Text 4267, 67 rader
Skriven 2006-05-25 09:15:00 av Nathan Prugh
Ärende: Apple Corp Joke
=======================
NEW TECHNOLOGY ANNOUNCEMENT FROM APPLE

In a surprise announcement yesterday, Apple Computer said that is is finally
doing away with the keyboard.  Apple stated that the
microcomputer user has suffered too long with this awkward and
inefficient input device.  According to an Apple spokesperson, the technology
for replacing the keyboard with only a mouse is here and the computer user is
ready for it.  The spokesperson said that Apple has received a steady stream
of complaints over the years about the need to constantly move the hands
between the Mac keyboard and the mouse. "The solution was obvious - do away
with the keyboard completely."

Acknowledging that there are still a few Mac applications that depend on
textual input in addition to graphical manipulation, Apple said the poor
people stuck with such outdated technology have not been forgotten. They are
introducing the Spinning Alphabet Wheel (SAW) to replace the keyboard.  The
SAW is a screen display object consisting of concentric circular strips
showing all of the characters which normally appear on the keyboard. The wheel
rotates continuously under character selector windows.  The user selects a
character by placing the mouse pointer in the appropriate window at the same
time as the desired character is about to appear.  "...and, ta-da, the
selected character appears on the screen just as though it had been typed on
an old fashioned keyboard."

"This is a marvelous new technology with plenty of room for growth," said the
spokesperson.  For example, the user can configure separate wheels for vowels
vs. consonants.  Or digits can be placed on their own special low speed wheel.
 "We have conceptualized the keyboard as a big, bulky menu selection device
and replaced it with dynamic display menus instead.  Apple will eventually
replace all menus with their new
Rotating Wheel Technology (RWT)."

When asked why the wheels have to rotate, the spokesperson said that Apple's
engineers had considered using conventional "point-and-click" technology for
the wheel.  "However, we feel that this type of operation is too complicated
for the typical Mac user.  So, we have done away with the mouse button, too. 
It is still hard for us to believe that the IBM world has stepped backwards in
technology by providing two or more buttons to confuse the user.  The IBM
compatible sector has not yet recognized that 95% of computer usage is devoted
to experimenting with different fonts and character styles in documents."

Asked if this new technology would reduce the price of the typical Mac
computer, the spokesperson countered that it would probably increase the
price of the Mac.  "After all, display space is already scarce on the current
screen.  We will now deliver Macs with two screens - one for the normal
display and a larger one for the multitude of rotating wheels the user needs
to access."  Apple said that the user who is confused by complicated devices
such as keyboards and mouse buttons will gladly pay a premium to avoid them. 
"In fact, the easily-confused user is our best customer," replied the
spokesperson.  "Not only are we doing away with the pesky keyboard, but we are
also giving them something they have demanded for a long time - more screen
space.  this is definitely a win-win situation."

Beta testers of the new technology were impressed by its ease of use, but said
there are still some minor problems to work out.  for example, one tester left
his machine unattended with the uppercase character wheel spinning at medium
speed.  While he was away somebody must have jarred his desk, moving the mouse
pointer into the selector window. When he got back he found that his Word
document now had one huge paragraph consisting of all of the characters of the
uppercase alphabet repeated 2,539,987 times.  "At first glance, this appeared
to be a big problem.  But after I formated the new paragraph with 33 different
fonts and 11 different type styles, it looked great.  I hope that Apple fixes
this problem before they release it, because these accidents can greatly
increase the time spent formatting documents."

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