Dvorak is better, stronger, faster than QWERTY, but no one knows about it. The QWERTY typeset was originally developed by Christopher Latham Sholes for the typewriter. The original typewriter was often plagued with jamming issues as the type bars would often hit each other and get stuck. Sholes fixed this problem by coming up with the QWERTY typeset, which keeps common two-letter sequences as far away from each other as possible. It was not designed to be fast or efficient, but still remained the popular typeset, even though new typewriters that jammed less frequently were invented. Some time later, August Dvorak developed the Dvorak typeset, which he claimed to be faster, more accurate, and more comfortable than QWERTY. By most accounts, Dvorak is better than QWERTY. The fastest typer in the world also uses a Dvorak keyboard.

However, to this day, QWERTY is the overwhelmingly dominant typeset used by people. There are several instances of people claiming higher WPMs by using Dvorak and the comfort level is definitely better, but it failed in taking off with the mainstream. I believe this to be the working of network effects. When Dvorak came out, nearly all existing keyboards used the QWERTY typeset. Typists and typist trainers had been using QWERTY for several years and were quite proficient at it. Even if Dvorak only took a month or two to become proficient, that would still be months of lowered productivity. If no one else decided to adopt the new typeset, others could easily take your job while you learned Dvorak. Hence the network effect: an individual would only learn the new keyboard if a large number of people in his network also decided to learn. Then, most competitors would be at lower productivity for that period of time, which would decrease risk of unemployment.

Firms also faced similar problems. There would be no incentive for a firm to be the only user of Dvorak keyboards. The firm would have to face a period of learning, and their typists would have to maintain knowledge of two different types of keyboards. Anytime a new typist was hired, he would have to be re-taught. It would also be hard to force typists to learn something that would be completely useless to them if they ever changed jobs. More than likely, an employee would simply quit then have to learn Dvorak.