The reason proved to be a typematic default setting of 600ms delay and 25 cps repeat. I myself felt that setting to be Obscenity Worthy upon trying it.
whoever set that as the default probably set it there because that's how they like it. I can handle a 25 cps repeat, in fact it makes shell usage heavily relying on the up arrow rather than the available history searches more convenient.
It seems to me that in this instance Oren is guilty of magical thinking leading to inadequate pre-release testing.
The magical thinking is that the default settings set for the intended audience of the tool deployed would be appropriate for inexperienced appliance operators. This turned out not to be the case. Just like you shouldn't turn an unsupervised child loose with a half horsepower power drill, ...