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Building on yesterday’s post about the command-line interface, the same sorts of interface concerns play into this discussion of the renewed relevance of the vi input model when using a laptop [via Digg]. The argument is that, without a mouse and with generally poorly placed navigation keys, editing that centers on the home keys and minimizes complicated key combinations is ergonmically desirable. This actually relates nicely to an article I saw linked over at Slashdot about motivations behind the design of vi based on an interview with its creator Bill Joy. The liimiting factors back then were certainly different than those motivating a continued interest in the editor:

It was really hard to do because you’ve got to remember that I was trying to make it usable over a 300 baud modem. That’s also the reason you have all these funny commands. It just barely worked to use a screen editor over a modem. It was just barely fast enough. A 1200 baud modem was an upgrade. 1200 baud now is pretty slow. 9600 baud is faster than you can read. 1200 baud is way slower. So the editor was optimized so that you could edit and feel productive when it was painting slower than you could think.

While this type of bandwidth issue isn’t an issue for most users today, it makes sense that an editor designed to be minimalist in a world where every keystroke cost real time would translate into an editor that is desirable in a physical interface setting where it is also desirable to conserve keystrokes. It makes me wonder if vi isn’t in fact the ideal editor for handheld devices….

I had a conversation a few weeks ago about frustrations that current OSs, or at least their documentation/presentation, overly obfuscate the ability of users to have a command-line interface as wll as a graphical one, reflecting an invalid, in my opinion, assumption that only hard-core power users would ever want a command-line interface. Over at Lifehacker, there is a really nice analysis of the current incarnation of the command-line embedded in our GUIs. Intuitively, this model of the merging of the two approaches to interaction feels right to me. A trivial example of my own habits is that I always call up the Windows built in calculator by hitting the Windows key, up arrow twice to Run…, and type “calc”. It’s faster than puttiing an icon shortcut, and I also don’t want another icon floating around my toolbar. Especially for the calculator, which is something that I only use occassionally, but when I do use it I want quick access. It would be nice if the GUI defaults made it clearer to the average user that these capabilities are available to them.

This is probably the best electronic hacker project I’ve seen ever: a computer-controlled push puppet for IM notifications. [via JK] How can you go wrong? You get to build a neat robot thing, attached to a cuddly puppet dog, and it contributes to your IM addiction by letting you know when your friends are around! Scroll down for the video – soooo cute! It’s enough to make me switch to Linux….

It’s too bad I’m not teaching my Cyberattacks class again this January, because the Month of Apple Bugs would be a great resource. I always run that class on Windows PCs because, statistically, there are just more Windows exploits out there right now, but it’s important to remember that no operating system is immune from exploits. We should definitely expect that, as Apple continues to grow their market share, OS X exploits will become more common too. What’s interesting is the number of exploits that aren’t just coming through traditional operating system holes anymore, but are taking advantage of online services that play some of the roles of an operating system, such as the recent Gmail address book vulnerability. None of the cases I’ve seen seem to require predictions of doom and destruction, but I anticpate that the next difficult push in security education is going to be educating the average user about the sheer breadth of vulnerable points in their average computer usage.