'Member when Bill Gates used to say that Windows was "intuitive"? 'Member that? I do. And Macs? Right. Where every program looks alike. That's as intuitive as every room in my house looking exactly alike. Like the kitchen and the bathroom. Makes for some occasional difficulties around mealtime…

And I have terrible, terrible news for you: using an iPod isn't "intuitive" either.

You know what's intuitive? Finding berries and avoiding predators. That's intuitive. Submitting to the Alpha person in the tribe, or dominating the Betas - intuitive. Recoiling from a flame – intuitive. Scrolling through menus, staring at moving pictures, pressing little plastic buttons in carefully orchestrated sequences – counterintuitive.

I can learn these things, but that doesn't make them intuitive. In fact, if something is intuitive, you don't need to learn it. You can intuit it.

Take me and my wife. She and I have different skill sets. I can pick out patterns in a crowded visual field, and I can learn extended series of manual actions. That makes me computer-friendly. She can find the compelling story in a series of events. That makes her a skilled and gifted writer. It does not help her use computers. Or iPods. Or our ReplayTV (Or PVR or DVR or TiVo or whatever the hell you're supposed to call them; our television-recording-unit-box – call it a TRUB).

I have another big advantage in using gadgets: avoidance personality disorder. Very helpful. Machines are peaceful, inanimate objects. They don't challenge or scare me. My wife, the storyteller, sees everything in terms of people interacting, so she assigns human motivations to inanimate objects. That's called the Pathetic Fallacy (a term coined by art critic John Ruskin in 1856 – look it up if you don't believe me), and is unhelpful with computers. She decides they are malevolent and have secret perverse desires. After all, the same action in various contexts will have wildly different results. And when my wife's computer gives her unexpected results, which happens every, oh, 20 minutes, a noise is heard throughout the house: a querulous "Peee-ter!" Same goes with remotes, iPods, and cell phones. It sounds like a cat is stuck in our crawlspace.

So don't talk to me about intuitive machines!

Let's imagine that Steve Jobs came out with a car – the iAuto, of course, which rhymes with "Why, I oughta…" Of course, it has no silly, old-fashioned ignition. As soon as you open the door the iAuto starts. It has a state-of-the-art electric motor, but you can't replace the battery, so you have to get a new iAuto after about five hundred recharges. And you can only recharge it at special iAuto stations.

The steering wheel is replaced with an innovative touch sensitive disk, called the ClickDisk™. The iAuto has no gas or brake pedals. They were so… inelegant! Why would you have two separate controls which do basically the same thing - control speed? Instead, there is a mode button on the ClickDisk™. When you press it, the ClickDisk™ controls your speed – clockwise accelerates, counterclockwise decelerates. The revolutionary ClickDisk™, in different contexts, will be used to tune the radio, turn up the air conditioning, select tracks on your iPod, and move the seats back and forth. The same button on the dash rotates through all those functions. And the state-of-the-art navigation system will show you any road in America or Canada – any road that has paid the license fee to Apple. And, coming soon, one of the most anticipated accessories for the iAuto is the new Apple iCoffin, available in seven fruitalicious colors.

The iAuto scratches easily, but it is still the current object of desire. And I hear Microsoft is coming out with one, too. It'll be called the Cruze. It's basically a lot like the iAuto, but available in brown, and lets you share maps with anyone else who also has a Cruze. But they can only refer to that map three times in a three day period, before they are prompted to buy it. And, of course, each Cruze has a Ctl-Alt-Del button, in case of a crash.

Sorry, old Microsoft joke. But just as fresh today as when screens were green.

So let's just stop expecting our machines to be intuitive. Stop making them elegant; instead, make them easy.

Peter Basch