The key take-away was they spent a lot of money on a research project specifically about mouse vs. keyboard and found the precise opposite to be true! Surprising to say the least.
* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing.
* The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.
Considering all the time I have wasted in recent years wrestling with text selection and cursor positioning on touchscreen devices, this discussion seems delightfully pointless: they are both so much faster than the third option that any difference between the two must be insignificant.
> The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding
Without specifying how it was tested that's meaningless. For example I've read of a test where keyboard users were slower because they had to do a find/replace operation on a file manually, moving the cursor only with arrow keys. That's like saying using the mouse is slower after forcing mouse users to type text on a virtual keyboard.
I think in most scenarios both can be fast enough that the difference doesn't matter, provided there's proper support for both.
I'll admit it's not much data, and there doesn't appear to be a source. But it vaguely refers to a study, and doesn't just reflect the authors preferences.
Did Apple do a study? Did it come to the conclusion that the mouse was faster? If so, why is it dead wrong?
I don't know if Apple did a study, and I'm not particularly inclined to look hard for it, because the argumentation from the article series itself is pretty much bogus and uses some weird test setups (like https://www.asktog.com/SunWorldColumns/S02KeyboardVMouse3.ht... and the e -> | replacement game); that, coupled with my real-world experience which every day proves superiority of keyboard over mouse in structured interfaces, leads me to assign very low prior to the validity of the conclusion of that Apple study, as reported by Tog.
(The study perhaps had a more narrow set of conclusions than presented in the article. Wouldn't surprise me.)
The key take-away was they spent a lot of money on a research project specifically about mouse vs. keyboard and found the precise opposite to be true! Surprising to say the least.
* Test subjects consistently report that keyboarding is faster than mousing. * The stopwatch consistently proves mousing is faster than keyboarding.