Whine all you want, Dvorak will never be the standard

Quick, what are the first six letters on the top left of the computer keyboard? You know them by heart, and "QWERTY" has become a standard of almost insurmountable proportions.

Now everyone knows that QWERTY is inefficient. Study after study has shown that the old standby -- designed so that users typically hit keys on alternating sides of the keyboard as they type so that keys wouldn't jam -- is slower than other alternatives, putting the most commonly used letters (E and T, for example) in places that are actually a bit difficult to reach.

Naturally, alternatives abound, but the most noteworthy is Dvorak, a keyboard layout devised in the 1930s with the goal of putting the most frequently used letters right there on the home row. The result? Dvorak typists should go much faster, though this has never been studied extensively.

80 years later, any Dvorak enthusiast can get a Dvorak keyboard for his computer (and even reshuffle the keys on a laptop if he really wants to, using software to reprogram what button goes to what letter), but that's only a small part of the data-entry puzzle. More and more people are now using their cell phones for communications, and there's no Dvorak option on the iPhone -- or any other cell phone, for that matter.

Why not? Because, as the Wall Street Journal so succintly puts it, nobody cares. Adding keyboard options complicates setting options, confuses people, and requires programming effort (however small). Worst of all, people seem to have a strange tendency to accidentally turn Dvorak settings on, resulting in epic confusion as they wonder why the top row of their keyboard starts with a bunch of punctuation marks.

Dvorak enthusiasts are more rabid than Apple and Linux fanatics combined, so they dismiss these concerns outright. One guy even complains so furiously about the iPhone's lack of Dvorak support that he "wanted to punch his fist through the computer monitor" every time he saw an ad for the device.

Sadly (for some), all that anger seems to be falling on deaf ears. Despite petitions, books, protests, and lots of hand-wringing, there's still no real Dvorak option for any major cell phone, the notable exception being an app available for the iPhone that only runs on "jailbroken" phones, severely frowned upon by Apple and something that voids your warranty. Apple seems to be having nothing to do with the idea.

So who cries for Dvorak? As much as I'd like to type even faster than I do already... the last thing I want to do is have to learn another keyboard layout. All for one and one for all, right?

And hey, the people I really feel sorry for are the guys that have to use a standard phone keypad to get their data entry done...