Monday
Feb092009
Of Mice and Men
Monday, February 9, 2009 at 1:07AM
Craig Hockenberry, of Twitterrific fame, in a Macworld 2009 armchair session discussing designing for the iPhone:
via Macworld.
I did some quick back-of-the-napkin sums:
Interestingly, I did some research on the first machine used by Douglas Engelbart in his groundbreaking 1968 demo. His archetypal mouse and keyboard connected to a SDS 940 Mainframe, which Alan Kay and Wikipedia roughly agree featured 0.5 MIPS and 192 Kilobytes of memory, all shared between up to 12 operators. So the first computer attached to a mouse and keyboard for real work had less than 1/1200th of iPhones power and 1 gazillionth of it's memory. And apparently the SDS 940 was not just running a fancy demo, but a real working system they used daily. From a Wired article on Doug's System:
The fleshy palm is on to something. The mouse has been an astounding success. It's cheap, quite reliable and used by millions. It's lasted much, much longer than it's inventors must have expected it to. It has been a stable, reliably installed piece of hardware that all software designers could rely on.
Naturally some envision a futuristic world beyond the mouse. In the last few years the iPhone, and it's cousins, have shown that touchscreen technologies can be useable for daily work. Perhaps the touchscreen technology driving today's mobile interfaces will become our desktop interfaces.
…It's interesting to me [that] you look at the 8 MHz processor in the original Mac, versus the 2.5, or whatever GHz in the current laptop — that's a huge change. Same with the displays and densities, going from 1 bit to 32 bit. That's a lot of technological change. But you look at the mouse and the keyboard, the two main input devices for that machine, and they haven't changed much in that period of time…
via Macworld.
I did some quick back-of-the-napkin sums:
The numbers in rectangles in the graph above show huge advances in CPU, memory and display capacity compared to the glacial evolution of keyboard and mouse.
Interestingly, I did some research on the first machine used by Douglas Engelbart in his groundbreaking 1968 demo. His archetypal mouse and keyboard connected to a SDS 940 Mainframe, which Alan Kay and Wikipedia roughly agree featured 0.5 MIPS and 192 Kilobytes of memory, all shared between up to 12 operators. So the first computer attached to a mouse and keyboard for real work had less than 1/1200th of iPhones power and 1 gazillionth of it's memory. And apparently the SDS 940 was not just running a fancy demo, but a real working system they used daily. From a Wired article on Doug's System:
By 1968, the lab had developed a complete system, which the researchers called NLS (a somewhat oblique abbreviation for oNLine System). The system included an SDS 940 mainframe computer with 12 time-sharing terminals — each of which had a keyboard, a cathode-ray–tube display, a mouse and a strange five-key "chord key set" for operators to enter commands. The SRI team ate their own dog food, too: They used NLS for their daily work, including using it to write and organize the code that ran NLS itself.
The fleshy palm is on to something. The mouse has been an astounding success. It's cheap, quite reliable and used by millions. It's lasted much, much longer than it's inventors must have expected it to. It has been a stable, reliably installed piece of hardware that all software designers could rely on.
And the mouse has barely changed in decades.
Naturally some envision a futuristic world beyond the mouse. In the last few years the iPhone, and it's cousins, have shown that touchscreen technologies can be useable for daily work. Perhaps the touchscreen technology driving today's mobile interfaces will become our desktop interfaces.
Reader Comments (9)
I would really like to try using a larger (e.g. mousepad size) standalone MacBook multi-touch trackpad as a mouse replacement. I think the gestures and not having to lift the mouse would be really useful, and the desk surface would no longer matter. I can absolutely see Apple releasing something like this. I think it also answers the questions about convincing and transitioning people too.
I think it's significant that on portable devices the 'mousing device' *has* changed. There were (at least) standard mice that you plug in, the large mouse ball things, the terrible little nub things in the middle of the keyboard, and various types of touchpad, leading up to what Apple is doing at the moment (and of course the iPod/iPhone).
Hi Tony,
This is true. The trackpad is quite a significant innovation. At the same time, I see a lot of people struggle with it (especially women?)
BTW, some people loved the IBM 'nipple' so careful, you might start something here. :-P
Definitely agree that Apple will make a keyboard sized touch interface for use with desktop computers. Their '2 finger scroll', '3 finger swipe' gestures are certainly the a step in bridging the worlds of desktop computing and fully touch interfaces to come.
Don't want to nitpick, but I reckon your figure for mouse improvement should be 1.5, not 0.5. 0.5 suggests a regression.
Ah, good point Mike. Sorry bout that. will fix when I get a chance.
Considering your line of work, you would have a better idea than me, but I haven't seen more people struggle with trackpads than (going back a few more years) with mice (holding them upside down, waving them in the air, etc).
I don't think Apple will do this, but what I would really like to see is something around the size of Apple's wired keyboard that replaces both my keyboard and mouse, and also has a screen (big iPod with no processor/memory). I don't know if I could manage without tactile feedback, but iPhone/iPod experience suggests that maybe I could (combined with really good auto-correction). Having the keyboard replaced by new interfaces for editing photos/music/video, etc would be great.
I don't think this will be the successor (or not any time soon) since it would be too expensive, but I do think that whatever the successor will be more generic than the keyboard/mouse in the same way that a computer is a more generic device than a typewriter/tape recorder/game system/etc.
Since multi-touch is all the rage, and it seems clear that a screen works best (in most cases) horizontally and somewhat distant, and people don't want to hold their arms out all the time, some sort of multi-touch device will replace/supplement the keyboard/mouse, before long.
re: the trackpad, I find the separate button seemed to give most people issues — often I'd see two handed trackpad usage, one on button, one on the pad.
Tony — I totally agree. Their patents suggest this logical direction. I did mockup what it might look like some time ago, but don't have that with me as I'm currently traveling in SF.
The typing is the key thing. I think with a different typing approach, like Swype/ Shapewriter technology could beat QWERTY for 'normal' text entry.
The technology is getting close, but the interface (you can try the WritingPad app on iPhone) needs some work.
Patent-wise; To type, you'll rest all fingers down. To draw you'll hold 2 fingers and thumb like you're holding a pencil and then touch all three to the surface. Other finger swipes etc give panning/scroll.
I imagine this device would give a custom interface for every app you switch to.
Possibly the device has some battery power and can work like a simple tablet. Possibly it has enough memory to act as your main computer. It could be what the iPod was originally hoped to become.
I'm sure the device will be expensive initially, and many will question it's value as few apps support it initially. But Apple's got a habit of releasing cool, expensive stuff, making it desirable, then finding ways to get cost down with manufacturing scale.
How about integrated eye-tracking as a replacement for the mouse?
What if that little camera on the top of your laptop was sensitive enough to register and follow your eyes, and move the cursor wherever you look. You "click" with a key on the keyboard (since your hands are probably already on it), or maybe with some sort of deliberate eye gesture (long blink, double-blink, whatever).
This would require a technological leap in eye-tracking technology, to get it small and cheap enough to be integrated into laptops and PCs. But imagine what it would do for handheld device usability, if it could be made THAT small.
Hi Vance,
That's a great suggestion. And technology is certainly making eye tracking in mainstream computing a very near thing.
In fact, eye tracking with blink detection is currently used by people with sever motor disabilities, but this implementation probably isn't quite the right one for mainstream usage.
You can read more in an earlier blogpost of mine here:
http://www.uiandus.com/2008/08/06/announcements/eye-tracking-in-future-interfaces/
Keith -- thanks, this is a great discussion.
This was a cool example of a 3D effect using tracking software with a built-in iSight:
http://molviz.cs.toronto.edu/molviz/
Can I add speech-to-text, as a potential replacement for typing? And voice control. I mean by themselves, but also as a supplement to mouse, keyboard, touch, pen, eye-tracking, etc.
You can't think of new input technologies as "replacements" necessarily. I think one future will be in hybrids, mashups or combinations of inputs that work well together, seemlessly. This needs some thought behind it -- I'm not envisioning a mouse in one hand, a multi-touch device in another...and a pen up my nose. :-0
The hybrid approach may inspire new devices -- start with the input, and design a device around it. Like the EEE keyboards (actually netbooks!) being shown at CES. Or Tablet PCs, of course.
The platform and applications need to have enough intelligence and power to support this. And you have to differentiate the processes. I mention this because futuristic input and artificial intelligence are often seamlessly blended in popular science fiction. It's one thing to have your computer understand your speech (which a Mac can). That part is input. But it's a separate computing process to have R2D2 devise a plan to blow up the Death Star, or Magel put up shields, or HAL decide to break the laws.