I was watching my young nieces (2 and 4) playing with the iPad, as children are known to gravitate to, and noticed that they stop dead in their tracks whenever they encounter a word, or an icon or symbol that they don't recognize. It dawned on me that they are illiterate in the language of WIMP in the same way that they are illiterate in English. What WIMP is is a visual language that they have yet to learn.

They gravitates towards MPG the same way they gravitate to picture books, rather than one full of words. Because they cannot yet decipher the language.

But English is a powerful tool, although unnatural and clumsy in some ways (can't express emotions well, can't draw a picture). And I believe WIMP is similarly powerful.

There's also the illusion of inherit intuitiveness with MPG. But it's only as intuitive as the maker of the program wants it to be.

One gesture can yield different results across different apps. And the result can be the opposite of real world physic if the maker so choose, or not very intuitive at all.

My biggest complaint about MPG is that it's not explicit what commands are possible. I did not find out that you can "unfold" a tweet with Twitter iPad app until a year later when someone showed it to me. Not every intuitive.

With a WIMP menu it's every clear what the possibilities are.

MPG is still nascent as a design language. it will improve w/ collective experience.

I completely disagree that WIMP makes it clear what the possibilities are. Outside of our early adopter circles most people never figure out how to navigate all but the most simple of menus. It's intimidating, even for adults. I don't think most people find WIMP user-friendly at all.

Having spent much of the last 30 years watching thousands of people use the current technologies, I'd offer that beyond a few simple things, MPG isn't really that much better than WIMP.

In both cases, most implementations require demonstration to know what to do. Even the videos of the babies trying to swipe magazines is the result of taught behavior, versus innate behavior.

One thing we know is that humans are really adaptable. If they can learn something, they pick it up fairly easily. Pilots fly complex planes with ease, once they learn and practice.

MPG makes sense in a touch-centric world and WIMP doesn't make sense there. Plus, as we get more sensors that allow for the subtle detection of pressure and movement, the WIMP approach of grabbing a potato and rubbing it on the table - I mean, using a mouse - will quickly seem antiquated.

But don't fool yourself that it's easier to use one versus the other. Instead, take pride that you've got the right neural patterns to adapt quickly.

Thanks for your input, Jared!

My point has always been that MPG and WIMP are both great in different ways, and that the emergence of MPG won't supersede WIMP.

Even in a touch-centric future, the WIMP paradigm is still valid. Where your finger is the pointer of WIMP, minus the multi-touch, physics, and gestures that define MPG.

I don't think WIMP will last long once every technology has multi-touch screens, which are coming soon. It's pretty clear that the direct manipulation of screen objects is far more desirable to indirect mouse interaction.

You can see the future by just trying to use a WIMP-based interface on an iPad, even with a keyboard. It's clumsy and doesn't feel right, even though it feels perfectly fine when you have a keyboard on a standard laptop.

Maybe you are right about the future.

For me the appeal of WIMP is that it's a purely visual and language-based way of interaction (think your average ATM machine). That every screen has all the instructions I need to interact with it. No phantom 3 finger swipes to bring up hidden functionalities.

WIMP implementations (Windows, OS X, or lesser used ones like X Windows) are way more complicated than an ATM machine. Switching between windows, minimizing, resizing, scrolling, menus, dialog boxes, tree-based navigation systems, application bars, tabbed window panes, etc. are all learned interaction styles that we've just grown used to. There's nothing simple about them.