary Wells)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: NeXT not revolutionary enough?
Message-ID: <1420@percival.UUCP>
Date: 8 Nov 88 23:10:42 GMT
References: <471@wucs1.wustl.edu> <4391@ubc-cs.UUCP> <485@wucs1.wustl.edu> <4069@encore.UUCP> <4429@ubc-cs.UUCP> <4090@encore.UUCP>
Reply-To: gary@percival.UUCP (Gary Wells)
Followup-To: comp.society.futures
Organization: Percy's UNIX, Portland, OR.
Lines: 40

In article <4090@encore.UUCP> bzs@encore.com (Barry Shein) writes:
>
>What do other people think would be revolutionary in a personal
>computer?

I feel particularly qualified to answer this, since I live with 2 techno-klutzes.  I can make wonderful things happen with the machines in our house, they have 
trouble making anything work right.  The comments that follow apply equally to
computers, television sets, VCR's and micro-wave ovens.

1) They must become simplier to use.  _MUCH_ simpler.  My wife cannot reliably 
record a TV program of her choice because she can't remember to set all the 
appropreate options (start time, end time, channel, antenna/cable, etc).  She
also can't reliably run the word processor, for the same reasons, even though
I have relabeled the function keys as "store", "retrieve", etc.

2) Endless options, nice for the truely interested, should somehow be reserved
for the expert.  The general person wants to write a letter, and send 6 copies
of it to friends.  Footnotes, reference list, widows, orphans, binder, etc, 
options are just confusing.

3) The general population wants to _see_ it on the screen the way it will look
on paper.  They want color and the ablity to draw pictures.  They want color
printers.

4) They want "point and shoot", literally.  Ask a person who is struglling with
any program what they want to do.  They will point at a word (for instance) thatthey want moved, point at where they want it, then point at the printer.  Their
hand never touches the keyboard.  

We will have a revelution when fingers are the primary pointing device, WYSIWYG
test editors are the rule, the program can configure itself (the last WP packageI ionstalled had 5 floppies full of printer config files.  _I_ know they were 
mostly duplicates with different names on them, but the average person doesn't),color and graphics are simple to use and include in all operations, what appearson the screen appears on the paper and, most important, the documents don't 
out on the first page with jargon (open any doc's you have.  read the "getting 
started" section.  It says "Before you use this package*, make a backup* copy ofthe disks* and store them in a safe palce", or words to that effect.  * indicatejargon.  My wife doesn't know what to do at this point, so does nothing.  In thefirst sentance, we have already intimidated our user, which is the same as 
saying alienated our customer.  Not a good idea!

-- 
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Still working on _natural_ intelligence.

gary@percival   (...!tektronix!percival!gary)