weird phrase “slash q-z” what does it means and why?

Question

Hi guys, I was recently browsing some quotes out of boredom, and saw one said by Jobs:

“The manual for WordStar, the most popular word-processing program, is 400 pages thick. To write a novel, you have to read a novel – one that reads like a mystery to most people. They’re not going to learn slash q-z any more than they’re going to learn Morse code. That is what Macintosh is all about.”

I can understand the meaning behind it but got curious about the phrase “slash q-z” as it seems not to be a common word and cannot find much about it on Google.

Edit: thanks for all the wonderful answers guys, it’s really interesting to look back see how far we’ve come from.

In: 412

Answer 1

I was working at a company in 1988 when a college pulled me into his office and told me about this weird thing he had plugged into his computer. He told me it was called a mouse.

I asked of what the hell that was for, and he said it was going to make it easier to move the cursor around on the screen.

I have been working for more than 10 years at that point using keystrokes. Actually, I still do. I’m old-fashioned that way. Okay, TBH, I’m old.

I’ll be honest and tell you I no longer remember what that particular keystroke means, and it causes me a little bit of trouble when people ask me how to do things at my work because they don’t understand how to do keystrokes and I don’t know how to do it using the mouse without a lot of digging.

Started off with the VI text editor on a Unix computer.

I loved WordStar. And PFSWrite.

Then came WordPerfect. That lasted for a lot of years. I took a job in the early ’90s at a medical device manufacturer. I worked on a team whose job was to convert the entire company from the WordPerfect application to Microsoft office, specifically Microsoft Word.

It was a corporate mandate, based on licensing requirements.

You would have thought we had sprouted horns and tails.

The toughest people to convert were the assistants, of which I was one. They came around eventually, because there was no alternative.

Now we b**** about updates. I maintain that updates are the equivalent of someone breaking into your house and rearranging your furniture for know what the reason than because they can.

I learned that we like what we know. Change sucks, but it is inevitable.

Thank you for the trip down memory lane. I’ll take my walker with the tennis balls and show myself out.