[sombremesa]

Doesn't this depend on the number of actions available at a given point in time? For example, if I'm "using my Macbook", I could be wanting to do any of no less than a million (not an exaggeration) actions at any given moment. It's infinitely easier for me to open Alfred (or the OSX spotlight for a weaker example) with one keystroke and type the thing I need to do. It simply is not possible to give me a menu (presciently) for this kind of thing.

Perhaps if you're restricting context to one app that doesn't have too much going on it's a different story, but compared to 30 years ago there is a lot more people (especially devs, or Starcraft players) need to be doing on the computer at a given time.

[wtallis]

I suspect that graphical/menu input is preferable only for a Goldilocks range of decision tree complexity. Too many options and displaying them all to the user at once is impossible or unhelpful, forcing you to provide a search function (see the Windows Start Menu). Too few options, and the user won't need any prompting to know what choices they have and what keys they can be selected with (eg. Escape vs. Enter).