Why Nosotros Can’T Quit The Qwerty Keyboard

It's a pretty large bargain when you lot intend most it.

From MIT's Technology Review, Oct. 13:

We’ve been using it to type for 144 years. Here’s why it works, together with what it would accept for us to give it up.

Tap is a one-handed gadget that fits over your fingers similar rubbery brass knuckles together with connects wirelessly to your smartphone. It’s supposed to costless you lot from clunky physical keyboards together with human activity equally a go-anywhere typing interface. H5N1 promotional video shows grin people wearing Tap together with typing amongst 1 paw on a leg, on an arm, together with fifty-fifty (perhaps jokingly) on roughly guy’s forehead.

Seems similar a swell idea, right? But when I tried it, the reality of using Tap was neither fun nor funny. Unlike a conventional QWERTY keyboard, Tap required me to intend a lot, because I had to tap my fingers inwards not-very-intuitive combinations to exercise letters: an H5N1 is your thumb, a B is your index finger together with pinky, a C is all your fingers except the index.

I memorized these combinations past times playing uncomplicated letter-choosing games inwards an app, but it was apace exhausting. It was almost impossible to type on my thigh, or on whatsoever surface that wasn’t apartment together with solid. My most verbose tweets were a handful of words long together with took several minutes to compose. Even typing out “Duh!” was cumbersome together with uncomfortable. After less than a week, I conceded defeat together with retreated to my big, old-fashioned QWERTY together with its soothing tactile feedback.

But spell Tap didn’t operate good for me, it brings upwards an of import inquiry most the development of technology. We own got together with then many ways to input data—by voice, acquit upon screen, stylus, you lot cite it—and yet nosotros notwithstanding rely heavily on something that looks a heck of a lot similar the kickoff commercially successful typewriters, released nearly 150 years ago. We tin strength out brand powerful computers that check inwards our pockets. So why haven’t nosotros quit the keyboard?

QWERTY’s quirky history
Part of the response is inertia. The large, clunky keyboard is what you lot learned to type with, equally did your parents together with your grandparents (and maybe fifty-fifty your great-grandparents). It’s comfortable; Kevin Weaver, an assistant clinical professor of physical therapy at New York University, says that at this indicate most of the potentially bothersome ergonomic issues own got been designed out of it.

“We’re stuck inwards a cycle,” says Frank Jones, an assistant professor of figurer scientific discipline at Brigham Young University together with a creator of a finger-tracking touch-screen keyboard called DotKey. “We learn kids how to role QWERTY because it’s everywhere. Why is QWERTY everywhere? Because nosotros learn kids to role it.”

This wasn’t ever the case. Early typewriters included all kinds of teaching kids equally immature equally kindergarten basic keyboard skills.

QWERTY dominates non only inwards countries that role alphabets (with roughly regional variations), but inwards countries similar Communist People's Republic of China that developed their ain systems, such equally Pinyin, to type a vast array of characters amongst the same uncomplicated keyboard.

But the QWERTY keyboard’s success has non been due to lack of competition.

The contenders
Way earlier Tap, at that topographic point were numerous efforts to alter the organisation together with cast of the keyboard—such equally the Dvorak Simplified Keyboard layout, patented inwards 1936 past times University of Washington professor August Dvorak. More recently, at that topographic point was the one-handed Twiddler keyboard. Neither managed to dent QWERTY’s dominance....MUCH MORE