Computing for Ordinary Mortals

In the courses I teach about human-computer interaction, I typically open each class with an example of a usability problem. I'm putting these online, in case others find them useful.
I'm a casual user of iPhoto. The application is up to version 9, and it's been around since 2002, so you'd expect it to be bulletproof with respect to usability. It's not quite that....

By a "quantum gap" I imagine that you mean a large qualitative difference in intelligence that needs to be explained. But the differences we see are arguably a matter of degree (very large degree, but still).
A century ago, asked what separates humans from other animals, we might have said language,  tool use, symbolic reasoning, reasoning with probabilities, analogical reasoning, reasoning about the future, cultural transmission of behaviors, and so...

This is a semi-random assortment of questions I've answered on Quora. I'm still getting used to the platform. I've copied my thoughts here, lightly edited, in case anyone's interested.
On computer science
Who are the real heroes in computer science history and why?...

It started with a phone conversation: "What would you think of moving to Germany?" "Sure." Six weeks later, it was done. My wife and I would live in southern Germany for the next five years.
I was working for Texas Instruments at the time, in McKinney, TX, at my very first real job. (My team built software for a device designed to help fighter jets fly 50 feet above the ground. I should blog about test flights in a tricked-out Cessna some...