New iPhone vid demystifies the "keyboard"
By Joshua Topolsky 
posted Jun 27th 2007 9:43AM
posted Jun 27th 2007 9:43AM
[Thanks, Isabelle]
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Or perhaps a nice thing to do for people to learn how to use a feature they've never used???
No, how about Apple realize that typing on a screen has never worked even with better tricks than this.
There is a reason why we used tactile feedback keypads for over 100 years. And just telling people to get over it isnt going to cut it.
Just because Apple HQ says it's cool, doent mean we have to just buy it.
I think they just made this video because people want to know how this keyboard works I guess.
The thing is, I'm a little nervous about the keypad still. This isn't what I wanted to see.
Instead of telling me you won't make that many mistakes, they tell me "You will make TONS, and don't even try typing with two thumbs for atleast a week. But when you make typos, the iPhone will try to fix it."
I'm not sure I feel comfortable having the iPhone fix all my typos when sending an email to my boss.
Not sure I like the "sent from my iPhone" signature either.
Heaven forbid you learn to proofread or change your email signature preferences.
@cisco kid and yes, to all apple-haters out there, wheter u like it or not, apple is revolutioning our entire world and lives, either directly or in a collateral way, so, stop complaining... you should demand higher quality from your beloved microsoft company (good luck with that!!!) instead of bashing apple for making better products! and, of course... why are you reading this posts if u all think iPhone sucks? that's something I will never understand... engadget just launched a pipes site without any iPhone or even apple news at all... what r u guys doin here if you're not making a research or planning to buy an iPhone??
you just don't get it
cheers
I like the iPhone - it's pretty.
However, they majorly screwed up with some hugely key features for me (3G, GPS?).
I keep reading to see if they have fixed it, or if initial reports were incorrect.
I don't see how criticism is "apple-hating", nor do I see a reason why we should "demand more" from Microsoft.
Apple put itself on this pedestal with stupid claims like "We're revolutionizing the phone industry" and "The full internet on a phone for the first time in history" -- WHA?
This is another case of Apple claiming they've invented the mouse (Sorry Xerox) and on this little critter they aren't delivering what they're boasting about.
Dude... we've had onscreen keyboards since the Newton. Why does everyone act like Apple just invented the touch-screen PDA phone and that no one's ever seen one before? Even this particular onscreen keyboard isn't exceptionally innovative. Hell, I can finger-type on my smaller onscreen keyboard on my Wizard.
And I don't even need a 'magnifying glass'.
I'll wait for the next iPhone, when it will hopefully be possible to rotate for a wider keypad.
Until that time I will subsist on a 9mm MOTOFONE imported from Mexico or Brazil.
meh....wait for the next software version. I bet they'll add this
Or wait until they add a clip-into-dock-connector thumb keyboard. You know it's coming.
@john Laur
How would the clip on keyboard stay connected?
You won't have to wait for the next generation iPhone to get a widescreen keyboard. That can easily be upgraded with a software update. It may happen on this generation.
Can't you just rotate the iPhone to landscape mode and the keyboard will automatically resize bigger?
Again its just more damage control to try to keep the hype up
is not damage control... iPhone in a title generates lots of clicks, both from people who hate it and love it. When it comes down to it is about the money and we'll are suckers for it. The iPhone is to Engadget what Anna Nicole Smith or Paris Hilton is to CNN. Flashy headlines not much reporting.
@andres
Uh, I think Matthew was referring to Apple making the video, not Engadget posting it. You made a good point about the clicks (however misguided it was), but I had to laugh at your "is not damage control" comment. Sorry, but to me it sounded like a 5 year old defending the realism of, oh say, professional wrestling.
"in perhaps a move to stave off some rumblings of disappointment that typing on Apple's soon-to-be ubiquitous new device may be a little less "intuitive" than they had hoped"
really? regardless of other shortcomings noted by the reviewers, they all seem to agree that in fact it does work as advertise. Which from the horses mouth himself (Jobs), it takes 5 days to get used to it. After that you'll type as fast as with a BlackBerry and Treo. Mossberg seems to agree.
Mossberg is an Apple shill. If he say anything critical of an Apple device, the land down under will freeze over!!
What else did you expect him to say?
Mossberg who? The US PC market might care for his opinion but in the worldwide phone market I can assure you his opinion carries no weight.
@ cisco kid
what about the other three? all fanboys?
there where four professionals who reviewed and all seem to agree on everything perfectly.
"Mossberg is an Apple shill."
Yes, haters, we get it. Any journalist who says anything positive about Apple *must be* a shill. It can't *possibly* be that they really do think Apple makes fantastic products...
Irrational thought is king in Apple Hater Land.
"Yes, haters, we get it. Any journalist who says anything positive about Apple *must be* a shill. It can't *possibly* be that they really do think Apple makes fantastic products..."
It's Mossberg, genius. Apple didnt give these phones to Consumer Reports, Maximum PC or some other publication that does through reviews of products, they gave them to some of the most Apple freindly writers out there.
Mossberg has never given an Apple product a bad review. He is a shill, good only for a softball love letter review for Apple. Even Apple folks know this.
There is a reason why Apple fans love him so much.
Depending on your motor skills, moving to a new type of input device can be tough or easy. I agree that if multi-touch is somewhat faulty there could be a problem, but if it works properly, you just have to take the time to retrain your typing. In my best days, I was about a 110 WPM typist on an IBM Selectric, but if I moved to a different keyboard it cut my speed considerably. It took easily a week or so to get used to a different keyboard that had a different feel or keystroke pressure. You just have to want to do it. I would have been happy to have predictive software to correct my mistakes, but I just had to practice so as to not hit the wrong keys. If you don't want to practice, well then you're just screwing yourself. I was always told I should learn Dvorak keyboard, but I griped because I would have had to take time to unlearn and relearn. Later on I had computers that could emulate Dvorak, but I never did learn because I convinced myself I'd never see a Dvorak keyboard in an office. I never did.
But what's the big deal about looking at a video explaining how predictive typing works. It seem interesting. I'm really good at ASDF keyboarding, but if it takes a couple of weeks to adjust to some multi-touch system what's the big deal. I never tried it, so how do I know I won't like it. I'd have to put some effort into it for a while. It would be unreasonable for me to expect a full-size keyboard on a small device. Even your beloved shrunken chicklet keyboard doesn't match a full-size keyboard, but it doesn't mean that chicklet keyboards are useless crap. At this point in time, they're a practical compromise.
I'm almost 60 years old and for younger people to be so sure that some different technology absolutely won't work is pathetic. Sure, there's no guarantee that multi-touch is better than a chicklet keyboard, but nothing will ever change with that sort of attitude. It may need to be tested and refined, that's all.
Please tell me how else you can keep a mechanical keyboard and a larger size screen and fit all on a small, thin device (you say smaller chicklets, right). You're saying you want to keep smartphones the same size they are now with the same size screens. That they're perfect at this point and will never need to evolve. Only six months time will tell.
Constable Odo, the iPhone keyboard is not multitouch. It appears to be well thought-out for a touchscreen keyboard but it still has all the basic shortcomings i.e. no tactile feedback and pads too small for the fingers. No amount of adaptation will turn a bad keyboard into a good one, so worries that this one will be bad like all others before it is justified. Even the Apple puppets publishing the first reviews have had reservations, all except king puppet Mossberg.
Obviously all of those features are meant to counteract the difficulty of not having a hardware keyboard, and to me they seem to do pretty well to keep the iphone on par with other phones, but it's just insulting the way the guy in the video makes it sound revolutionary and talks about how much better it is than anything you've ever used. People who wonder why there is so much scrutiny on the iphone... make sure and watch that video.
how can you knock it til you try it? It may indeed be a learning curve that rewards you with a better way of typing....
I wasn't really knocking the iphone as much as I was knocking the hype machine.
Really Mattso?
It's insulting to you for a company to hype their products? You must spend a lot of time feeling insulted because every company on the planet does it.
It's basically an expression. I didn't feel personally insulted, but it makes me wonder who out there would actually buy into what this guy is saying. Do they assume people are really that gullible? Show me the features and I'll be able to make an educated guess on how good they are. All that extra hyperbole he was spitting out was a waste of time for anyone who has a brain. At least that's the way I see it.
... and I know all companies hype their products, but I don't even need to finish this sentence for most people on here to know what my point is...
Seriously, EVERYTHING about the iPhone doesn't have to be news. Tutorials really aren't news. I want to have iPhone news, but just because Apple posts a new video or changes a word on the iPhone homepage to bold it is not news stop it.
Then stop visiting till next week or subscribe to the non-iPhone RSS.
I have no need to hear you whine like a baby, wha! wha!
Actually, in my opinion, this is the biggest iPhone news of the week. I don't think anybody had any idea a key's target zone was dynamic like that. Very sophisticated.
Jonathan, quit whining, a video being added to apple's website is definitely an important thing to a lot of people. If you don't want to hear about all of the iPhone updates, engadget has given you a link to an iPhone-free section of the website, use it or be quiet.
it's good for news as all the the little anti-fanboys keep jumping up to yell about how the iphone keyboard will suck, yadda yadda (wahhh I can't afford one!) so it helps put that to rest. there's a video, there's people who use it and say it's good.
it's relevent becuase now hopefully atleast one set of people will stfu.
don't like it don't read it.
I clearly said I am interested in iPhone news. I don't want to miss out on everything. ButI don't want to have to scroll past a iPhone post every other post.
Read more carefully, then complain about my "whining."
"I clearly said I am interested in iPhone news. I don't want to miss out on everything. ButI don't want to have to scroll past a iPhone post every other post."
So read the damn iPhone-free RSS feed, and catch up on the iPhone news on the iPhone-only feed as the mood arises.
Although a major-traffic tech news site changing its format at your behest is CLEARLY a better option...
The end of the video was the most interesting, the guy was typing really fast still making mistakes and the iPhone was giving good guesses on what he meant, instead of words that aren't even really that my razr does all the time.
Also has anyone else noticed, that dude has some huge hands good lord!
nice!
Apple is making believers out of the infidels. I love how the people that hate the iPhone keep coming to post about it. I'm not fond of broccoli, but you don't see me constantly b1tching to the Jolly Green Giant about it. Get a life.
Cool video. Sold.
No thanks Apple I'm waiting for the Sony Ericsson W960
"Also has anyone else noticed, that dude has some huge hands good lord!"
Naw, the iPhone is really that small....
Ok, I'll believe that, I just thought the dude has some big bear paws.
Who is that guy by the way?
It was me....Steve "willyboy" Jobs.
Who is that guy?
That's not John Appleseed?
I dunno who he is, all I know is, Steven Colbert needs to do a parody of these videos. He kinda looks like him.
I think a lot of people are missing the point. After watching these videos, it's clear to me that Apple has been spending most of their time on the underlying interface. Features (MMS, iChat, etc) are easy to add later. But if the keyboard, scrolling, safari, etc aren't right FROM DAY ONE, then the phone has no hope at all. Seriously, what good is iChat if you can't type your crap in it?
I havent watched the video, but that looks like a chat session to me... I thought IM was out.
iPhone doesn't have iChat
@Jonathan
That's why he said "Features (MMS, iChat, etc) are easy to add later."
I suggest a remedial reading course.
Why is this news? Repositioning your cursor in your typing field has been a feature of PCs, Macs, PDAs and just about every halfway mediocre system that featured word processing ever invented.
It will all be over soon....
This only leave me with one question:
What comes in the box?
Here's the link to the pics of the box.. dunno whats in it. maybe u can guess..
http://www.modmyiphone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=384
I did notice that he was making errors while typing fast at the end. They don't expect you to be able to type error-free, they just expect that the iphone will be able to predict and make the necessary corrections "when" you make those mistakes. In other words the software is built to concede to its flaws and faulty design (the keyboard) but offers an alternative solution.... correction. Somehow i feel uncomfortable about that.
I think that those errors were on purpose. They were meant to show you how you can make a mistake(s) and that if you just keep going, everything will (should) work out by the end of the word.
I think the people complaining about the lack of a hard keyboard are missing a big point. Apple didn't go with a soft keypad because they thought it was better than a hard one. They could have added most of that same software to a hard keyboard interface if they wanted to. They went with a soft keyboard because that allowed them to have the screen cover 90% of the front of the device, which is great for all other functions of the phone besides text entry. To me, that increased real estate makes this device more usable than a hard keyboard would.
That guy's index finger covers at least 7 freak' KEYS.. how the freak are you suppose to type?
Very cool video! That correction looks and functions a lot better than T9 (which is what I normally use for typing on my cellphone). Also interesting how touch areas get bigger to guess which words you're typing. The end of the video makes me wonder, though. Sure, the correction picked up all of the errors, but I wasn't sure if the guy made that many errors on purpose for demonstration or if you really need to trust the keyboard that much.
All I got from that is the keyboard is incredibly inaccurate and next to impossible to type on without mistakes. Think about it, the last scene with two thumbs was most likely demonstrated by someone who has been using the iPhone for months with a set script of simple words to type. Even at that he was slow and his error rate was ridiculous. "Trust" the software...essentially a spell check? No thanks! We all know how much trouble that can get you in.
I'm an Apple guy, but this just doesn't look like fun.
I hear if you type "DRM" the spell checker changes it to read "Vista."
"There is a reason why we used tactile feedback keypads for over 100 years."
And the reason is because modern touch-screens didn't exist 100 years ago.
Yeah, that comment kinda reminded me of the people who said the Wii was going to suck. "We've been using D-Pads for over 100 years!"
They've existed for the last 10 years and they've sucked all that time. The value of tactile feedback is not a matter of opinion except to the delusional.
USA Today, the WSJ and the NYT are the highest-circulated papers in the US, with a combined daily readership of over 5.3 million. I suspect that's why Apple chose them.
At least spell check your own posts before questioning the thoroughness of professional journalists.
I'm still trying to find a reason to buy one.
For different water-cooler conversation.
To be the coolest kid on the block.
To make your children jealous.
Because you hate Steve Ballmer.
Because you love Steve Jobs.
Because you're not a 50 year old single man like most of these trolls.
Because you have a sense of style.
Because you're a technological fetishist.
Because it's user interface is beautiful.
Because you love touchpads.
Because you realize, even though it's not the best nor cheapest on the market, it's definitely the coolest.
Because you have a spare $500 laying around.
Because you realize that a gadget creating this much buzz will surely be a hit, regardless of trolls.
Because TREOs and Blackberrys are ugly.
Because life is about having fun. You only get to live once.
For different water-cooler conversation.
I drink carbonated water.
To be the coolest kid on the block.
I'm a 37 year old father of three with a nice house, new souped up Jetta and 07 Quest SE, ride on mower, nice home theater system, PS3, etc. I don't need an iPhone to make me the coolest kid, father, man, whatever.
To make your children jealous.
My kids are 2, 3, and 4. Paying too much attention to any one of them for more than a minute makes them jealous. Besides, they'll probably just chew the iPhone or drop it in the pool, or do some other f'd up thing that toddlers in their terrible two's do.
Because you hate Steve Ballmer.
I can't stand that dude.
Because you love Steve Jobs.
I don't trust the guy.
Because you're not a 50 year old single man like most of these trolls.
See three answers above.
Because you have a sense of style.
Not really. I'm not MetroSexual.
Because you're a technological fetishist.
Not anymore.
Because it's user interface is beautiful.
I'll give you that.
Because you love touchpads.
Not too crazy about electronic touchpads. Now, the nice 38D touchpads? Those I do love.
Because you realize, even though it's not the best nor cheapest on the market, it's definitely the coolest.
Not really. There are nicer devices that get more done that would be considered cooler like the HTC Kaiser.
Because you have a spare $500 laying around.
Not with 3 kids anymore. Although I may be able to expense it. I'm trying to figure that one out.
Because you realize that a gadget creating this much buzz will surely be a hit, regardless of trolls.
It also has the greatest opportunity to be a big flop because maybe it's being overhyped a bit much.
Because TREOs and Blackberrys are ugly.
I can't freekin' stand Blackberrys. I'm writing them out of my company's cellular policy. The last cool treo was the 650. Unfortunately, Palm gave up on that device and it's turned into a WM5 wannabe.
LOL...
Thanks for putting in perspective for that freak of nature.
He's the type of guy that goes in the bathroom to smell other peoples &$*#^%
Does anybody know if the iPhone can access a shared iTunes library while on WiFi?
I don't think the iPhone can directly access iTunes at all. It can only sync with iTunes from your computer.
Maybe thin fingered people will adapt to it ok, but us fat fingered folks (FFF) will have problems with it. Same with the treo and the dash - small keys are ok for some folks and not for others.
I still have a little difficulty typing on my wing with it's slide out keyboard. The old blackberries (7230, etc.) were pretty good, though.
so that wine guy that got to test the iphone was right that everybody didnt believe last week he spoke about the magnifying glass feature
They didn't publicize the magnifier tool because they didn't developed it first... This is the same idea of the SHIFT Technique described in the SIGCHI paper of this year.
http://www.engadgetmobile.com/2007/05/16/microsofts-finger-based-interface-new-or-an-iphone-copy/
Man the time just doesnt change... And I mean it REALLY dosen't change... it stays 9:42 throughout all the iPhone commercials/videos I've seen. Funny!
Subconscious suggestion that the thing is in fact the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
wow looks like the second comming to me. what about u guys?
Oh yeah, I'm on my 3rd and 4th. "Wet nap, please!" ^^
I really hope they say something about at least one of the following between today and launch:
-Ringtones in iTunes
-Voice Calling
-iChat
-Games
I'm already getting it, but more icing is always sweet.
not going to lie, the guy that does the videos on apple.com with the features and keyboard kind of creeps me out. i really feel like he's so nice and then at the end will ask me to get in his van...
He's going to multi-touch you.
"IPhone users will quickly learn to trust its intelligence to correct their mistakes automatically" says Steve Jobs. Well, I DON'T MAKE MISTAKES, STEVE! The last keynote, Steve's iPhone guy couldn't even type correctly when he was demonstrating it! SIDEKICK 3 forever!
I can hear it now: "Iphone owners are garnering support in a class-action lawsuit against apple, claiming that the device's particularly inuntuitive keyboard has caused a condition, aptly dubbed Ifinger... you may recall a similar fiasco in which blackberry owners were the victims of gadget-related injury..."
My biggest question mark is the UI. I still cannot imagine typing long blocks of text on this device, but if they have truly got this right, ... http://www.sramanamitra.com/blog/999
Nice blogspam...and for a particularly worthless blog as well.
I wrote this on another forum and I'll post it here as well...
A landscape keyboard is not as good as everyone thinks when you are using your one finger or two thumbs. I remember using the widescreen keyboard on Magic Cap and found it SLOWER AND MORE ERROR PRONE than smaller onscreen keyboards because your thumbs have to travel further distance across the screen. It's slow, uncomfortable and less accurate believe it or not. The only time a bigger keyboard becomes better is when you can use all your fingers to type.
Consider what it would be like to type on a regular computer keyboard that was twice is large... You'd have to move your whole palm across the keyboard every time you wanted to type a word... the same is true for a landscape touch keyboard on the iPhone. Wider does not equal better..
The sidekick 3's keyboard is wide and it's one of the best keyboards on the market.
You really can't compare a 3 inch wide keyboard to a 5 foot desktop keyboard.
Because the "wide" 3 inch keyboard people want iPhone to do isn't impractical like the desktop comparison is.
So what happens when i type an acronym? For example what if 'ouzza' stood for something, and i push the space bar to go on to the next word. Oh wait, iphone just corrected me and changed that to pizza,now i have to go back and change that. Having to stop typing to cancel the corrections will slow down what already seems like slow text input method.
"iphone is smart and can notice contact names." What's so smart about that? Only thing i noticed in the video was after he typed "applesee" it suggested "appleseed." Because it's just so hard to type in a d.
If it adds frequently used words to it's dictionary won't the frequently made mistakes be added too? Just wait till the dictionary gets cluttered with SMS slang.
Well atleast the iphone is pretty.
If you had paid attention, they told you:
To reject a suggestion, tap on the suggestion, and to accept it, press the space, erm, 'key'. And it makes sense that it would have to wait until after 'apples' to come up with Appleseed, as more obscure last name 'starter letters' would come up sooner.
@Chicksta
"To reject a suggestion, tap on the suggestion, and to accept it, press the space, erm, 'key'."
-Did you read what I wrote? I guess I wasn't clear... I didn't say you couldn't reject suggestions. What I said was. HAVING TO REJECT SUGGESTIONS ALL THE TIME WILL MAKE TYPING VERY SLOW.
"And it makes sense that it would have to wait until after 'apples' to come up with Appleseed, as more obscure last name 'starter letters' would come up sooner."
-Appleseed wasn't the only word that it suggested when there was only 1 letter left. Last I checked "applese" was not a word - and they should know this because they have the whole english dictionary on there - so why didn't it suggest 'appleseed' after 'applese?' Remember now, it is THE most advanced text input method ever, or whatever the hell he said. Don't make claims like that if you don't want people to be picky.
"If you had paid attention, they told you:"
-Now if YOU had paid attention to what I wrote...
Well, apparently you will have issues with typing on it, because when you type one thing, it'll type what you typed, and then you'll yell at it and tell it that that wasn't what you typed (even though the -actual text you typed- proves otherwise), that it should have understood what you meant to type instead, and that even if you aren't very clear, it should understand what you meant and not what you did, and therefore it's the fault of the device, not of your poor communication skills.
"I guess I wasn't clear... if YOU had paid attention to what I wrote..."
Sorry, I did read what you wrote, not what you meant to write but didn't. Next time I'll read your mind instead. P-AJA.
No one asked anyone to read anyone's mind. I was just rephrasing what I said, since you obviously didn't understand, and still don't. As for what you just said. It won't have any trouble reading what text I enter, as I would never buy one. I'm happy with my current Windows Mobile device. Now back to the point, if it had a proper input method there would be no confusion as to what was meant and what was pressed.
Now this is becoming a fight. I have better things to do that fight in comments. Feel free to respond, I'll read it, but I won't respond anymore to this topic.
I like how you press space to accept the suggestion, then have to backspace in order to add punctuation. Very handy... Oh well, when you design a device for style over function, you can't make everything work like you want. Nevertheless, Apple will be heralded as usability geniuses.
I guess for any combination of letters there can be one and only one interesting suggestion!
You know, I usually just kind of chuckle over all of the trolling and ignorance that is the fabric of the Engadget comments section, but honestly, I hope you are a better person in real life. You made a statement, I responded to it, then you screamed in caps that you said something that you didn't (you never said anything about time to delete suggestions to not accept them, you specifically said that you were concerned with going back to change the auto-correct, which isn't an issue). Then you put me down because I read/responded to what you actually wrote, and not to what perhaps you meant to say (but didn't). THEN you say it's MY fault that you didn't say what you meant (in saying that I don't understand), and that you 'had' to clarify it [because you wrote something else]. You didn't 'rephrase' what you said, you -changed- what you had originally said. That's not an issue of understanding on my part, it's an issue of you not being able to communicate. Then you reveal that you're just talking out of your ass anyways, because you don't really care about the way the feature works, you just like the sound of your own voice, because the bottom line seems to be that you're trying to say it doesn't have a 'proper' input method (which I would think would be a matter of preference and of capability (i.e., vision, hearing, etc.)) and to tell everyone you like your current WM. Well, none of those things were in your first post, so why didn't you just say what you meant? 'I don't want an iPhone, but I want to say something about it so I can feel special'.
-If- you have better things to do than fight in comments, then why don't you not start it - learn how to say what you mean, not insult people, and/or not get mad at people for not knowing that you meant to say something you didn't say and then go around trying to put them down for that? And yes, I get the little passive-aggressive move in stating that you won't respond, how very clever of you.
Chicksta, you are the one displaying your ignorance here. His meaning is plain enough for everyone to see:
"Having to stop typing to cancel the corrections will slow down what already seems like slow text input method."
He obviously understood how it worked. Perhaps you should spend a little more time on reading comprehension and a little less on hyperbolic insults.
Actually what he said was...
"Oh wait, iphone just corrected me and changed that to pizza,now i have to go back and change that."
Yes, Craig, it is a semantic issue. And I guess you can't see the distinction either, and while it is nitpicky, here it is. You do not stop typing to cancel corrections, according to the video. You either: a) stop typing to reject the suggestions, or b) keep typing (by using delete 'keys') to delete the auto-completed 'corrections'. So when I read what was written, which was about 'cancel the corrections', I inferred that to mean 'cancel the corrections', NOT 'cancel the suggestions'. On the one hand, I can see how someone would be (incorrectly) interchanging the two, but they are different. So, no, it is not obvious to me nor to anyone else I know what he meant in lieu of what he said, nor what he understood - nor could it ever be, as I do not speak for others. If I were to say something that needed clarification because I misused a term, I wouldn't get all jackass to the other person about it, because my goal in communication is to be understood and to understand, not to blame someone else for my own inability to explain what I mean.
But I really can't take it seriously, because I noticed the same person posting on even more iPhone stories despite their claim to not want one nor be interested in one. The crux of it is that 'he doesn't get it', to which I really have to ask: why do those of you 'uninterested' need to blather, or even feel a 'need to understand' (pretending to ask questions via not-well-guised insults)? If you don't 'get it', and aren't open-minded enough to want to 'get it' or heck, can't even just try it before blathering, move on. You will be so much happier in life.
Hey, the keyboard looks like a feature specifically chosen to get that "set apart" image...I think it will be great. Also, this is a bit off topic, but if you don't want to spend quite so much on your iPhone, here's an article that shows you how to get it for $300 as a switching customer.
http://tech.blorge.com/Structure:%20/2007/06/26/how-to-land-your-iphone-for-300/
Am I the only one who turns off predictive text the day they get a phone? Predictive text is annoying, and half the point of a full keyboard is to eliminate the need for it. Unless Apple has developed the first predictive text technique that actually works, this is a minus.
Probably. I've lived by T9 for years and years. I feel like I'm going to lose a valuable childhood skill when I pick up an iphone on friday.
Three questions:
1) Can we type in landscape position? It should give more keyboard space.
2) The preventive function is linked to the built in dictionary, but will it work with foreign language or other localization setup?
3) Is there any different localization setup?
Although it has nothing to do with the keyboard, the fact that Apple didn't include a "search by text" feature or an IM solution (including their own proprietary iChat), is bewildering to me. And EDGE is garbage. I'll stick to my rinky-dink Sidekick until iPhone 2.0 when they get their act together...
hmmmm, time for me to dig out my Visor stylus....
Seriously, a stylus may not be a bad accessory here.