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Was listening to this podcast about OSX Lion and it mentioned that the new trackpad gestures are much more memorable than keyboard shortcuts, especially for "average" users.

Which seems to resonate with this question on keyboard shortcuts - saying that most people dont use them.

So, do you think that is where the future is - touch gestures and not keyboard shortcuts?

Personally I cant see it changing things much - while there is a keyboard, but then I dont learn many either - but probably more than "average".

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ted.com/talks/pattie_maes_demos_the_sixth_sense.html augmented reality moves on. There will always be keyboard shortcuts for drawing software or CAD. But probably there will be more gesture users not able to tipping with all 10 fingers in future. A bit bad for the open source movement maybe... :( mainly professional programmers – Hauser Jul 27 '11 at 21:57
Chris, welcome to productivity.SE. As currently formed, this question is more of a discussion prompt than answerable, even subjectively. I can re-open it if the question is re-cast, perhaps to ask about what attributes/features of gestures are improvements over keyboard shortcuts (like the memorability you mention) and vice versa for the benefits of the keyboard over gestures. It would still be subjective but more concretely focused (this B&GC question has a similar style). – Adam Wuerl♦ Jul 28 '11 at 2:09
Hi Adam - no worries, thanks for the welcome and feedback. Perhaps its more a question suited for Quora/discussion type forums, or just the water cooler conversations :). – Chris Kimpton Jul 28 '11 at 6:31

closed as not a real question by Adam Wuerl♦ Jul 28 '11 at 2:02

It's difficult to tell what is being asked here. This question is ambiguous, vague, incomplete, overly broad, or rhetorical and cannot be reasonably answered in its current form. For help clarifying this question so that it can be reopened, see the FAQ.

2 Answers

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I'd say not entirely, just by virtue of the fact that there are so many more possibilities of key combinations than gestures that can be accomplished with one hand. The concept of 'gestures' is also still pretty Mac-centric so time will tell on whether they receive a similar level of adoption on Windows and Linux.

I went out and bought a Magic Trackpad to take full advantage of the gesture support in Lion but I'm finding that there's a weird area of overlap where it's equivelently fast to do things like launch Mission Control with a gesture or by hitting F3, and I find myself not really sure of which one I should be doing.

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I think no. The range of keyboard shortcuts is much broader than gestures. Especially in some domains like computer programmer.

Also, your hands are already on the keyboard when typing. It's going to be faster to type control-B or command-B than go to the trackpad for anything. Even if the trackpad is two inches down from your fingers.

By contrast, the trackpad is more convenient if you are just browsing/scrolling.

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